4/5 Rancors - The Star Wars Expanded Universe contains events dating back at least 25,000 years before the films, but until the publication of Drew Karpyshyn's Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, these millennia have been the province of videogames and comics. The books have kept a tighter focus, starting right before The Phantom Menace and moving out to just shy of forty years past Return of the Jedi. It is a delight to finally have fiction set in another time, and this era in particular (1,000 years before the Battle of Yavin) has not been well fleshed out. Prior to this novel, only one comic book series (Jedi vs. Sith) and a couple of short stories had been set during this time, as the Knights of the Old Republic games and comics take place several thousand years earlier.
Karpyshyn was the lead writer for the Knights of the Old Republic videogame, which had a plot I would rank right there with the films themselves and the very best of the novels. By the midpoint of the game, the storyline was absolutely riveting as your character worked out his or her past and started to understand the underlying drift of the tale. With this game as a credential, I eagerly anticipated Karpyshyn's first foray into Star Wars novels.
I wasn't disappointed. Darth Bane's origin tale is well thought-out and deftly written. Many elements of this story were clearly inspired by Revenge of the Sith. In some places, this story mirrors that film, as we see some similar events in Bane's path as we experienced in Anakin's, including a vaguely-defined notion of a Chosen One, an exploration of passion as strength, a need to wipe out other Force users (Light or Dark in this case), and some serious peril for children who get in his way.
However, the storyline differs sharply in many ways. Bane had a horrible childhood, abused by an alcoholic father and condemned to work in cortosis mines on the barren planet Apatros to pay off his father's accumulated debts. Despite being a slave, Anakin's childhood doesn't look that bad in the movies; his mother clearly loves him and Watto doesn't come off as a very harsh taskmaster. Bane forges his path to the Sith through hatred and anger; Anakin finds his through attachment and love.
I enjoyed the time spent on Korriban at the training facility for the Brotherhood of Darkness. Karpyshyn gives a strong sense of how the Sith have lost their way, and indeed, they come across as somewhat bad but not truly evil. There's too much pretense of honor and equality in the Brotherhood to jive with the Sith we know such as Palpatine or Anakin. This segment of the story is a superb set-up to Bane's determination to enforce his newly-conceived doctrine of the Rule of Two (no more, no less).
One aspect that sometimes holds the book back from being completely engaging is the sense of inevitability in the story. Anyone who has seen the films has an excellent idea of who will prevail in the Bane vs. the Brotherhood of Darkness with its hundreds of Dark Side users. Bane's path to power and embrace of the Dark Side are also very carefully mapped out with no real surprises along the way. At points, the story reads more like a history than a ripping adventure yarn.
I'm thrilled to see Del Rey take the chance of publishing a book set in an entirely different era from usual. I hope it will pay off and more stories set further out (in both past and future) from the movies will follow. There is plenty of room at the end of Darth Bane: Path of Destruction for sequels, and to date we've gotten one with Darth Bane: Rule of Two and a third novel has just been confirmed for 2010.
