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| Source: Amazon.com |
Star Wars - The Old Republic: Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn
This would be the first book that I approach in my new format. So here goes...
From the book’s back cover:
There’s something out there: a juggernaut of evil bearing down to crush the Republic—unless one lone Jedi, shunned and reviled, can stop it.
Revan: hero, traitor, conqueror, villain, savior. A Jedi who left Coruscant to defeat Mandalorians—and returned a disciple of the dark side, bent on destroying the Republic. The Jedi Council gave Revan his life back, but the price of redemption was high. His memories have been erased. All that’s left are nightmares—and deep, abiding fear.
What exactly happened beyond the Outer Rim? Revan can’t quite remember, yet can’t entirely forget. Somehow he stumbled across a terrible secret that threatens the very existence of the Republic. With no idea what it is, or how to stop it, Revan may very well fail, for he’s never faced a more powerful and diabolic enemy. But only death can stop him from trying.
Synopsis:
Star Wars - The Old Republic: Revan is a book that would be considered part of the so-called “EU” (the European Union? No, not quite), or “Expanded Universe” of Star Wars. These are books, comic books and games and other various things that take the basic premises of the Star Wars films and expand upon them. In this case, the book in question is based on a popular series of video/computer games that had their story arc written (at least in part) by the author of this book, Drew Karpyshyn. For the curious among you, those games were the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG games for PC/Xbox, and the new PC-based MMORPG titled The Old Republic. These games follow the story of a fallen Jedi named Revan, who went off to fight the Mandalorians, or Boba Fett’s great-great-great-great.....and then some.....grandparents.
This would be the first book that I approach in my new format. So here goes...
From the book’s back cover:
There’s something out there: a juggernaut of evil bearing down to crush the Republic—unless one lone Jedi, shunned and reviled, can stop it.
Revan: hero, traitor, conqueror, villain, savior. A Jedi who left Coruscant to defeat Mandalorians—and returned a disciple of the dark side, bent on destroying the Republic. The Jedi Council gave Revan his life back, but the price of redemption was high. His memories have been erased. All that’s left are nightmares—and deep, abiding fear.
What exactly happened beyond the Outer Rim? Revan can’t quite remember, yet can’t entirely forget. Somehow he stumbled across a terrible secret that threatens the very existence of the Republic. With no idea what it is, or how to stop it, Revan may very well fail, for he’s never faced a more powerful and diabolic enemy. But only death can stop him from trying.
Synopsis:
Star Wars - The Old Republic: Revan is a book that would be considered part of the so-called “EU” (the European Union? No, not quite), or “Expanded Universe” of Star Wars. These are books, comic books and games and other various things that take the basic premises of the Star Wars films and expand upon them. In this case, the book in question is based on a popular series of video/computer games that had their story arc written (at least in part) by the author of this book, Drew Karpyshyn. For the curious among you, those games were the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG games for PC/Xbox, and the new PC-based MMORPG titled The Old Republic. These games follow the story of a fallen Jedi named Revan, who went off to fight the Mandalorians, or Boba Fett’s great-great-great-great.....and then some.....grandparents.
This storyline featuring Revan is supposed to be thousands of
years before Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star. Life isn’t too
terribly different back in Revan’s day than it is in the prequel Star Wars
movies. We've got it all. Lightsabers,
the Force, droids, hyperspace travel, and stuff like that. In fact, you
can’t help but wonder if progress is an unattainable goal for these folks in
the Star Wars universe. Once they got the Force, they stopped needing to
do anything else that was cool. But that is beyond the point of this
review, I suppose.
In a “nut shell,” you probably will be interested in
this book if you have played those games that I have mentioned. As I have
played them (except for the online MMORPG- that’s Massive Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game, for those of you who were even remotely curious) I was
interested in this book. As an aside, I have no intention of playing that
MMORPG version. Call me old fashioned,
but I see no reason to pay a monthly subscription fee to play a game. That is just silly.  |
| Drew Karpyshyn / Source: Drew Karpyshyn.com |
Anyway, the characters and plot of the
games are quite involving, especially for a role-playing game series (I
typically don’t care for role-playing games - bring on the quick and dirty
action games or something with some turn-based modern warfare strategy for me).
Thus I hoped that this book would fulfill some of my “Old Republic”-style
need for thrills, and also supply some useful back story for a pivotal
character in the game series, the once-fallen Jedi knight, Revan.
What I liked about the book:
Well, it had Revan in it. And it did tie up some loose ends regarding that character. Revan is a real Jedi/Sith butt kicker in the games that I played, and his life both before the games’ starting point and after the games leave off is shrouded in mystery. For instance, we know Revan took his friend/ally, named “Malak,” out into the unexplored regions on the fringes of the Star Wars galaxy while fighting the Mandalorians, and then returns from beating them with his army and an intention to conquer the Old Republic. He is kept from doing this when his now Sith apprentice “Darth Malak” turns on him and shoots his space ship at the same time that a strike team of Jedi are attempting to defeat him in close quarters lightsaber combat. It was an opportune moment for Malak to turn on his master, as he was distracted by a bunch of marauding Jedi aboard his ship. Revan falls into the hands of the Jedi.
