Three days ago, I was informed that I was one of the winners of a contest from Star Wars Books. Today, I received my prize. This is the first physical Star Wars book I’ve owned since the read-along 33 1/3 records.
Salacious B. Crumb and my Sith Inquisitor approve of this prize.
Normally, I would have cropped the image but I love how I caught it with my Sith Inquisitor looking up at Salacious.
After learning the name of the Darth portrayed in the cinematics for the game, I headed to Google to learn more about this bad-ass Sith named Malgus. I ended up on a site called Wookieepedia and I lost many hours of my life there reading several articles of interest to me. I craved more information, especially about Malgus. Luckily, there is a book about Malgus called Deceived and I was able to get my hands on a copy. It took a while before I got around to reading it because I was distracted by other things, but now that I’ve read it I would like to write a little review. Obviously, this is my personal view and yours will probably be different so keep that in mind while reading this.
The first comic/book I read can be found here, and the second can be found here. I ended up reading a third before coming back to this one, since I find this book so awful.
I tend to write my reviews as I’m reading so bear with me. I began reading Deceived 4 Nov 2011 and I have to say that it has been difficult to push myself to read it. The writing style/sentence structure is poor, in my opinion, and the battle scenes are even worse, feeling forced and like the author didn’t know how to write his vision. The author also reuses descriptions and words as if he could not find another way to say what he wanted and it comes across as just poor writing, to me. Now, I’m not a good writer in the least, but that does not mean I can’t have an opinion. I’ll insert some of the sentences of examples so you can just read, and hopefully see, why I dislike the writing. Let’s just say I find this book to be an awful read, one of the worst things I’ve ever read. The story itself could have been great, if the book had been written by someone else. The only reason I pushed through was because of Malgus.
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“He slipped his respirator to the side and kissed her with his ruined lips, kissed her hard.” Granted that I’m only about 28 pages in but so far, this is one of the worst sentences I’ve read so far. I can’t even come up with words to describe how much this sentence grates me. All of the really short sentences used are bad enough. If I wrote like that. People would jump all over me. And point out the errors of writing that way.
“STILL HEART, still mind, these things eluded Aryn, floated before her like snowflakes in sun, visible for a moment, then melted and gone.” This is another example of a sentence that seems very awkward to me. Like I said, I’m no writer but I know what reads well to me and what doesn’t, and this doesn’t.
“”She shook her head. “Something other than that.” She licked her lips, shifted in her seat.” Short sentences, aaahhh!!!! To me, that last one should be something more like ‘She licked her lips and shifted in her seat.’ This book is full of poorly formed sentences and fragmented sentences, which make it very difficult to take seriously and to read.
“Her eyes fell to the thin hilt of the man’s lightsaber, the bulky, squared-off hilt of the woman’s.” This one needs a transition since Aryn obviously changed her focus from the male Sith’s lightsaber to the female’s.
““Passions can lead to mistakes,” Angral said.” This sentence makes no sense for a Darth to say considering the Sith are all about passion. ‘Peace is a lie, there is only passion.’ I mean, come on! It’s right there in the Sith code. So either the Darth Angral character is supposed to be an idiot or the author screwed up.
In chapter 10, Aryn is watching footage from the Jedi Temple security camera. It’s stated that the main camera faces the doors and this is reinforced when they are watching Malgus and Eleena walk into the temple. Yet, a few sentenced down they are suddenly able to see Ven’s face even though his back was to that camera during the time of the footage they are watching. I think someone goofed, not that it’s the first goof in this book, I’ve seen several misspellings but that’s really not uncommon.
When Zeerid is checking out the Liston spaceport and he reads the name Valor on three Imperial shuttle, he immediately knows they belong to Malgus’s cruiser. Unless the cruiser had the name on it and Zeerid saw it when they were in the tractor beam being pulled backwards, he wouldn’t know because Malgus did not give the name of his cruiser when he hailed Zeerid.
Tonight (technically yesterday), I sat down to read the rest of Revan and I have to say that I was not disappointed. My personal opinion is that the book is very well written and it’s extremely engaging/engrossing. Once I started reading, I just couldn’t put it down despite a headache and eye strain. I could see the book play out like a movie in my mind as I read, it was great! The descriptions of what was going on and what certain people looked like were enough to let you visualize without be overdone. I was drawn to the characters, some more than others but that’s not because of the writing, and formed attachments with them on different levels. It was just a really great read, to me, a book that is worth reading more than once.
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I was really drawn in to certain characters, well, mostly Scourge but I quite liked Revan and some others. I won’t deny that I felt sinister pleasure as Scourge sliced through Sechel’s tendrils, I even felt myself grinning; and again at the apartment. Actually, it pleased me anytime Sechel was put in his place. Can you tell I have a disdain for Sechel?
One question I had was answered but more questions were created. I now understand how Lord Scourge is still alive and able to be in the game, I don’t quite understand why, though, knowing that the Emperor’s intent is to destroy all life other than his own; unless that’s not his intent. I know he’s obsessed with keeping his existence but if he’s wanting to end all other life then why would he not only give Scourge immortality but why is he creating his ‘children’? (that wasn’t in this book, that’s from Blood of the Empire). I don’t know if any of that is explained in the game, but I guess I’ll find out at some point.
I’m not sure I understand why the Emperor did not sense the presence of Revan all those years, or even Meetra when she finally arrived. I guess if his mind was elsewhere but you’d think two powerful Jedi being that close, he would have felt something in the Force. You’d also think the Emperor would be able to sense Meetra’s spirit hanging around Revan or that the connection goes both ways. I don’t know, maybe the Emperor has all of this power but his senses are dulled along with his physical senses? I also guess that Bastila must have never told anyone about the Sith seen in the holorecording; that’s the only explanation I can think of as to why the Republic is so shocked when the Sith Empire launches their bid to reclaim Korriban 300yrs after the events of the book (I think it was 300yrs, give or take a few).
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Something that’s not exactly relevant to the review, but relevant to the book, is the description at the end of Revan’s stasis chamber. Maybe it’s years of Science Fiction movies, intuition, or precognition, I don’t know, but before ever having any knowledge whatsoever of how Revan was kept alive, I had a vision in my head of what was described in the book. I mean, I knew from reading spoilers that the Emperor was feeding off of Revan, but the spoilers that I read never mentioned a stasis chamber or anything like that, and yet I knew and what I saw in my mind was exactly as described in the book. Strange…
Mistress of Mordor Beaming Beeman (Falling Skies)
