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Books

Darth Bane; Path of Destruction

I love reading, it's one of the reasons I became a writer- am trying to become a writer. However if a book doesn't click with me within the first fifty pages it just wont get read. Books that click in the first 50 happen often enough, but books that click in the first page? That is rare, as it was with Darth Bane, I read page one and then just plowed straight through to the end of the 324 pages within a day (I read about that much on my first day reading Codex Alera book 4).
I think there's been, maybe three other book series that hooked me like Darth Bane did - Mistborn, Codex Alera books 3 and onwards, and the trinity trilogy - and all of them were sword and shield era fantasy. Maybe I accepted it because Bane was laser sword? Regardless it was a supurb read.

Written by Drew Karpyshyn - also known for writing most of the Bioware Games and pretty much anything to do with Star Wars old republic era - Darth Bane; Path of Destruction is another one of those divergences from the norm. Like Deathnote the book doesn't follow a particularly good - light side - character, but unlike Deathnote it goes a step further to make him an outright bad guy. He's not tryign to improve the world, he's not only killing villains, he's just Mean.
The book follows the character, Bane, as he grows from mining rat, to sith military squad leader, to sith apprentice all the way up to Sith Lord, and finally Lord of the Sith.
It's a cool novel full of intrigue, politics and interesting Star Wars history (bane invented the Sith rule of two for instance) but really the reason I loved it was that it was different.
I've read a fair few star wars books, but all of them were set from the perspective of the good guys. When I picked this up I'd jsut finished reading The Unifying force where all the happy positive energy flower children of the universe (and Boba Fett) came together to defeat the evil invading force that had plagued the galaxy for 21 previous books. It was a good book, a typical book for the genre and I enjoyed it... but then Path of Destruction came along.
Darth Bane shows how the Sith conspire against one another to gain power and destroy each other. It shows how cold and heartless the sith can be, even and especially to each other. It shows how even a bastard orphan can grow up to be one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. And it has a cameo from Revan, my favorite star wars character ever.

It was a really well writen book that now has 2 sequels that I will read soon.

VIDI-oohhhhh
- James