To moja pierwsza książka z uniwersum Star Wars i było całkiem ciekawie. Może trochę nie do końca pasowało mi, że miała ograniczniki wynikające z części V i VI sagi, ale w miarę zgrabnie się wpasowała.

I really enjoyed this book growing up, but I found it kind of a slog to reread. Something about the structure just didn't work for me this time out. The chapters lurch back and forth between different scenes in ways that kind of made me wish they'd just been formatted into individual character perspective chapters a la A Song of Ice and Fire.

It also suffers a bit from being officially commissioned connective tissue between the two much more interesting stories of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Not a lot really happens here, and a number of attempts to sow tension fall kind of flat. No one can die, which isn't the only way to add tension to a story, but large swaths of time pass while we wait for the characters who are waiting for something to happen. There's just very little urgency to any of the proceedings.

Shadows of the Empire feels like the genesis point of modern Star Wars's obsession with shining a light on every single dark crevice of the continuity, which was annoying in the prequels, and has only gotten worse under Disney's ownership. A lot of Solo style "And that's the origin of THAT" type moments. Ever wonder how Leia got that cool bounty hunter armor she wore in the beginning of Jedi? Wonder no longer! A near-human assassin droid gave it to her so she could get to Coruscant undetected for a meeting with a criminal kingpin about... something?

Speaking of which, in retrospect, Prince Xizor and Dash Rendar are two very funny examples of officially licensed "OC do NOT steal" characters. The former is a criminal mastermind who's always two or three steps ahead of Darth Vader, and the latter is essentially Han Solo with the serial numbers only partially filed off.

Parts of it are still fun, there are decent action sequences, and I'll always have a bit of a nostalgic soft spot for it as the first piece of Star Wars EU content I ever read, but it isn't really as well-written as some of the old EU's better entries, nor is it wild enough to stand with the wildest entries in the franchise, either. Also, I know I complained elsewhere about a modern Star Wars novel's sexlessness, but given the awful sequence where Xizor attempts to... let's say seduce... Leia here, maybe sexlessness is for the best when it comes to Star Wars.

Just a real mixed bag. Maybe the game held up better (not going to put that theory to the test).

“Cold allowed precision, heat threw caution aside and plunged in rampantly. Cold was the process of deliberation and planning, heat the result of unbridled passion. Passion was fine, but only when controlled and channeled properly.”

The story takes place before The Return of the Jedi. It's pretty much a big rescue mission when it boils down to it. Luke, Leia, Chewie and Lando are on a mission to rescue Solo prior to ending up at Jabba's Palace. Not good, not bad. I'm going to give some of the new canon novels a go that have received great reviews.

by Steve Perry, published in 1996.

This Star Wars novel, ‘Shadows of the Empire’, fits exactly between the Star Wars movies ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’ and is even sanctioned by that Lucas guy. As you recall Han is kinda frozen, Luke is not quite done his training and Lando has possession of the Falcon and Leia is, well Leia and Chewie still snarls a lot.

What this novel does well is set a good fast pace of activities in the Star Wars universe and really fill in how Luke built his new light saber and what Leia and Chewie and Lando did between movies. And as far as that goes a pretty decent job was done.

But, since Han is frozen in carbonite sitting pretty in Jabba’s throne room, I guess the author felt the readers really needed another Han and so created Dash Rendar . . . Yeah, that’s what I thought to. I thought the Clone Wars were long over . . .

Perhaps the neatest creation, to give the author some credit back, is Xizor the head of Black Sun the evil underground crime network of the Star Wars Universe - if you are a super geek you will also know that there was a plastic model kit made of Xizor, an actual full length movie soundtrack and other marketing goodies just like it was an actual movie release.

So, back to Xizor. Pretty decent character as far as evil characters go; ruthless, charming and reptilian with a juiced up pheremone system to drive all the humanoid ladies wild when he so chooses - no really. And you can guess that at some point in the novel Leia gets to sample his scent, but I won’t spoil it for you here.

The actual writing itself left me a bit annoyed. The sentences are too damn short. And repetitive. And too melodrama. Just too much. Way too much. Really too much, it was. If you follow me.

Still, the writing style aside, the story is pretty decent and we get to see Darth Vader pitted against Xizor in a competition to win the Emperor’s favours. Good rivalry there for sure and yeah, since you’ve seen ‘Return of the Jedi’ you can guess which evil villain wins.

Overall a worthwhile bit of time spent with your favourite Star Wars characters. I really would have liked to not see Dash Rendar though - the Han Solo clone. You do get to see how and where Leia gets her funky bounty hunter suit though and how the Emperor let the rebels get the new Death Star plans - It’s a trap!

I leave it up to you. If you are a Star Wars geek you will likely need to read this book since it ties up a bunch of activities between movies and is treated as official Star Wars Universe stuff. If you just like the movies (the first three produced, not the last three) you can skip this book and never knew it existed.

May the . . .