Ok, but what caused him to turn evil in the first place? He left a good guy and came back steeped in the Dark Side of the Force. So what did he find out there in the unexplored regions? And after he finds out that he used to be a bad guy and chooses to be good (you have the choice to re-adopt your evil ways or become a good guy in the games, which is one of their selling points), what happens then? At the end of the first game, Revan defeats his former friend/Sith apprentice Malak, but what does he do after that? In the second game, we are introduced to somebody called “The Exile,” a Jedi who has a similar story to Revan (though the story/game is not anywhere near as good as the first game, in my opinion) who just happens to be flying Revan’s spaceship, the Ebon Hawk (think the Millennium Falcon if it had a front end that looked like a stapler), and Revan is nowhere to be found. We’re only told that he went off to fight the evil in the unknown regions. Convenient. And annoying. What happens to Revan after he leaves? Enquiring minds want to know.
The character in the second game, “The Exile,” also becomes someone we care about, and his/her fate is also a mystery after defeating the bad guys in the game (on that gender thing, you can choose to play as a male or female, but in the book it is a “she”). I also take it from some of the things that are part of the book’s story that the MMORPG also has these two characters in it in minor roles. So the book makes a good bridge between all the games. That is what is good about it.
What I learned, if anything:
Well, as I explained in What I liked about it, you learn what happened to some main characters from those video/PC games that you may or may not have played. If that is important, then, yes, I did learn something. I also had the fact reinforced that you should never trust/turn your back on a light saber-wielding Sith Lord, even though that goes without saying. But I won’t ruin how I came to that conclusion. Just in case you do read the book after perusing this review.
What I liked about the book:
Well, it had Revan in it. And it did tie up some loose ends regarding that character. Revan is a real Jedi/Sith butt kicker in the games that I played, and his life both before the games’ starting point and after the games leave off is shrouded in mystery. For instance, we know Revan took his friend/ally, named “Malak,” out into the unexplored regions on the fringes of the Star Wars galaxy while fighting the Mandalorians, and then returns from beating them with his army and an intention to conquer the Old Republic. He is kept from doing this when his now Sith apprentice “Darth Malak” turns on him and shoots his space ship at the same time that a strike team of Jedi are attempting to defeat him in close quarters lightsaber combat. It was an opportune moment for Malak to turn on his master, as he was distracted by a bunch of marauding Jedi aboard his ship. Revan falls into the hands of the Jedi.
Ok, but what caused him to turn evil in the first place? He left a good guy and came back steeped in the Dark Side of the Force. So what did he find out there in the unexplored regions? And after he finds out that he used to be a bad guy and chooses to be good (you have the choice to re-adopt your evil ways or become a good guy in the games, which is one of their selling points), what happens then? At the end of the first game, Revan defeats his former friend/Sith apprentice Malak, but what does he do after that? In the second game, we are introduced to somebody called “The Exile,” a Jedi who has a similar story to Revan (though the story/game is not anywhere near as good as the first game, in my opinion) who just happens to be flying Revan’s spaceship, the Ebon Hawk (think the Millennium Falcon if it had a front end that looked like a stapler), and Revan is nowhere to be found. We’re only told that he went off to fight the evil in the unknown regions. Convenient. And annoying. What happens to Revan after he leaves? Enquiring minds want to know.
The character in the second game, “The Exile,” also becomes someone we care about, and his/her fate is also a mystery after defeating the bad guys in the game (on that gender thing, you can choose to play as a male or female, but in the book it is a “she”). I also take it from some of the things that are part of the book’s story that the MMORPG also has these two characters in it in minor roles. So the book makes a good bridge between all the games. That is what is good about it.
What I learned, if anything:
Well, as I explained in What I liked about it, you learn what happened to some main characters from those video/PC games that you may or may not have played. If that is important, then, yes, I did learn something. I also had the fact reinforced that you should never trust/turn your back on a light saber-wielding Sith Lord, even though that goes without saying. But I won’t ruin how I came to that conclusion. Just in case you do read the book after perusing this review.
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| Revan and Malak, I presume? / Source: Star Wars.wikia.com |
What I didn’t like about it:
The main problem with this book, from my own point of view, is that it was too rooted in the games. I know, after having described the games in some detail in an effort to make you more familiar with the background that this book draws on, that this may sound odd. However, I’d venture to say that it is accurate assessment.
The thing is that there are too many instances where it seems like the author has just lifted game mechanics to fit the situation he is describing. For instance, when a bad guy attacks a good guy with Force lightning in the story (remember the Emperor in Return of the Jedi? yeah - like that), the good guy throws up a wall of Light-side energy to protect himself. I’m not describing a particular event here, but I know things like this did happen in the story, even if I can’t recall a specific page and paragraph to refer to. The result of the descriptions is a bit bland, when you have the game mechanics in your mind to draw upon. I can’t say what a regular non-player reading the book would make of it.
Further, the plot bookends the games so completely, as to make it feel like a teaser for people to play the games. This was a bit unsettling to me. I think for someone who had no experience with the games, the glaring holes in the plot that the games fill would seem jarring. To me they seemed like just a tease, as I already mentioned.
