Rule of Two: A Novel of the Old Republic (Star Wars: Darth Bane)

by Drew Karpyshyn

Series: Star Wars (1000-990 BBY), Star Wars: Darth Bane (2), Star Wars: the Old Republic era (1000-990 BBY)

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Title	Rule of Two: A Novel of the Old Republic (Star Wars: Darth Bane)
Author	Drew Karpyshyn
Rating
Tags	sf, star wars, old republic, darth bane
Collections	Your library
Your review	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.
Other authors 1
Publication	Del Rey (2008), Edition: Reprint, Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
Publication date	2008
ISBN	0345477499 / 9780345477491
LC classification
Dewey	813
Primary language	(blank)
Secondary language	(blank)
Original language
Date acquired	2008-10-01
Date started
Date finished	2008-12-01
Summary 1	Rule of Two: A Novel of the Old Republic (Star Wars: Darth Bane) by Drew Karpyshyn (2008)
Comments	Amazon.com purchase
BCID	XXX-
Number of copies	1
Citation	MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, Wikipedia citation
Data source	amazon.com