The Old Republic: Revan
Author: Drew Karpyshyn
Medium: Novel
Publication Date: November 2011
Timeline Placement: 3,954 – 3,950 BBY; 3,900 BBY (epilogue)
Series: The Old Republic
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC AND STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS ENSUE
Our story begins two years after the first Knights of the Old Republic.
Revan, the hero of that game, has retired from the galactic limelight
and is now married to Bastila Shan, the love interest for players who
selected a male avatar on the character creation screen. Also for some
reason his name is Revan. Which is odd, because I thought that
“Revan”/“Darth Revan” was the KotOR player character’s previous
evil personality that was destroyed when Darth Malak blew him up and
the Jedi Council reprogrammed his mind with a new identity. Like there
are several points in the game where you can say “I’m not Revan anymore,
I’m [INSERT PLAYER’S NAME SELECTION HERE].” I guess that would look
awkward on the cover of a novel though.
[Continuity Note: Although both KotOR games allow the player to choose the sex, race, and morality of their character, various Star Wars publications later established a “canon” version of the games’ events, dictating that Revan was a white man, KotOR II’s
Jedi Exile was a white woman, and the light-side ending of both games
was the true historical outcome. This has made a lot of people very
angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Part of the appeal of KotOR I and II, as the only RPGs in the Star Wars videogame
library, was the ability to customize your character’s personality and
choices, so you could basically insert yourself into these pivotal
moments in Star Wars history. The games took place so far in
the galaxy’s past that there was no real danger of later stories needing
to define precisely what had happened in them, but they did it anyway
so here we are. I should point out that Drew Karpyshyn and Revan aren’t to blame for this, though; it had already happened long before this book came out.]
All is not perfect wedded bliss for our
generic all-purpose hero, however. As forgotten memories of his past
life return, Revan has been plagued with nightmares of a storm-covered
world and a hidden threat to the Republic that is preparing to strike.
In search of answers, he reunites with his old friend, Mandalorian
mercenary Canderous Ordo, who tells him that the Mandalorian clans are
scouring the galaxy for the mask of Mandalore. When Revan slew Mandalore
the Ultimate at the end of the Mandalorian Wars, he took his ceremonial
mask and hid it somewhere, preventing the Mandalorians from uniting
under a new leader. Apparently this has some relevance to Revan’s
dreams, because he decides to drop everything and locate the mask
himself. But first he makes a quick stop at the Jedi Temple, where we
get a short cameo appearance by Atris from KotOR II. She acts
like a complete bitch, which to be honest isn’t the worst
characterization in this book. The text specifies that she is around
Bastila’s age, but there’s no way that can be right because she was a
Jedi Master on the Council before the Mandalorian Wars even began, and
Bastila was a neophyte Padawan at the beginning of the first KotOR. Since it’s highly evident that no one involved with planning, writing, or editing this book ever played KotOR II, however, you can see how they might make that mistake.
 |
| What’s my age again? |
Anyway, Revan tells Canderous that he’s
going to help him track down the mask. “Time to get the old gang back
together for one last adventure,” Canderous declares with a grin only
slightly less broad than my own, but because this book is terrible, of
course that doesn’t happen. “Well,” says Revan, “Juhani and Jolee can’t
come, because they’d rat us out to the Jedi Council, and Mission and
Zaalbar are apparently running some kind of importing/exporting business now
and can’t afford to take the time off work to go on an adventure. HK-47
would just start shooting everyone in the face, because that’s literally all that he’s good for, so since we’re inevitably going to end up shooting a lot of people in the face he’s definitely out. And the plot of KotOR II requires the Jedi Exile to be in exile somewhere so we can’t even ask her. So that just leaves you, me, my trusty droid R2-D2 T3-M4, and Bastila.”
This was the exact scene when I knew this book was going to irredeemably suck. These are the self-aware excuses they make on Fuller House to
explain why Mary Kate and Ashley never show up. This is a book based on
a videogame; there’s no reason they had to go to such absurd lengths to
exclude almost all of the characters from that game. I know why they
did it, though. It’s right on the cover: Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite this novel ostensibly being about the central character of the KotOR era, this isn’t a KotOR book; it’s a TOR
book. So forget about all the characters you know and love and say
hello to new assholes like the Sith Emperor and Lord Scourge. Gotta
promote that sweet MMO brand, yo. What’s that? You wanted KotOR III? Well FUCK YOU.
