I'd heard good things about SoTE, had fond memories of the game, and honestly thought the plot sounded pretty good in summary. Unfortunately, Steve Perry's execution of it was terrifically worthless. He includes not one but two Gary Stus - Dash Rendar and Prince Xizor. This is generally a bad way to design characters. However, the real problem with SoTE is that Perry never escapes the tropes of the SW universe. I realize there is a fine line between repetitious, predictable tropes and the archetypes and mythological patterns that are central to SW, but it seems like the editors could have kept this piece of clumsy fan-fiction grade writing off the shelves.

Every character is motivated by murdered family members, everyone is a played-out stereotype of a character with a few major traits that are turned up to the max, and all the action occurs in bursts of stereotyped scenes - chase scenes, fight scenes, etc, which all end predictably and follow the patterns. Nor are the plot arcs really developed in a way that emphasizes their relative importance. The Suprosa bit, crucial to setting up ROTJ, came out of nowhere, went by quickly and without much attention, and didn't give me any reason to care about the Bothan pilots. So what if half the squadron died, and they were rookies? If it had been a larger battle, and they'd been members of a no-name random x-wing squadron, they'd never get mentioned again.

Another reviewer made some comment to the effect that, if you're picking a star wars novel, you can't be expecting "existential philosophy." But fortunately, many authors have recently raised the bar in SW to the point that I do now have high expectations of SW novels. The KOTOR games, Matthew Stover's novels, as well as select other novels written by people who care and know how to write, and also including the excellent essential guides and rpg sourcebooks written by people who care as much or more, have done great things for the quality of new Star Wars stories. Enjoy one of them, and don't bother with SoTE. Read a summary instead.

Pretty good book, average by SW standards. I enjoyed Luke learning to be a Jedi quite a bit, and R2 and Threepio flying the Falcon was super funny. Damn this book was horny though, the Xizor seducing Leia scene made me very uncomfortable.

I’ve wanted to read this since I was a kid, back when Star Wars movies numbered at 3. The author captures the voice of established characters well, but the actual writing is clunky. I enjoyed it though.

2.5

There are moments in this book that are great, but those are floating in a sea of just plain bad. Overall, this book suffers from the old fanfiction foil of original characters feeling like they are specifically designed to outshine the original cast.

Dash Rendar is Poochie...nuff said.

Xizor is so frigging try hard it's not even funny. He's rich, he's handsome, he can have any woman he wants, he has so much money it's stupid, he's an expert shot, he's an expert martial artist, he has the best HRD ever built, he's smarter than everybody...etc. etc.

The story itself is fairly sloppy. There are multiple moments where things happen for no real reason other than "that's where the story is going." Like, there's one attempt on Luke's life and Leia's like "OMG SOMEONE IS OUT TO KILL LUKE WE NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW AND CONTACT A VAST CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION AS OPPOSED TO OUR OWN HIGHLY SKILLED SPY NETWORK."

Dash Rendar adds nothing to the story other than the fact that he is Poochie...and even when it looks like he's taken down a peg, it turns out that it wasn't his fault and he is still in fact, Poochie.

Leia's internal dialogue is extremely problematic, but I can't really fault the author too much on that considering the time period it was written. Doesn't make it good, doesn't excuse it all, but I have to take context into account here.

Overall, if you're looking to explore some of the old EU books, this one is one of the more popular out there but not quite worth seeking out unless you are like me and grew up listening to the audio book and want a trip down memory lane. Just be careful while you're on that stroll, it's a minefield of Bantha Poodoo.

A completely serviceable Star Wars novel that falters thanks to lots of poor characterization. Luke and Lando were fine. Vader actually had some excellent moments. I loved the section that talked about how most of Vaders time is spent being bored because his moments of conquest are so easy, unless Luke is around.