Also, and most glaring in my opinion, Revan is a pretty cool character on his own. The story makes him out to be a bit... well, he comes off... how can I put this? The plot of the games - especially the first one - was, to me, more intriguing than the Star Wars prequel films. I thought Revan was a more interesting character than Lucas managed to do when he was portraying Anakin Skywalker in Episodes 1, 2 and 3. The book doesn’t do the Revan character justice, in my eyes. He was such a... well, he is such a badass in the game, once you go through the plot. The book leaves him coming off kinda thin. It is not satisfying. That’s my take on it.
As a last note on that, you might say that Drew Karpyshyn was just hamstrung in his writing by the fact that he wrote the game plots. To my knowledge, he was the lead writer on the games, and so the stories in them would largely be his. This may be so to a certain extent, but in contrast, Karpyshyn also wrote at least three other Star Wars-related novels about another semi-Expanded Universe character, Darth Bane. Bane is supposedly mentioned by George Lucas in one of the Star Wars film tie-in novels, so he could be roughly considered to be part of the canonical Star Wars universe proper, rather than ancillary as so much of the “EU” is. Those books about Darth Bane are quite good, by the way. In this way, I argue that Karpyshyn is a decent author, but that this book was just not his best work. A pity, since Revan deserved better treatment than this book gave him, especially from the guy who, for all I know, invented him in the first place.
Recommendation:
If you LOVE the associated games and have to be in-the-know on anything “Revan-related,” I’d recommend it. But if you are only lukewarm (pun intended) on the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, or not interested in anything not taken from the movies directly, than skip it. You’ll not be missing much if you do. Too bad, as it could have really given non-game players a real taste of the awesomeness that is Revan. Too bad indeed.
Learn more about Star Wars - The Old Republic: Revan on Amazon.com
Learn morw about the author on DrewKarpyshyn.com
The main problem with this book, from my own point of view, is that it was too rooted in the games. I know, after having described the games in some detail in an effort to make you more familiar with the background that this book draws on, that this may sound odd. However, I’d venture to say that it is accurate assessment.
The thing is that there are too many instances where it seems like the author has just lifted game mechanics to fit the situation he is describing. For instance, when a bad guy attacks a good guy with Force lightning in the story (remember the Emperor in Return of the Jedi? yeah - like that), the good guy throws up a wall of Light-side energy to protect himself. I’m not describing a particular event here, but I know things like this did happen in the story, even if I can’t recall a specific page and paragraph to refer to. The result of the descriptions is a bit bland, when you have the game mechanics in your mind to draw upon. I can’t say what a regular non-player reading the book would make of it.
Further, the plot bookends the games so completely, as to make it feel like a teaser for people to play the games. This was a bit unsettling to me. I think for someone who had no experience with the games, the glaring holes in the plot that the games fill would seem jarring. To me they seemed like just a tease, as I already mentioned.
Also, and most glaring in my opinion, Revan is a pretty cool character on his own. The story makes him out to be a bit... well, he comes off... how can I put this? The plot of the games - especially the first one - was, to me, more intriguing than the Star Wars prequel films. I thought Revan was a more interesting character than Lucas managed to do when he was portraying Anakin Skywalker in Episodes 1, 2 and 3. The book doesn’t do the Revan character justice, in my eyes. He was such a... well, he is such a badass in the game, once you go through the plot. The book leaves him coming off kinda thin. It is not satisfying. That’s my take on it.
As a last note on that, you might say that Drew Karpyshyn was just hamstrung in his writing by the fact that he wrote the game plots. To my knowledge, he was the lead writer on the games, and so the stories in them would largely be his. This may be so to a certain extent, but in contrast, Karpyshyn also wrote at least three other Star Wars-related novels about another semi-Expanded Universe character, Darth Bane. Bane is supposedly mentioned by George Lucas in one of the Star Wars film tie-in novels, so he could be roughly considered to be part of the canonical Star Wars universe proper, rather than ancillary as so much of the “EU” is. Those books about Darth Bane are quite good, by the way. In this way, I argue that Karpyshyn is a decent author, but that this book was just not his best work. A pity, since Revan deserved better treatment than this book gave him, especially from the guy who, for all I know, invented him in the first place.
Recommendation:
If you LOVE the associated games and have to be in-the-know on anything “Revan-related,” I’d recommend it. But if you are only lukewarm (pun intended) on the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, or not interested in anything not taken from the movies directly, than skip it. You’ll not be missing much if you do. Too bad, as it could have really given non-game players a real taste of the awesomeness that is Revan. Too bad indeed.
Learn more about Star Wars - The Old Republic: Revan on Amazon.com
Learn morw about the author on DrewKarpyshyn.com
The parting comment:
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| Source: LOL snaps.com |
"Ya wanna say that ta my face, ya dirty land lubber!" I also like the single hook version of this one, which would be a drunk Rhinoceros wanting to fight you. Look out for drunk rhinos, whatever you do. I can't say which would be worse to have to get in a tangle with, a drunk rhino or a drunk octopus.
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