Speaking of Scourge, this is as good a time
as any to bring him up since he’s the main character of this novel. At
the very least, he’s the only character who learns anything or undergoes
any sort of arc. Every other chapter is from his point of view, while
the rest are split between Revan and the Jedi Exile. The book should
have been called Star Wars: Scourge, but then they couldn’t trick the Revan fanboys into buying it.
Scourge is a pureblood Sith Lord on the
planet Dromund Kaas, the capital of the Sith Empire reconstituted in the
Unknown Regions after the Jedi thought they had wiped out the Sith in
the Great Hyperspace War. While Revan is running around chasing dreams
and playing detective, Scourge finds himself embroiled in political
intrigue when he is pulled into a conspiracy against the Sith Emperor.
All of the secondary characters in this section are boring nonentities,
but Scourge himself is the most interesting character in the book so it
sort of balances out. Note that in this context “most interesting
character in the book” means next to nothing.
Meanwhile, Revan returns home to tell his
wife he’s signed them up for a quest, only to find this sentence lying
in wait for him: “Bastila was sitting in the living room when he got
home, watching holovids while she waited for him to return.”
I know this book was written by the head writer of Knights of the Old Republic,
but did he ever actually play his own game? Because it’s hard to
imagine anyone who did writing a scene where Bastila sits around the
house all day watching soap operas and waiting for her husband to come
home. Look, I don’t have some highly exacting standards when it comes to
positive representation of women in fiction. As long as the writing is
believable in its context and not overtly misogynistic, I probably won’t
sit there writing a thirty-page feminist critique of how everything I
read reinforces sexist tropes or doesn’t pass the Bechdel test or
whatever. But fuck this. Bastila is an awesome, kickass, slightly
annoying character who deserves better than this trash.
In fact, all the KotOR characters
in this book do. The only one who sounds or acts anything like himself
is Canderous; otherwise it’s like reading someone’s KotOR
fanfiction. That’s the danger of taking a videogame protagonist whose
personality is literally a blank slate and trying to turn him into the
central character of a novel. Throughout the book I kept thinking “Revan
would never do that” or “Revan would never say that,” because my Revan never would. Maybe Drew Karpyshyn’s would, if he played the game as the most boring man in the universe.
Anyway, Bastila announces that she’s
pregnant, so, surprise surprise, she’s not going on the trip either.
After a brief disagreement over how much Revan owes the galaxy versus
how much he owes his own family, Revan has no trouble convincing his
wife to accept the fact that he’s going who knows where for who knows
how long and leaving her to give birth and raise their child alone until
he gets back, if that ever happens. They bang, then the next morning
Bastila’s like “Be careful out there” and Revan says “Sure thing,
toots,” and that’s that.
Let’s see how this compares to Kreia’s description of their separation at the end of Knights of the Old Republic II: “.
. . He knew he must leave all loves behind as well, no matter how
deeply one cares for them. Because such attachments are not the way of
the Jedi, and they would only bring doom to them both in the dark places
where he now walks. It would have been better if he had made her
understand. But she was always strong-willed, that one, and did not
understand war as Revan did.”
Just as I thought: they match up perfectly!
Revan, Canderous, and T3-M4 take Revan’s ship, the Ebon Hawk, to the ice planet Rekkiad (yes, really, another one),
where they meet up with Canderous’s old Mandalorian clan, led by a
woman named Veela . . . who is Canderous’s wife! Canderous introduces
Revan as his friend “Avner,” which to be fair produces a mildly humorous
moment when Revan confronts Canderous over his lack of creativity.
Revan and Canderous help their allies fend off an attack from a rival
clan by shooting a bunch of Mandalorians in the face. No one says “I
guess it would have made sense to bring HK-47 after all.”
Following memories gleaned from his dreams,
Revan leads the Mandalorians to an ancient Sith crypt where he and Malak
hid Mandalore’s mask after the Mandalorian Wars. Revan remembers how,
with his final breath, freed at last from the evil spell that had
bewitched his mind (Jesus, really?), Mandalore the Ultimate revealed
that the whole war had been a scam orchestrated by the Sith to weaken
the Republic. In the crypt, Revan and Malak found evidence confirming
that the Sith Empire had survived the Great Hyperspace War and continued
to thrive somewhere in the Unknown Regions, and together they set out
to find it.