I found the villain Xizor to be ridiculous and equally useless. He secretes a pheromone that can seduce any being…What is this trash? Leia is written so poorly. I enjoy a bit of fun science fiction here and there, but Leia being seduced not long after the ending of Empire thanks to some smelly good stuff is criminal to her character and felt so shameless. She also makes a terribly stupid decision for some plot convenience and becomes a damsel in distress once more. It misses everything about Leia that makes her so interesting.

Despite this, the novel is actually solidly entertaining. One moment I loved was when Threepio and Artoo recklessly drive the falcon around. That was a genuine moment of comedy and stakes that I could see in one of the movies.

One thing I was annoyed by was the need to establish things for ROTJ. Like here.. get it…its how Leia gets her bounty hunter outfit and her thermal detonator. So unnecessary. Just like this entire book.

Least favorite of the Expanded Universe so far.

I tried to love this book a read back in college. The audiobook is a really bad copy if the tapes. But I tried to enjoy it anyway. The story is fun, but predictable. There is little to no character development, it is just the same characters in an action story. The action doesn't disappoint. It keeps the story going forward. Still, it ends solidly and sets up episode 6 rather well.

Classic Star Wars, now not classified as canon but still awesome stuff.

Shadows of the Empire tells the story between episodes V and VI. It follows the adventures of Lando, Chewie, Leia, Luke, and a character who first appears in this book- Dash Rendar. Much of the story focuses on a battle of wits and espionage between Darth Vader and Prince Xizor (head of the crime syndicate Black Sun). Shadows of the Empire gives much depth to Xizor's character. Many paragraph breaks within chapters make the pace seem faster and allow Perry to switch the perspective between several characters throughout a single chapter. The beginning pacing is a bit slow but is a fast read towards the later half of the book. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Prince Xizor as Perry spends a lot of time from Xizor's perspective. Perry also spends some time from Vader's perspective and readers get to see him interact with Palpatine. Shadows of the Empire does a good job filling in the story between the movies and gives more depth to Xizor. I would give this book a 3.5 if I could because it was an enjoyable read but not outstanding.

Here we go- One of the more noteworthy novels from Star Wars Legends, Steve Perry's Shadows of the Empire.
Also, an ENORMOUS thank you to my goodreads pal Crystal Starr Light - she sent me an AUTOGRAPHED BY STEVE PERRY COPY of this book and I am so happy to have it as part of my collection!

Anyways, on to the book itself. "Shadows of the Empire" is much more than just another tie-in star wars novel from the original Expanded Universe. This was an entire multimedia project created by Lucasfilm in 1996- with collaboration between Bantam Books, Lucasarts, and Dark Horse Comics to create a massive but intimately woven story that chronicles the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Different parts of this story are told in the various pieces of media that are part of it. The comic is about Boba Fett and the Bounty Hunters, while the N64 video game stars new character Dash Rendar. The book, which I am reviewing here, showcases the central characters of the Original Trilogy and what they were going through during this time- as well as how they were dealing with the absence of Han Solo.

THE STORY: Han Solo has been captured by Boba Fett, and the Rebel Alliance has suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Lando Calrissian work to get the rebels back on their feet, as well as to find and rescue Han. Leia decides to seek out the Black Sun criminal syndicate for help, but gets far more than what she was bargaining for in its leader, Prince Xizor. The team also enlists Dash Rendar for an extra blaster.
Meanwhile, Prince Xizor has greater ambitions (and a thirst for revenge) as he plots to take Darth Vader's place by killing Luke Skywalker and humiliating him. At the same time, Darth Vader continues his quest to capture Luke alive and turn him to the Dark Side- as well as show Xizor who's boss.