Nope, not gonna do it.

2.5 rounded up to 3. The best parts and what kept me reading until the end was Darth Vader and Luke. Otherwise the plot wasn’t that great and the writing itself was just ok.

So far the best of the extended universe novels I have read..this is maybe due to the fact that as it is set between the empire strikes back an return of the Jedi it makes the most use of the characters from the film especially as Vadar and the Emperor are here.
Th only main character not about is Han Solo being trapped in Carbonite..certainly the character of Dash Rendar(kind of an intergalactic lord flasheart) Is introduced to plug this gap though I don't really know why...you already have a Solo type character with Lando and it would have been easy to have used him as the action hero.
Anyhow minor criticisms aside this is a good book which not only fills in some gaps between the film's but shows a struggle between the empire and a criminal network called black sun...this really provides much of the action and the regular characters are drawn into a power struggle due to the bounty on Luke's head.
All in all great fun and a quick and likeable read.

No puedo decir otra que: ¡Me ha encantado!
El argumento sirve para unir el espacio entre las dos películas. Cada punto de la historia está bien construido y con ella podemos ver más allá de lo que sabíamos hasta ahora de los protagonistas.
Vemos a Luke como un aprendiz, creando su sable láser, los primeros intentos de usar la Fuerza y como se va convirtiendo rápidamente en un Caballero Jedi.
Nos encontramos con un Vader más humano, tratando de atraer a su hijo a su lado y usando el lado Oscuro de la Fuerza para volverse más fuerte y sanarse a si mismo.
El Emperador nos muestra una imagen intocable, lejana y, al mismo tiempo, extremadamente poderosa.
Conocemos también mucho más de Leia, Lando, Chewie y llegamos a saber cómo los rebeldes vuelven a tener noticias de la construcción de la segunda Estrella de la Muerte.
Otro de los personajes que no pueden faltar es Xizor, me parece un villano bien construido, con carisma y extremadamente poderoso que juega un juego muy peligroso junto con Vader y el Emperador.

Lo único que no me ha gustado de este libro es la manera en que el autor ha usado a algunos de los protagonistas del libro para cumplir unos puntos y luego hacerlos desaparecer. Pero son hechos puntuales que realmente no quitan en ningún momento la emoción del libro.

Una historia totalmente recomendable para cualquier apasionado de Star Wars que quiera acercarse a lo que pasó entre El Imperio contraataca y el Retorno del Jedi.

I can hardly see this book with today’s eyes. Shadow came out as part of a massive multi-media project in times when there was no new Star Wars movie in sight. It was the closest thing we had to a new Star Wars movie and as such very special. This book was actually the heart of it. Xizor and Vader were amazing to watch as rivals and it was just good to see Luke and Leia and Chewie back in OT mode.

The mastermind behind the Black Sun criminal organization, the Dark Prince Xizor is competing for the Emperors favor, against Darth Vader. After finally being able to strike against Vader, Xizor finds his plans foiled by a Corellian Smuggler called Han Solo. You would like this book if you like Star Wars and fantasy

It good. Felt like I was watching a Star Wars movie.

One of the BEST Star Wars sequels ever written. A true classic and it would make an awesome film in its own right. Darth Vader is clearly the star here, but in this novel transcends his villian status. He's still nasty, but there's a depth to him.

What a nice little character Xizor. Oh well.
This includes a bit of spoilers but it's predictable since this book is set between the Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi. So you already know what is going to happen. Why did Luke "gave away" the droids, why Leia is a bounty hunter, why chewie is chain why Lando is a troop of the Hut and why Skywalker is a "badass".

This is a story that explains a bit on why it took them some time to save Han (1 year I think) but at the same time provided a new character Prince Xizor and his machinations to become the Emperor servant while the same time eliminate Darth Vader as number 2.
And to be honest that's the most interesting part of the story. Everything else was boring, from Leia to Chewie to Lando a Han Dash. this last character is the copy of hand, same traits, same way of speaking. If the writer swap the name nobody would have figure it out. Interestingly he puts Leia saying, do all people like Han behave like that? Is there a school? lol it's quite funny.

So why 6.5 Stars? Round to 7. Well because of Xisor and the last one hundreds pages that were good. Everything else was a bit boring. Again, the best parts were Xisor. Darth Vader & Emperor were also nice, but apart from that , no.

IT was nice to see Leia a bit different from high and mighty she looks like in empire strikes back and even doing stuff out of her character.
I had higher expectations for Xisor, but unfortunately we all know how it would end, after all in return of Jedi there wasn't any mention of it.

Another thing that upsets me is Luke. Everyone wants to convert , well Darth wants but I don't see the power he sees in him. He isn't powerful at all. I think Darth is kidding himself. He just don't want to kill his son. If they had killed Luke when they had the change, the Empire would survive. It's sometimes this badly written stuff that upsets me. Face palm situation. If the Emperor forseen everything, why didn't he forseen that.