Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn

So as you probably realized I've been listening to a lot of books from the Star Wars expanded universe, mostly from the new canon, and I had been feeling kind of disappointed with the results. So I decided to go back and look at a book from the old canon that I remember as being mostly good and see if my tastes had changed or if the books were as good as I remembered. I will say this book seemed pretty okay, if nothing particularly special. I think that's partly because this jumps outside of the movie canon going back to a thousand years before the Battle of Yavin so it doesn't have the baggage associated with the movies.

This book, as you can probably guess, is the start of a series about Darth Bane, who reforged the the Sith order and established the Rule of Two. This book starts with Dessel, a miner trapped on a company-controlled planet digging for cortosis ore that the Republic needs to build armor during the seemingly interminable war against the Sith Empire. Dessel and many other Outer Rim residents have little use for the Republic which doesn't really care what happens as long as the resources continue flow towards the Core. After killing a Republic trooper in self-defense, Dessel chooses to flee and join the Sith Empire as a regular footsoldier. But it's soon discovered that Dessel has an affinity for the Force and he is recruited to join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Darkness.

The book focuses mostly on Bane and his path to becoming the ultimate Dark Lord of the Sith, as well as his conflict with the leadership of the Brotherhood of Darkness. I thought it was interesting to watch how Bane develops as a character and grows in the dark side, opposed to how Luke or many other characters developed on the light side of the Force. It's not a lot to write home about, but I thought it was okay.

Something I wish this book had expanded on more, and maybe we'll see more of in the later books, was the Jedi order at this time. The book focuses a lot on the Sith Order and the Sith forces but doesn't delve a lot into the Jedi order or the Republic forces. In fact, we don't really see the Republic or any Jedi until the last third of the book or so. I think it would be more interesting to see the contrast between the Jedi and the Sith when the galaxy is in open war between the two factions before the Sith go into hiding. It's also interesting that Jedi are going around calling themselves Lord which seems counter to Jedi ideology, so I'd like to see how the Jedi order changed over a thousand years.

Overall I think this book was pretty okay and I'm willing to go check out the other books within this sub-series. I'll have to see if it has the same issues that other parts of the canon have had that I've noticed recently.

- Kalpar