THE BAD: Shadows of the Empire is a bit of a mixed bag, so lets get the bad stuff out of the way first.
I was not a fan of any of the new characters created for the novel and/or the SotE multimedia project. Starting with Dash Rendar, I found him to be pretty stereotypical and cliche. I've heard plenty of complaints that Dash was a Han Solo stand in/copy, and now after reading this book I can really see why. He is written here as an even more extreme version of Han: another smart-mouthed rogue who is even more selfish and even more about the money, taking out the traits that made Han more complex and just dialing up the more unlikeable traits to 11. Maybe Dash Rendar works better as a protagonist for the video game, but here he just clutters up the story.
Guri is a character that isn't just bland, she doesn't even feel like Star Wars. I've been willing to accept quite a few concepts that have been strange and "out there" for star wars, but the human replica droid is the first that seemingly falls within all the rules established in this universe but still doesn't quite fit. She feels more like something out of Star Trek or Blade Runner than she does Star Wars. Even if she weren't a human replica droid, Guri is not interesting at all, and quite a Mary Sue- the book emphasizes her impeccable beauty, unwavering loyalty, and unbeatable strength without giving her any sort of flaws.
And Xizor.... uuggghh, he was pretty annoying. Perry writes him as such a Gary Stu to the point where it's ridiculous, on top of a cringeworthy subplot where he has the hots for Leia. He would have been a better character had Perry written him with more restraint, but I think he tried to hard to make Xizor intimidating by telling us how unbeatable he is in every regard.
The writing works well in most places, but I recommend skimming if not outright skipping between roughly pages 250-270; I don't remember ever cringing any more than what I had to endure with those scenes, to the point where I almost threw up at how sickening it was. I'm not sure whether I was supposed to feel aroused or dirty, but... GAHH! The shower scene in Solo was more erotic! Heck, I'd probably have a better chance of feeling uncomfortable in the right way reading 50 shades of Grey! You know what, I need to move on here, because the sooner I forget about what I had to suffer through there, the better. YUCK!

THE GOOD: Despite the glaring problems, Steve Perry does an incredible job on many of the other aspects of the book.
The best parts of this novel are easily the familiar characters. Perry's portrayals of Luke, Leia, Lando, and Vader are all spot on- and fairly nuanced. With all of these characters, their personalities are perfectly in line with the Original Trilogy, and Perry does a fantastic job addressing everything that has happened to them in A new Hope and Empire Strikes Back.
Luke has been shaken by his encounter with Darth Vader, and his confidence in himself is been shattered. Luke's little journey in this book as he tries to reconnect with the force and strengthen his bond with it is both highly compelling and very interesting to read about. I loved the bit where he works to build himself a new lightsaber. It may be outdated because of how The Clone Wars series, even before the canon reset, changed how building a lightsaber is done (especially the nature of the lightsaber crystal) but I can forgive that here because this book was written over a decade before those episodes of The Clone Wars came out. I also liked how vulnerable Perry made Luke here, allowing for the situations he gets into feel much more dangerous and exciting for the reader even though we know he will survive.
Leia is done especially well, and is probably the best character in the book. The loss of Han Solo has deeply affected her and has left her in a highly vulnerable emotional state. As disgusting as the scenes between Leia and Xizor ended up being, Leia's portrayal was compelling, and serves to increase the complexity of her character. That strong will we associate with Leia is there, but she's not infallible, and Perry strikes a perfect balance. I also highly commend Perry for addressing Leia's complicated feelings for Luke. Given the revelations about Leia in Return of the Jedi, it makes the attraction between Luke and Leia in New Hope and Empire look... awkward to say the least. But Perry addresses it here during the sections where Leia has her point of view, without worrying about it coming off as incestuous. In the end, I thought Perry handled it quite gracefully.
Lando works great here, and I wish they didn't also team up with Dash Rendar because of it. Lando serves as a Han Solo stand-in like Dash when it comes to the team dynamic, but I think he's written much better. Lando is used as the snarky sidekick to Leia and Luke the way Han was in A New Hope, but unlike Dash, he doesn't feel like a Han Solo clone- I feel like I'm seeing Lando Calrissian in the sections he's featured in. I also like how Perry doesn't just throw in a snarky line from Lando in every single conversation (something that I felt like happened with Dash), but when he does, it feels like something that distinctly Lando would say. Also, not every line from Lando is intended to be a funny one-liner; although when he DOES throw a comedic one-liner, it almost always sticks the landing.
I really liked Darth Vader in this book. He doesn't get as much page time as the other familiar characters, but when he does, it's a treat. Vader's characterization is in line with what we know of him in the original trilogy; badass and evil. Perry also does a surprisingly good job making you feel the fear that Vader's comrades feel when they are in his presence. However, I think the emotional baggage is handled perfectly- it increases the complexity in Vader as a character without getting in the way of his intimidating side. Perry puts quite a bit of focus on Vader's desire to please his master, as well as his frustrations of dealing with a rival in Prince Xizor.
Other supporting characters from the original trilogy are handled well in this book too. Chewie is fun, and Perry does a good job with giving him some personality that stays consistent with what we know from Chewie in epsisodes 4, 5, and 6. R2-D2 and C-3PO get a pretty funny bit towards the end with the Millenium Falcon, but it was also fun to see Wedge Antilles. All of these characters were compelling and consistent with their portrayals in the Original Trilogy.
For the most part, Steve Perry does a good job with the writing. There isn't that strong of a central story here, but he manages to weave all of the characters' individual stories together into a fairly cohesive narrative that effectively and compellingly showcases what was going on in between episodes 5 and 6. The action scenes were also quite enjoyable- Perry is able to write action that has enough to provide a basic idea of what is happening but still manages to make the sequences feel fast paced. There's plenty of action scenes to be had in these pages, and pretty much all of them are highlights of the novel.

