Format: Paperback
Published: January 1st, 2001
Age: Adult
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 2/5 Stars
When I was setting up my reading challenges at the start of this year, I gave my Star Wars loving partner a task; to find three of his Star Wars books that fit with any of the prompts, with a promise that if I got through all three and still had blank prompts, we could add more. I have finally read the first of the SW books he wanted me to read.
It is interesting to go back to the Star Wars Legends books, and get a feel for the ideas around the characters and universe as a whole pre-Disney. And it’s interesting to see the kind of ideas that were carried through to the more recent Star Wars iterations.
In Darth Maul – Shadow Hunter, we follow a few different characters as they traverse Coruscant. The book takes place immediately prior to the prequels, so we get some familiar faces alongside characters completely unique to the novel. Darth Sidious is lining things up to set his plans fully into motion when a contact disappears, and he tasks his apprentice, Darth Maul, with tracking the contact down. Lorn Pavan is an information broken, working alongside his droid companion, I-Five. Lorn hates the Jedi, so when he comes across information regarding the Naboo blockade, he seeks out the Black Sun instead to pass it on, before coming into contact with Jedi Padawan Darsha Assant. Before Lorn can do anything with the information, he and Darsha find themselves on the run from Maul, who will stop at nothing to complete his mission.
What interested me initially was the criticisms against the Jedi, especially with Lorn who despises them. I wanted to see this explored more, and that interest increased as we find out why he dislikes them so much. But this part was left hanging, and wrapped up quite quickly to put us firmly back in the prequel era ‘Jedi = good (if flawed)’ mentality. I think most of the other issues are the kind that occur simply because this is a prequel book, so can’t really go too far off the path with existing characters, and because of the time it was published. There were hints at a romance between Lorn and Dasha, but these felt incredibly forced, rather than a natural attraction.
Maul should be the most compelling character, and initially, again, he was, but this is quickly lost. It’s clear he’s powerful, but he’s built up a lot, and we end up seeing him really do the same thing over and over. It feels like a lot for a character who ultimately had fairly little screentime! We do see Obi-Wan, but he doesn’t really have any impact on the plot. All we really get from him are moments where we’re told how great a Jedi Darsha is, when we…don’t really see that? She’s not awful, but again, plot constraints mean she can’t really be great.
And because it’s a prequel, the events of the book end up feeling pretty meaningless. It’s generally pretty shallow, and the original characters feel like missed opportunities for something truly interesting. It’s also incredibly repetitive; we have one set of characters who move forward, followed by other characters who come up behind them and really just repeat their impression of something we’ve just seen happen, again, without having any impact.
And I think that’s a core issue with this book – there’s a lot of filler, to make up for the fact we can’t see too much of established characters, or have original characters make too much of an impact. Instead, we get a weird wrapping up feel at the end as things are directed towards Episode I. It’s just a bit messy, as a result of being a prequel and the period when it came out, when there was a sense of things needing to be that little bit ‘gritty’.
If you’re dipping into Star Wars books, personally, I don’t think this is worth it; it doesn’t add much to the world, or much even to the character of Maul himself except that he dislikes the Jedi (because of who raised him) and he’s merciless. There’s little here that adds to the universe as a whole, unfortunately, and much better Star Wars books exist out there.
Reading Challenge
2025 SFF Title Challenge
Prompt: hunting/hunters
Progress: 9/16
Unwrapping Words 