This book follows Bane and his new, young apprentice immediatly following the climax of Path of Destruction; they are still on Ruusan, the planet that saw the deaths of thousands on Jedi and Sith when Lord Kaan released the most devastating Force-weapon I’ve ever seen: the thought bomb. Read the rest of my review here: http://davebrendon.wordpress.com/2009... ( )

Darth Bane, the founder of the Sith order that culminates in your favorite and mine, Emperor Palpatine, was totally awesome in his original depiction in the comic book Jedi vs. Sith. A stone-cold dude who did what he had to do to get the job done and took no prisoners, probably the most successful new Sith since the original Palpatine/Vader duo. Karpyshyn's depiction of the man in his novel Path of Destruction was good-- not as all-out awesome as that of JvS, but still well done, though I had some quibbles. In this book, the sequel to Path of Destruction, however, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by Bane. After the cool introductory chapters with Bane on Ruusan and Dxun, he then totally lames it up by getting covered with alien parasite things that either sap or add to his power depending on the paragraph you are reading. The best part of this book is the dealing with the fallout of JvS: Lord Farfalla is always awesome, of course, and it's nice to see how the Jedi Order was forced to restructure after the Battle of Ruusan. JvS characters Zannah and Darovit get good play here, and I even liked the annoying padawan character.

But then the book takes a ten-year jump and becomes totally uninteresting. Bane himself does nothing other than obsess over the creation of a holocron. We skip all the good years of Zannah's development, jumping to the point where she's essentially pure evil already, which is disappointing as her fall is one of the best parts of JvS. The plot here is mostly some banal intrigue gone wrong, which somehow ends up involving Darovit-- and then kills him off, totally undermining the excellent ending the character got in JvS. Mostly, this part of the book just feels nonessential. Why should I care about what's going on with these characters anymore? It's not just that they're so divorced now from what excellent work was done with them earlier, either. This part of the book, including the so-called "climax", is just flat and dull.

Oh, and Darth Bane looks progressively lamer with every visual depiction he gets. He looked like he was hewn from rock in JvS; on the cover of this, he looks like a chubby man with face paint like you see at a football game. At least they didn't show the stupid orbalisks all over his body.

A good followup to Path of Destruction. Darth Bane spends less time on camera in this book, with more being given to his apprentice, her cousin, and the Jedi who has reason to believe the Sith were not entirely wiped out in the Seventh Battle of Ruusan. He continues to do an excellent job of making people who follow the dark side into sympathetic characters. This series is a must-read for anyone who wants to create Sith villains for their Star Wars game. ( )

http://dfollett76-books.blogspot.com/... ( )

Interesting story line. It was harder to read than the first Darth Bane book - when the main characters are so relentlessly evil, there is a conflict between wanting these characters to succeed at their mission, and wanting them to be stopped. ( )