THE CONCLUSION: Final rating is 3.5 stars.
Shadows of the Empire has many problems and doesn't fully hold up, but the stuff that's actually good is truly fantastic. The classic characters are fairly compelling and the action scenes are a lot of fun, even if the new characters ranged from mediocre to terrible. The stuff with Leia and Xizor is truly painful to get through, but if you can stomach that the rest of the book is a fast and easy read. I haven't experienced the entire multimedia project for Shadows of the Empire but this novel feels self contained enough that I think it can be enjoyed without playing the N64 game or reading the comic. I would definitely skip the sections with Leia and Xizor between page 250-270 or so, but I would recommend the rest of the book to those who are interested in exploring the legends continuity.

Ever since the late nineties Shadows Of The Empire to me has only been the amazing N64 game that I played to death; a fun side story between Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi starring some rough and gruff hero named Dash Rendar that quite frankly looked cool as hell in the game artwork and cinematics. In my opinion he even gave Han Solo a run for his money as a badass gunslinging hero, the guy fought in the battle of Hoth, went up against both IG-88 and Boba Fett and took down a whole biker gang trying to assassinate Luke. You can imagine my surprise when I finally read the novel for Shadows Of The Empire only for Dash to be a sometimes side character popping up every now and then to support Luke, Leia, Lando, Chewie, and the rest.

But what surprised me the most was how much the writer of this book, Steve Perry, made Dash an unlikable asshole! Was he not aware this guy was the main character of the video game when he was writing it and that players would be controlling him?! Dash is annoying and cocky, he bullies and teases everyone, and even completely abandons the heroes at one point during a life or death scenario because he’s not getting paid anymore to help. I get why people write characters to have unlikable, almost villainous traits of course, as it’s as fun to root for the bad guy as it is the good guy sometimes, but this guy barely even has an arc at the end. Of course he helps, and even fights alongside the heroes later, but you never grow to really like him. I was excited for him to finally make his appearance, which takes awhile to even happen, and then after that I grew to dread when he’d show up again. I’d see his name on the page and be like, ugh Dash is here again. Who invited this prick? Luke, Leia and Lando all complain about the guy constantly. He sucks! Oh cool he’s a badass who can shoot and fly well, but he’s still a bully with small dick syndrome. When you see people in real life driving pickup trucks aggressively on the highway with giant tires, that’s Dash Rendar.