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| Curses, I am betrayed! SPRING BRRRRRRRRRRRRREAK!!! |
Suddenly Canderous’s wife betrays them, sneering, “Did you really think rearranging Revan into Avner
would fool us?” Revan and Canderous make short work of the
Mandalorians, with Canderous himself shooting a laser through his wife’s
heart to defend his friend.
“Bros before hoes,” says Canderous. They fist-bump.
Revan resolves to venture out into the Unknown Regions in search of
the Sith Empire once again, because that worked out so well for him the
last time. Canderous wants to come too but Revan gives him the mask and
says “Instead be Mandalore.” Canderous puts on the mask and declares
himself Mandalore the Preserver, vowing to restore the honor and glory
of his people.
Let’s see how this compares to Canderous’s recollections in KotOR II: “I
wanted to go with him. I respected him, knew he could use me where he
was going. But Revan refused, saying that he must travel alone. . . .
Before he departed, he left me with a simple mission. He told me where I
could find the Mandalore’s helmet, and that I must take it and
reassemble the clans. When I asked him why he told me nothing, only that
I should wait for him to return and be ready for it. . . . Revan never
said what he was looking for—or what to be ready for. I don’t know if
I’ll ever know.”
Close enough for government work!
Revan and T3 take the Ebon Hawk to the ancient Sith world of
Nathema, where they are immediately shot down by Lord Scourge and his
employer, Darth Nyriss. Scourge finds Revan unconscious in the wreckage
and brings him to Nyriss, who recognizes him from his previous visit to
the Empire five years earlier. They take him back to Dromund Kaas to
interrogate him in Nyriss’s dungeon, leaving the Ebon Hawk behind with T3-M4 still aboard.
Scourge tortures Revan but is able to glean no information from him
because he’s forgotten everything that happened to him when he was on
Dromund Kaas before. Darth Nyriss resolves to keep him alive and study
him in the hope that they will find a way to use him in their plot
against the Sith Emperor. Revan sits in her dungeon and does nothing for
four years.
All right, just for fun: “The Sith is a belief. And its empire, the
true Sith Empire, rules elsewhere. And Revan knew the true war is not
against the Republic. It waits for us, beyond the Outer Rim. And he has
gone to fight it, in his way. He left the Ebon Hawk and its machines behind, for he knew he would not need them.”
Yeah that’s totally what happened. I can’t tell the difference and neither can you.
Anyway, at this point, a little over halfway through the book, the story jumps forward four years, leapfrogging the events of Knights of the Old Republic II
and picking up with that game’s protagonist, the Jedi Exile, paying a
visit to Bastila Shan. Karpyshyn helpfully recaps the events of the
game, though, revealing that a group of rogue Jedi started calling
themselves Sith, after the alien species, and wiped out the Jedi by the
tens of thousands. All of this is wrong, of course, or at least
erroneously phrased. But wait, there’s more!
The Exile’s name, like Revan’s in the original game, is entirely the
player’s choice; characters in the game address him or her only as
“Exile.” This book, however, finally establishes her canonical name as
“Meetra Surik.” I won’t say too much about this because I’m getting sick
of listening to myself, but that’s the best they could do? Really?
“Meetra”? And why doesn’t the player’s choice matter for the Exile’s
name but Revan’s name is still Revan, even though the KotOR comics already established that that wasn’t even his birth name? But wait, there’s more!
HK-47, along with T3 and Canderous, returns from the first game as a recruitable party member in The Sith Lords. In Revan,
the Exile mentions to Bastila that he’s gone missing, and they
speculate that he’s gone off to look for Revan. “The last thing Revan
needed while helping Canderous and the Mandalorians was a homicidal
droid following him around,” says the Exile. “Someone should try to
track him down. Find and disable him before he hurts anyone else,”
suggests Bastila. “HK’s a little too trigger-happy to bring on this
mission,” Revan had commented earlier. “If we bring a homicidal assassin
droid with us, I don’t think they’re going to give us much of a chance
to explain why we’re there.” Why does everyone in this book hate HK-47?
He’s awesome, and not at all a one-note joke character like they try to
write him off to be. “Oh that rascally HK-47, always going around
murdering people at random!” You can’t even complete the Sand People
quest in KotOR without bloodshed unless you have HK-47 in your party to translate their language. But wait, there’s more!
Bastila thinks to herself that the Exile was one of Revan’s most
trusted advisers and closest friends; she actually says out loud, “You
stood by Revan’s side at the beginning; he had no truer friend.” I hate
to contradict you, Bastila, but HK-47 might have shared a different
opinion, if you’d thought to ask him.
