Darksaber Review

Darksaber
by Kevin J. Anderson

Review By: Neil Richard

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Ugh. I’m starting to get tired of these low grade books being churned out of the Imperial Publishing plants. It’s almost like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. Somewhere in a dark corner of a New York office building is a team of five writers working together to pump out book after book. I think the only difference between Star Wars and the Hardy Boys is the Stratemeyer Syndicate didn’t allow the workers to put their names on the books.

I guess the Imperials are nice guys after all.

With Darksaber, things continue to look bleak for the New Republic. Daala is still alive and continues to gather power from the remnants of the Empire. With Pellaeon’s help, she mounts an attack on the Jedi academy on Yavin IV. Dorsk 81 sacrifices himself to save the academy by using the Force to “shove” the Star Destroyers to the edge of the system. The New Republic shows up to get in the final blows against what’s left.

As usual, the good guys win, bad guys loose, and nobody of import gets hurt (with the exception of Dorsk 81, who I thought was cool because he had a number in his name). Outside of that, the biggest thing that grabbed my attention was the Death Star.

Actually the Death Star’s history. We see what looks like a Death Star in central sections of the Droid Control Ships in Episode I. Episode II gives us a hologram of the soon to be constructed Death Star I. The Death Star I gets destroyed in Episode IV and the Death Star II gets destroyed in Episode VI. The Death Star III (smaller and more compact) is destroyed after that. Then we have the Hutts stealing the plans for the Death Star and creating the Death Star IV (code named Darksaber because of its lightsaber-like shape).

Ugh. Another copy/paste book under my belt. I can only hope the next one is better.

The review is also available in Word and PDF.

Neil@tk42one.com
© 2006 TK42ONE.com Productions