Kevin J. Anderson’s Darksaber was one of my favorite books the first time I read it. Then I waited a couple of years and went back to read it again, and realized that it really wasn’t as good as I thought it was.
Don’t get me wrong, Darksaber is one of the better stand-alone novels in the Star Wars universe. The shortcoming, in my opinion, is the same thing I originally regarding as the novel’s biggest strength: the short chapters. The longest chapter in Darksaber is maybe 20 pages. I realize, too, that I first read this book when I was 15 years old, and obviously my attention span as developed into something stronger than it was before I started driving. The short chapters give the reader a sense that Kevin J. Anderson didn’t want to spend too much time on any one part of the story for too long.
Set immediately after Children of the Jedi, or eight years after Return of the Jedi, Darksaber tells the story of Durga the Hutt, a Hutt crime lord with ambitions of galactic domination. He obtains audience with Leia Organa Solo, now President of the
Durga returns to the Hoth Asteroid Belt, where he is building the Darksaber, a superweapon that is only the Death Star’s superlaser with little to no external amenities. Durga’s chief scientist, Bevel Lemelisk, is the man responsible for the Death Star, and in the course of this book we learn that Emperor Palpatine killed him a couple of times when work either got behind schedule, or when the Rebellion blew up the first Death Star.
General Crix Madine has a prominent role in this novel. Madine is the bearded fellow who gave part of the attack plan speech in Return of the Jedi. Giving a minor movie character a starring role in a novel usually means only one thing: that character is about to die. Sure enough, no sooner does the reader actually start to like Madine as a character, Durga shoots him and kills him.
Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker is travelling the galaxy with Callista, who was rescued from the Eye of Palpatine. Callista lost her Force powers when she took over the body of Cray Mingla, which is a really long story that I don’t care to tell.
The pair journeys to some rather exotic locales in the galaxy far, far away, including a spa resort inside a comet, Dagobah, and back to the old Rebel base on Hoth, where Luke once again encounters the wampa that he de-armed in The Empire Strikes Back.
The grand climax of the story comes when Durga tries to fly the Darksaber out of the asteroid belt, fails to do so, and explodes.
Kevin J. Anderson has written many Star Wars books, including four adult novels, and a series of children’s novels. This is probably his best, because, well, the Jedi Academy Trilogy could use a little work. Sorry, Kevin.
Re-readability: 8.7
Final Grade: B+
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