“Revan said that many Jedi have the capability to form connections to
life around them, although few of them realized the extent to which
this is possible. . . . He said you had such a capability, master, but
it would be your downfall. To tie so much of yourself into others—if
they suffer or die, then you would die as well. I think Revan pitied
you, master. It was very insulting, if I may say so. . . . I believe
Revan wanted you to face the Jedi Council, master. As if there was
something that you would show them and possibly undermine their
strength. Perhaps Revan wished the Council to see how far the Jedi had
fallen. Knowing Revan, it was no doubt a strategic decision on many
levels. . . . There is a certain strength in parading defeated leaders
before their people. Perhaps Revan felt that your return to the Council
in your state would show them what Jedi were capable of—and the cost.
Revan often referred to you as a Jedi who was already dead, and felt
your reception by the Council would further show you their hypocrisy.”
Jeez, no wonder everyone in this book seems to hate him.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Because she is a woman, Bastila is insensibly jealous of the Exile and her relationship with Revan. “There is no emotion, there is peace, she
thought. The familiar words of the Jedi mantra were easy to recite, but
much more difficult to follow. . . . She knew her feelings of
resentment were neither justified nor fair, but even her Jedi training
couldn’t quell her emotions.” She then confesses to the Exile how
helpless and useless she feels without her husband, and that she just
waits around all day for him to come back. Wow what great
characterization, I completely believe that this is the same person who
faced down two separate Dark Lords of the Sith on their own ships. You
know how women are, all emotional and irrational and completely useless
without a man, right?
So the Exile and T3 discover the location of
Dromund Kaas and the Exile makes contact with Scourge, who has spent
the last few years building a sort of give-and-take relationship with
Revan as each tries to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the other’s
people. Scourge knows that the Sith Emperor is building up his Empire’s
military for an attack on the Republic, a course of action that Scourge
opposes because he believes another war will lead to the eradication of
his people and their way of life. I’ve put off talking too much about
the Sith Emperor for most of this review but now I guess we have to, so
here goes.
The Sith Emperor, born as Tenebrae, renamed Vitiate, known later as Valkorion (“I have so many names!”),
is the bastard son of the Sith Lord Dramath and a peasant woman, both
of whom he murdered when he was six years old. Ooh, what a spooky
badass. When the Sith Empire was under attack by the Republic during the
Great Hyperspace War, Vitiate lured thousands of Sith Lords to his
stronghold on Nathema, where he used their collective life force in a
ritual that killed every living thing on the planet, leaving the world
devoid of the Force and also turning him into an immortal dark-side
aberration somehow. He then led the surviving remnants of the Empire
deep into the Unknown Regions, where they spent the next 1,000+ years
rebuilding their strength.
The Sith Emperor reads like a child’s idea of a villain. Oh he’s so
evil he was born with BLACK EYES and he NEVER CRIED and animals were
ascared of him! He spent MONTHS torturing his mom to death when he was a
little kid! He can EAT PLANETS and create HOLES IN THE FORCE and he’s
like A THOUSAND YEARS OLD and he can NEVER DIE! He’s so evil and badass
and cool, he was the real bad guy behind the scenes of KotOR
all along! He turned Revan to the dark side and I don’t care if it
doesn’t even make sense, he wants to kill everybody in the galaxy and
then kill everybody in the UNIVERSE!
He’s basically a combination of Darth Nihilus and Emperor Palpatine from Dark Empire, except less interesting than either of them and written by an idiot.
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| Don’t mind us, we’re just looking for some Shock Jockey. |
I’m not opposed to such a ridiculously overpowered, over-competent
villain in concept, but who the hell is Lord Vitiate? He’s some random
nobody who was just born comically strong in the Force and comically
evil for no reason, then became immortal the same way. All the central
villains in the KotOR games had some measure of depth and complexity to their characters; not so with the big bad of The Old Republic. He’s just a stupid evil asshole.
Jesus Christ, why am I still talking about this book?
