Book Review | Star Wars: Dark Lord - The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno

Having been rapt by James Luceno’s staggering lead-in to Revenge of the Sith, Labyrinth of Evil, and Matthew Stover’s even better novelisation of the movie itself, I awaited the release of this loose-fitting trilogy’s final chapter with bated breath. At last, we would be given a telling glimpse beneath the mask of Darth Vader. At last, we would pay witness to the notorious ‘Jedi Purge’ that followed the dawn of Palpatine’s Galactic Empire. At last, the gulf between the two Star Wars trilogies would be bridged with Dark Lord - The Rise of Darth Vader, a title that promised more than the total sum of Star Wars spin-off literature that preceded it.

My first reaction to this book was one of passionate frustration. The eponymous Sith Lord is absent from the narrative for great swathes of the action, Luceno instead focusing on his surviving troupe of Jedi: Bol Chatak, padawan Olee Starstone and her master, the book’s real protagonist, Roan Shryne. There is little more to the plot than watching these Jedi learn of their fellows’ fate, struggle to come to terms with it, and then seek to avoid the same for themselves, while in the background Vader struggles to accept the limitations imposed on him by his recent injuries.

Pleasingly though, when Luceno does delve into Vader’s thoughts and feelings, he does so incisively. Sparse though they are, the passages of this book that deal with Vader’s struggle to free himself of Anakin Skywalker and harness the power of the shadows that shroud him are masterfully written. Luceno devotes considerable chunks of prose to Vader’s gradual acceptance of his mechanical limbs and life-support suit; he even delves into the Dark Lord’s built-in colostomy bags and details the daily, painful skin-scrapings that he must endure. There is an agonising moment when Vader looks up at the deformed remnants of his new master and asks, “Are these the faces of victory?”, bringing the trappings of the dark side into sharp focus.

The novel also makes good on its promise to depict Vader’s rise. When we are first reunited with Vader around fifty pages in, he is still the lumbering, self-recriminating half-mechanical monster that woke up on Palpatine’s operating table. Barely able to walk on his new legs without calling upon the Force for support, this Vader isn’t even a shadow of the dominant force that we remember from the original trilogy. By the book’s end, though, Vader has truly mastered the dark side of the Force; it has become “his bride”, his new fixation. When he finally duels with Shryne on Kashyyyk, he appears invincible.

Devotees of the saga will also find it hard not to take pleasure in some of Luceno’s shamelessly fan-pleasing vignettes. The author offers illicit glimpses into the Empire’s early days, subtly noting the inception of the grand moffs, the enlistment of storm troopers to replace the increasingly unreliable clones, and even the transformation of the Loyalist Committee into the Rebellion. I found Vader’s dealings with Bail Organa particularly enlightening as Luceno shares both men’s reflections on them, and for many the book’s closing Ben Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn cameo will vindicate the purchase in of itself.

Of course, none of this makes up for the dearth of plot, which is ultimately where Dark Lord - The Rise of Darth Vader falls down. With a shift of emphasis and a more regimented storyline, this one could have been up amongst the greatest Star Wars novels ever written – instead, I’m afraid that it ranks amongst the most maddening.