Anyways… the Vader/Xizor rivalry is cool, and I was happy to see Xizor fleshed out a lot as he’s barely even in the game at all. He’s an evil ruthless bastard, the scene where he breaks the neck of the guy who attempts to assassinate him because his father died doing construction for Xizor’s palace and the guy just wanted revenge? Jesus… that’s ice cold stuff. I liked how smart and cunning he was, was always plotting and scheming, a classic evil lord sitting on a throne having others spy and do his bidding. Always trying to fuck with Vader, the mind games always at play. The whole “he has pheromones that make the opposite sex want to sleep with him” thing was… interesting? Very funny to imagine current Disney Star Wars trying to do that nowadays…

It’s written like a comic book in a way, the action is very descriptive and pops out, and that makes the dialogue sometimes a little silly. I was obviously picturing the actors themselves when I was reading these lines, and sometimes had a hard time picturing Mark Hamill’s Luke and Carrie Fisher’s Leia saying/doing these things in the book.

I’m biased a bit because I love this era of Star Wars (of course) and the excitement of the re-released original trilogy in the nineties with the improved special effects, and of course the video games, so I was going to like this book no matter what. I’ll just keep my image of Dash Rendar as the cool badass from the video game and not the meathead dweeb from the book.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is a story from the pre-Disney Legends continuity.

Telling the story of events that transpire between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it follows Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie in their adventures to recover Han Solo from the clutches of Boba Fett before the bounty hunter can deliver his prisoner to Jabba the Hutt. They are joined by the Corellian smuggler Dash Rendar, who shares suspiciously similar characteristics to Han Solo, except he has an even bigger ego, and a slightly newer ship.

On the opposing side is Darth Vader, still obsessed with finding young Skywalker and seducing him to the Dark Side of the Force. Also joining the ranks of Star Wars villains is Prince Xizor, the Falleen leader of the Black Sun crime syndicate, who believes that he is a rival to Vader for the Emperor’s favour, and who has a personal vendetta against the Dark Lord of the Sith.

My history with this book goes back to 1996, when it was one of the earliest of the second wave of Expanded Universe novels (that began with Heir to the Empire). Shadows of the Empire was conceived as a “multimedia” project, to encompass a full symphonic CD soundtrack, a videogame on PC and N64, a graphic novel, and this novel. I bought the PC version of the game, but my computer was too underpowered to play it (I lacked a 3D accelerator!), so I never got to play it. I thus had to settle with just the novel and the soundtrack. (Actually, I’m pretty sure I bought and read the book before I tried the game, but it’s more than twenty years ago and no-one reading this will give a damn!)

This book is ... not as good as I remember it being. It is tremendously clichéd, and feels almost like a ‘paint by numbers’ space adventure. That’s not to say that there isn’t stuff to enjoy. The plot moves at a fair pace, and there are action scenes aplenty that satisfy my Star Wars craving (after recently having read Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow which has zero action, it was good to get back to ‘proper’ (!) Star Wars storytelling). However, it suffers from early-expanded-universe-itis—by which I mean that he author’s creativity is severely circumscribed by only really relying on the original trilogy of movies as a source of inspiration. This is not completely the writer’s fault, as there were no doubt constraints due to the nature of the project, but it does end up making the universe feel more cramped than, for example, the Thrawn trilogy or the X-Wing series. Still, we do get a nice evocation of Coruscant, way before we’d even seen it in the Special Editions, let alone The Phantom Menace.

This is the least of the book’s problems. First of all, and reading it as a middle-aged man in 2019, it is striking how much the book has ‘male gaze’ written all over it. No opportunity to describe a woman in terms of physical attractiveness is missed, and that is exemplified in the form of the android (gynoid?), Guri, who is clearly the author’s favourite kind of woman—flawlessly beautiful in a conventional American way, and utterly obedient and characterless. Star Wars meets the Stepford Wives.

Too often Leia is treated as luggage, or as a prize to be won, or as a problem to be solved. This is done by both the heroes and the villains, making it a writing problem. To all those that criticise George Lucas’s writing, he always wrote Leia as a powerful personality who took control of her destiny. This is not on show here—like Dave Wolverton before him, Steve Perry has a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Leia a compelling character: the force of her personality and her unwavering determination to fight for what she believes in, not how beautiful she looks in a frock.

