Dynasty of Evil

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
© 2009 Drew Karpyshyn
296 pages

Twenty years ago, a disgruntled miner-turned-revolutionary-turned Sith Lord destroyed the whole of the Brotherhood of Darkness and became the sole Dark Lord of the Sith. Taking the name Darth Bane, he quietly eradicated the remnants of his old life. Taking a young girl named Zannah with him, Bane transformed what it meant to be a Sith, beginning a new order that maintained only two Sith should ever exist -- a Master to embody power and and apprentice to crave it, seek it, and claim the title of Master for herself through a challenge to the death. The weak perish and the strong survive; this is Bane's way of the Sith.

A lifetime of wielding the dark energies of the Force have atrophied Darth Bane, but his apprentice -- an accomplished Sith sorceress whose manipulation of the Force can drive her enemies insane -- has yet to challenge him and claim the title of Dark Lord for herself. Disgusted by her apparent lack of ambition, Bane searches for a way to lengthen his own life so that he might find and train a better apprentice. Dispatching Zannah on a mission to investigate the murder of a Jedi knight -- for anyone who can overcome a skilled Jedi is of interest to Bane -- the Dark Lord himself travels to the galaxy's perilous deep core to look for a planet where a Sith lord once ruled for centuries, relying on arcane knowledge to achieve near-immortality.

Zannah takes opportunity of her liberty to find her own apprentice in preparation for her overthrow of Bane, and she is not alone in seeking a confrontation with him: a woman who witnessed her father tortured at the hands of Bane in The Rule of Two has come into money, and is using it to pay a talented bounty hunter and assassin to track Bane down.  The characters' journeys come together in the depths of a mountain prison, where the five stalk each other -- some looking for salvation, others for revenge and glory.

Although somewhat short -- fontsize is fairly large, making the page count misleading -- Karpyshyn succeeds in giving his central character a fitting resolution, a demanding task considering the amount of tension Karpyshyn has been developing since The Rule of Two. His cast of characters is strong and must be so, for the novel is dominated by character drama: while Bane, Zannah, Princess Serra, and the others all have action-laden jobs to fulfill,  they're only background. Two of the new characters held my attention: Serra, the royal princess whose hatred and desire for revenge against Bane draws her into the dark side, a move contested only by her faithful bodyguard Lucia -- who once idolized Bane during his revolutionary years in the Sith army. The fifth character makes the ending almost unpredictable:  before completing the novel, I could not say with surety which resolution Karpyshyn would choose.

The Darth Bane trilogy has been a pleasure throughout, and its capstone is fitting if a bit light.

Related:

• Dynasty of Evil's Wookiepedia entry
• Reviews from TheForce.net

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

Darth Bane: Rule of Two
© 2008 Drew Karpyshyn
318 pages.

I began this year with Darth Bane:Rule of Two, the second in a yet-unfinished trilogy of books about Darth Bane, creator of the Sith order that Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine were members of. At the end of Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, the Sith lord acquired an apprentice in the form of a young girl, Zannah. The story picks up shortly the end of Path of Destruction, where all of the Army of Darkness (the Sith) and many of the Army of Light (Jedi) have been destroyed (via events in Path of Destruction). After spending a little time here, we move ten years into the future. Bane is continuing his study of the old Sith ways to further develop his power in the Dark Side while being a mentor to Zannah. We see Bane beginning to subtly interfere in politics to bring about changes more amicable to his desires: this slow sabotage may continue until Palpatine is able to realize it in the three prequel movies. Meanwhile, one Jedi is not as confident as his brethren that the Sith have been wiped out completely. There are multiple threads: Bane's growth as a Sith Master, Zannah's growth as an apprentice, the Republic adjusting itself after the Sith Wars, the Jedi Council adjusting itself along with the Republic, and the lone Jedi's quest to expose the Dark Side. The author is good at developing stories and characters and so on, but what is particularly interesting to me is the way he develops Sith philosophy. While I certainly don't agree with it, the author actually makes it coherent. Palpatine, Maul, Dooku, and Anakin all seemed to join the dark side out of "Eh, this golden rule thing blows. How about I just give myself permission to be an ass by dressing in black and glaring?" Anakin's descent is more complex than that, but the end result is the same. The case is different with Bane. He's evil, but he's principled about it. His reasons are complex, and seemingly authentic. He grows, finds meaning in Sith teachings. This is very different from the Palpatine-esque "Being evil is so much FUN!" attitude. (Zannah, however, subscribes to the "Yay evil!" school Hopefully this will change as she gets older).

All in all, a pretty good read. I enjoy the story, the characterization, the political intrigue, and especially the orbalisks. I won't spoil anything, but they're a really interesting idea and I'd like to see EU authors do something with them.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction: A Novel of the Old Republic
© Drew Karpyshyn 2006
324 pages

The Star Wars story is not limited to the two trilogies: books, video games, and other media create an Extended Universe deemed canon by LucasArts. People have been writing books and fleshing out the history of the Star Wars universe. This book is set -- according to Wookiepedia, a Star Wars wiki -- a thousand years before Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star in A New Hope. That action ("The Battle of Yavin") is the Star Wars universe's calendar's origin: events are labeled as being B- and A- BY, or "Before" and "After" the Battle of Yavin. In that time, according to the intro flap of the book, the Sith numbered in the thousands and they fought the Republic and its guardians, the Jedi, for control of the Galaxy.

The book is set during that battle, although for the first third of the book it is pure background. The first third of the book takes place on a small mining moon. Its lone settlement is the Star Wars equivalent of a Pullman town: the workers work all day for Pullman, they sleep in Pullman homes, they buy their supplies at the company store. The company uses its power to its advantage, and workers often become deeply indebted to the company and become literal wage-slaves. This is a man called Des' spot in life: thanks to his father's gambling debts, he works all day in abysmal conditions, with no hope of escape. Republic transports come through and ocassionally lure the miners into joining the Army of the Republic, but little do they know that their wages will be garnished to pay the SW-Pullman company. The Jedi are not concerned with the plight of the workers, and it is this that makes Des resentful and contemptuous of both the Republic and the Jedi.

Circumstances beyond his control turn Des into an outlaw, and he seeks refuge in the armies of the Sith, who are fighting a war against the Republic. His ability to use the Force is strong, and is quickly noticed by Sith lords, who reccommend him to the academy of the Sith Masters. There, he learns the ways of the Dark Side and begins to forge his own destiny. This book and the book that follows is his story. He adopts his father's contemptous name for him -- Bane -- as his own name. The story woven is rather captivating. This is a different universe, almost, than the one we see in the trilogies. The Sith here are not the sophisticated masters of evil that Palpatine and Darth Maul are: they're unrefined, crude almost. They struggle to recreate themselves in hopes of gaining more power.

The author shows Darth Bane's progession from a bitter, abused, but socially healthy miner to a Master of the Dark Side, capable of murdering whoever gets in his way. It took three movies to do this for Darth Vader, but here the author is limited to one book. He succeeds, though, and fairly well. The journey to the dark side is not a smoothly-running one: Bane will moralize with himself, attempting to figure out what is happening to him. The author does a fairly good job of building his character, but of course the readers know where it will lead. Along the way we meet interesting characters, which of whom are struggling with their own issues. The various personal and political struggles meet their climax in the Battle for Rusan, where an army of Jedi and an army of Sith fight a bitter battle to the end, where both sides are beginning to lose track of the ideologies that bring them there.

In sum, a captivating story that is well written and a worthy contribution to the Star Wars universe. I enjoyed it more than I have many other SW novels.