All the furore over the release of Episode III has made me go back and search out some of the Star Wars Extended Universe novels that I devoured so furiously when I was a kid, out of the hope that immersing myself in the Original Trilogy and the books based around it would help block out some of the pain caused by the prequels. They're essentially glorified, sanctioned fanfiction - though the ten-through-twelve-year-old version of me didn't know that. Shadows of the Empire was one of my favourites at the time, and I was curious to see how it would stand up re-reading it so many years later.

To put it bluntly: not bad. Re-reading it with the knowledge of what fanfiction is in my mind, it really does seem more than ever like one. It even fulfils a role which a lot of fanfic takes on - filling in events which take place 'off-screen' in canon, the background events which we don't get to see. The book itself is set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and tells the story of the first failed attempt to rescue Han.

The pacing is as fast and the action as non-stop as the movies, helping to pull along the plot, which aspires to the Machiavellian, but which really ends up achieving only the political acumen which one could imagine the bastard love child of Blair and Bush possessing. The characterisation is mostly good, too, with the addition of some new OCs - Guri (the assassin femme fetale droid, whom I quite like); Prince Xizor (the mostly fun-in-a-ahahaomgwtf! way Gary Stu who continues on in the fine tradition of fantasy novel characters having really fucking stupid names); and Dash Rendar (so obviously a clone of Han Solo I'm surprised they didn't test his DNA for Corellian ancestry). The expansion of the canonical universe I especially liked - particularly the parts where we get to see something of how the Empire operated on a day-to-day basis.

The dialogue, however, is choppy, and often reads more like a screen-play than a novel. The exposition too often seems forced - something which seems especially irksome when you consider that the number of people reading this who don't have a fairly good knowledge of the Star Wars universe will more than probably be extremely low.

All in all, though, it's a fun read if you have an hour or two to spare and want to switch your brain off. If Star Wars is a popcorn kind of movie, this is a popcorn kind of book. ( )

A Star Wars novel that details what the Star Wars heroes were doing in the time between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. It shows how they try to rescue Han before Boba Fett can deliver him to Jabba, and fight off an attempt to kill Luke by Prince Xizor, the head of the largest criminal organization in the galaxy and a rival of Darth Vader. The storyline is good, but the writing itself is not that great. The whole book is written in short, choppy sentences that make it feel more like a screenplay then a novel. The bigger problem with the book is that anyone familiar with Star Wars already knows where the main characters will be at the end, so it can't really create any suspense. ( )

I think Perry does a better job of character devlopment than most other Star Wars authors, and Prince Xixor might be my favorite bad guy ever. Perry did a great job with him, in my opinion. "To contend with Xixor is to lose. Also, an attack on me will also be judged a suicide." Heh. ( )