Star Wars: Death Star (2007) Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Tuesday. Today I'm here to review Star Wars: Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry and was published in 2007 by Del Rey Books. I actually have quite a bit to say about this book and there will be some spoilers, so if you haven't read it before, and are interested in reading it, please do so before reading this review. Let's get into it.

Death Star is one of the most interesting Star Wars novels, Legends or Canon, that I have ever read. Mainly because it's the first Star Wars media to focus solely on the Empire. Apart from the early part of the novel occasionally shifting to the prison planet, Despayre, and the occasional TIE Fighter combat operation, the novel takes place entirely on the first Death Star starting three years prior to the first Star Wars movie and ending with the destruction of the Death Star at the end of the movie. And while Grand Moff Tarkin, played by Peter Cushing in the movie, Admiral Motti, played by Richard LeParmentier in the movie, Admiral Daala, from the Bantam era novels by Kevin J. Anderson, and Darth Vader, played by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones in the movie, appear throughout the novel, they aren't the main focus of the book. The book focuses mostly on various new characters whose jobs range from civillian posts such as one of the architects working on the interior construction of the Death Star, to a TIE Fighter pilot.

Death Star is also intriguing because it expands on certain scenes key scenes from A New Hope and gives us the thoughts of Tarkin, Motti, and Vader during those scenes. Like Vader wondering why Obi-Wan was on the station as they hadn't seen each other since Obi-Wan left him to die on Mustafar at the end of Revenge of the Sith. You can actually tell which scenes were written by Steve Perry because, like in his solo Star Wars novel, Shadows of the Empire, he really enjoys writing Vader as he delves deep into the thoughts, desires, and goals of the character every single time he writes him. His portrayal of Vader is the same in this novel as it was in Shadows of the Empire even though Death Star was written and published after the prequels finished coming out while Shadows of the Empire was published while Episode I was still in development and pre-production in the mid-'90s. And really, Darth Vader didn't really change much in the 11 years between the release of Shadows of the Empire in 1996 and the release of Death Star in 2007. The only thing the prequel movies really did for the character is giving the audience time with Anakin Skywalker before his fall to the Dark Side, and show us WHY he became Darth Vader, not just HOW he became Darth Vader.

There are way too many characters to talk about all of them individually and basically none of the new characters make their way into other Star Wars novels after this, but I would still like to talk about them because they're pretty well written. However, two of them appeared in earlier pieces of Star Wars media. Doctor Divini, nicknamed Uli, first appeared in Medstar II: Jedi Healer, a Clone Wars era novel written by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry that was published back in 2004 during the original Clone Wars Multimedia Project that Lucasfilm launched to fill in the gaps between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, which is referenced during the Uli chapters, and Nova Stihl, an Imperial soldier who appears, nameless, in A New Hope. According to Wookieepedia, he's one of the Stormtroopers that chases Han and Chewie through the Death Star, and was one of the troopers guarding the entrance to the conference room that we frequently see Tarkin and Vader in during the movie. Everyone else is a one and done character who we never see again in any novels or comics. 

Which makes it harder to care about these characters. I like all of them, but, it doesn't matter if they survive or not because none of them ever show up again after this book. Which is unfortunate. Especially since some of them would've been fun to see around the Rebel fleet in Honor Among Thieves and Razor's Edge, like the Twi'lek bartender, Memah Roothes and her boyfriend, a Zelosian ex-convict named Celot Ratua Dil. Alas, even though the majority of them survive the destruction of the Death Star, we never see them again.

The other issue that I have with this book is that there's no real indication of how much time has passed throughout the book. Wookieepedia states that the book starts 3 years before the events of A New Hope or 3 BBY (Before Battle of Yavin) and ends in 0 BBY or at the end of the movie, but there's nothing within the text that says how long it's been between the major events in the book not even a description that says that something happened, "a few months ago" or "a year ago" or whenever. So it can get a little bit confusing sometimes. Especially because each chapter rotates between the characters.

I originally heard about Death Star from an article in Star Wars Insider #96 from 2007, which covered the book. I was interested but it wasn't until 2010 or 2011 that I was able to buy it in paperback and read it as I was in college starting in September 2007, and was there until the spring of 2010. And by that point I was still trying to catch up on reading the New Jedi Order series that had run from 1999 to 2004 as well as some of the Clone Wars/Prequel era novels that had come out between 2000 and 2006 since I'd spent my high school years, when those novels were coming out, catching up on the Bantam era novels that had come out between 1991 and 1999. I remember the first time I read it I wasn't really sure what to make of it given that it's focused on the Empire. I mean, I liked it, but it's not something I was used to seeing in a Star Wars novel. And it's not really something that's been done since outside of a few Darth Vader centric books, and of course some of the comics that Marvel has been putting out since 2015.

Overall this is a really good book. The pacing is good, the characters are decent, and it actually adds things to, and expands upon, certain scenes in A New Hope. Which isn't always the case with novels like this that attempt to add to or expands on one of the movies. If you ever wondered what the regular Imperials do on the Death Star before and during the events of the movie, I recommend reading this book, if you haven't already of course.

That's it for this review. I'll be back tomorrow for a comic book review of some sort. It might be the first Archie Comics review for the Mark Waid run on the book, or it might be another single issue. Either way, I'll have a comic book review out for you sometime tomorrow. So until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.