So Scourge agrees to help the Exile spring Revan from Darth Nyriss’s
dungeon, but the only way he can get her inside is by having her dress
up in a sexy dancing girl’s costume and pretend to be his slave. Because
of course it is. Scourge creates a distraction by telling the Emperor
that Nyriss is plotting against him, so while the red-armored Imperial
Guard (sigh)
storm Nyriss’s stronghold, Scourge and the Exile are able to infiltrate
the dungeon. They free Revan from his cell, but he’s weak from the
drugs constantly administered to him to keep from from using the Force
to escape. The Exile has a present for him from Bastila, however: the
iconic mask he wore when he was the Dark Lord of the Sith! “I was afraid
that if I showed it to him, it might trigger something inside his
mind,” Bastila explained earlier. “It might awaken some dormant evil,
rekindle the spark of the dark side. . . . I tried to keep Revan’s past
at bay, but now I understand that was wrong. I was being selfish. His
past is a part of him, whether I like it or not. So turn my husband evil
again, baby don’t need no good daddy.”
 |
| #soiconic |
Revan touches the mask and instantly regains all his lost memories.
When he and Malak first came to Dromund Kaas, they tried to get in to
see the Sith Emperor so they could kill him, but they were led into a
trap and the Emperor dominated their minds and broke them to his will.
He sent them back to the Republic on a mission to conquer it for him,
thereby retroactively undercutting the back story of the original game
almost ten years after the fact. “But though we had underestimated the
Emperor’s power, he underestimated us, as well,” Revan recounts. “Our
wills were stronger than he thought; our minds twisted and perverted his
instructions until we thought we were acting of our own accord. Malak
and I were turned to the dark side, but in doing so we found the
strength to block out all memory of the Sith and the Emperor, partially
freeing us from his control.”
So all that talk in both KotOR games and LucasArts’ own Chronicles of the Old Republic
document about how Revan and Malak had already mostly turned to the
dark side before the Mandalorian Wars were even over, we can just throw
that out the window, right? Revan’s search for the Star Forge and
discovery of the Trayus Academy, his scheme to use the war to recruit an
army of Jedi and soldiers loyal only to him, his positioning of all his
disloyal followers at Malachor V when he knew it was about to be
destroyed, how he brutally ripped the Rakatan language from the minds of
the surviving Rakata on the Unknown World, Malak’s desire to murder the
Jedi Exile when she abandoned their cause—just forget about all that
stuff, it turns out they were actually stand-up guys all along until the
Sith Emperor messed with their brains.
Darth Nyriss comes in and easily overpowers both the Exile and
Scourge, but equipping his mask gives Revan a +5 bonus to his Wisdom
attribute, allowing him to reflect her Force lightning back at her and
incinerate her on the spot. They make their escape and hide out in a
cave, where T3 plays Revan a hologram of Bastila and their son, Vaner.
“Revan smiled, realizing it was an anagram of his own name.”
It turns out that the Emperor has destroyed not only Darth Nyriss’s
household, but the houses of all twelve members of his Dark Council as
well. The entire city is on lockdown, providing the perfect opportunity
for our uninteresting protagonists to stage an assault on the Emperor’s
fortress. Scourge gets them in the front door, then he, Revan, the
Exile, and T3-M4 fight their way to the throne room. T3 seals the door
behind them, locking them in for the final confrontation with the Sith
Emperor. “I did not expect you to return,” Vitiate says to Revan, then
expresses his disapproval of Scourge’s treachery. “He has seen the
depths of your evil,” Revan counters. “He stands with us now.”
The Emperor blasts Revan with so much Force lightning that his stupid
mask superheats and starts melting onto his face. T3 uses his
flamethrower on the Emperor but Vitiate blocks it with the Force, then
blows the little droid “into a million pieces, internal circuits and
external casing obliterated in a single instant.” So passes T3-M4,
companion character in two great RPGs, sacrificed on the altar of hack
writing.
Revan, the Exile, and Scourge unite against the Emperor, with Revan
declaring that he can’t stand against all three of them. But suddenly
Scourge has a vision of the future where he sees the player character
from the Jedi Knight class in Star Wars: The Old Republic striking
down the Emperor. Realizing that it isn’t their destiny to succeed here
today, Scourge backstabs the Jedi Exile, killing her instantly, and the
Emperor lightnings Revan into unconsciousness.
As a reward for his loyalty, the Emperor elevates Scourge to the
newly created position of Emperor’s Wrath and makes him immortal by
hooking him up to a bunch of tubes with green liquid inside. Scourge
vows to himself that he will use the centuries given to him to find
another way of stopping the Emperor, so his sacrifice of his allies will
not have been in vain. But when the Emperor presses the IMMORTAL button
on his infernal machine, Scourge’s body is flooded with intense
physical anguish that the Emperor tells him will never abate. Eventually
he will get used to it, until he’s no longer able to feel anything at
all, just like Captain Barbossa. As Scourge writhes in agony on the
floor, screaming and weeping, the Sith Emperor tells him, “This is the
price of immortality.”
Meanwhile, Revan, our supposed hero, has been imprisoned in a stasis
field in a secret location, unable to move or age but fully aware. He’ll
spend the next 300 years with the Sith Emperor feeding off his life
energy and waging a mental war against him for access to his knowledge
about the Republic and the Jedi. But while the Emperor tries to read his
mind, Revan is also planting ideas in the Emperor’s head, tricking him
into delaying his invasion for centuries. All the while, the Force ghost
of the Jedi Exile is hanging out outside Revan’s prison, silently
bolstering his resolve without his knowledge, because even in death
she’s just so devoted to him, despite all that shit he told HK-47 about
her.
The book ends with an epilogue set 50 years later. Bastila, now an
old woman, is visited by her son and grandchildren on her wedding
anniversary, because she always gets more depressed than usual at this
time of year. Vaner asks if she ever wishes his father had stayed at
home with them, and Bastila replies that she never once had that
thought, because the fact that the galaxy hasn’t been destroyed proves
that Revan accomplished whatever he set out to do and bought his family a
long life of sitting around watching soap operas. Bastila falls asleep
on the couch, dreaming of her husband who never came home.
Wow what a great follow-up to such a fun, lighthearted adventure
game. I always suspected that the most satisfying direction to take the
story after this well-earned happy ending
was for the character I played as to lose the girl he spent the whole
game romancing and leave her to grow old alone and depressed, get one of
his companions and the player character from his sequel killed for
absolutely no reason, and then be imprisoned and tortured for literally
hundreds of years without end, having achieved the absolute bare minimum
of what he was trying to do. Fantastic storytelling decisions all
around, guys.
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| Revan’s so touched to see his family he got his facial scars before the Emperor even electrified his mask. |
Meditations
This whole review is full of my Meditations™, but here are a few more:
When the Exile visits Nathema and learns of the Sith Emperor’s
ability to simultaneously drain the life of everyone on an entire
planet, she is completely horrified and reacts as if she’d never
suspected such a perversion of the Force was possible. I guess she
forgot that she killed a guy who could do the same thing just last week.
Strangely, the book also makes no reference to the Exile’s unique
ability to subconsciously manipulate the minds of Force-sensitives and
grow more powerful with the more Force-sensitives that surround her. As
the Jedi Masters in KotOR II describe it, “You are a cipher,
forming bonds, leeching the life of others, siphoning their will and
dominating them. . . . You must have noticed as you’ve fought across all
these planets, killing hundreds, only to become more and more powerful.
Why do you think that was? But what’s worse is that bonding you have.
It hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten stronger, and the more attachments you
form, the more you draw others to you. And that is why you are a threat
to us all.” Instead, the only memorable trait she has in this book is
being Revan’s number-one fangirl.
The only people to whom I could recommend this book are players of
the MMO who haven’t played or have no emotional attachment to either Knights of the Old Republic or The Sith Lords.
I honestly don’t see how someone with any real affection for those
games and their characters could find any redeemable value in this
tripe.
Stylistically, Revan isn’t unreadably bad, but the writing
is incredibly basic and unsophisticated. For example, we’re frequently
told in the text what characters feel or want. “Scourge was angry.”
“Bastila was jealous.” “Revan was sad.” “The reader was bored.” The most
concise analysis is a comparison I made before: it reads like bad
fanfiction.
Honestly this book would have been so much better, even with its
limited, uninspired prose, if it had just been what Canderous proposed
at the beginning: “Time to get the old gang back together for one last
adventure.” The first half of the book could have been about the search
for Mandalore’s mask (or some other macguffin, if we’re actually
respecting the continuity of The Sith Lords for a change), with
Revan reuniting with all his old party members from the first game for
the last time before he disappears from the known galaxy. Then the
second half, since KotOR III is apparently off the table forever, could have been a chance to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s left undotted and uncrossed at the end of KotOR II.
As it is, Revan is present as an active character for less than half
of his own novel. Most interesting character or not, the book isn’t
called Scourge; there was no reason to waste half of it on the
political machinations of a bunch of all-new characters, almost all of
whom are dead by the end of the book. This should have been a sequel to KotOR, but instead it was a prequel to TOR, and that made all the difference in the world.
Fuck this book.
1/5 Death Stars. I’d rate it lower if I didn’t know there are even worse things waiting for us in the dark.