I’m going to ignore the rapey implications of Xizor’s seduction techniques—he’s a pantomime villain, so that’s to be expected. But no, actually I can’t ignore it—Leia deserves a better opponent than someone who just sees a beautiful woman and wants to grab them by the pussy. At least she gets to give him a good kick in the gonads.

Beyond the portrayal of women, there are other negatives that should be mentioned. The characterisation of Luke is all wrong—he acts more like Wormie from the original Star Wars novel, not like the Jedi Knight-in-training who learnt from Yoda and survived a duel with Darth Vader. There is a world of difference between a naïve 19 year old boy who’s never set foot off Tatooine and the 23 year old maimed war veteran that Luke is during this story’s timeframe. In some passages Luke’s internal monologue is more like a tween than a grown adult. It is hard to credit that this is supposed to be the character who, in less than a year, will show maturity enough to resist the pull of the Dark Side when facing the Emperor.

The portrayal of the Emperor also feels off—Palpatine shouldn’t be so easily manipulated by a duplicitous villain as obvious as Xizor. Further—the Emperor seems to be written as if he is some sort of hippy youth group leader. Sample dialogue, “Lord Vader. How are things there?” It doesn’t really have quite the grandeur of Palpatine’s typical speech patterns.

It’s not all bad, but every time, just as I’m settling down to enjoy the story, the author comes up with a fresh way to irritate me.

Example A: we are introduced to a side character who has two features described, 1. He is bald. 2. He has teeth made of polished black chrome. I don’t know about other readers, but for me the teeth are by far the more interesting and distinguishing feature. Yet, from that point forward, the author refers to the character as “Baldy”. This is both lazy and a juvenile attempt at a slur, and unnecessarily mean-spirited.

Example B: I’m not sure that a sensible writer these days would create a species called ‘Epicanthix’, and then compare them negatively to a blonde, blue-eyed character as being ‘ethnic’. Hmm. Especially considering the character mentioned later called Mayli Weng, who represents the Exotic Entertainers Union—the author is wearing stereotypes on his sleeves for all to see.

It’s not all bad, though. The scene of Vader inside his hyperbaric chamber using the Dark Side to heal his injuries is a great concept that really gets to the heart of who Darth Vader is—powerful enough to restore himself, but still Anakin enough to feel elation and joy at the rejuvenation, which paradoxically breaks the Dark Side spell and returns him to his ruined state.

Also, while Xizor is a totally hokey villain, he is also really enjoyable as someone with Olympian levels of self-confidence who is happy to crush all opposition with a fat wad of cash and a sexy android. He fits into Star Wars well, given its origins in the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers style that inspired George Lucas. He is certainly refreshing after having Hutts as the bog-standard gangster in every other Star Wars tale.

Still, the good points of the story aren’t enough to add it to the pantheon of Legends must-reads. It is far too flawed for that.

The character of Dash Rendar, the Han Solo stand-in, was necessitated by whole Shadows of the Empire media project. He is a character who needs to be plausibly incredible at all the various skills a Star Wars hero should have because he is the player’s avatar in the game world. This makes him a great videogame protagonist, but an insufferable character in a novel.

The much vaunted Bothan spy network makes an appearance, sending a secret message to Leia secured with the almost inconceivably difficult-to-guess password: “Alderaan”. No wonder so many of them died bringing news of the second Death Star if that is all the cunning they can muster.

A further thought—towards the end of the novel there is a scene where Rogue Squadron show up, and three of them are described as being distraught or disabled, and Perry writes Wedge as totally unbothered. I guess nameless X-wing pilots don’t matter in this story. It certainly is a difference from the X-wing novels where Wedge (quite rightly) agonises over every loss to his squadron. Star Wars books can be tonally weird.

So, enjoyable despite some eye-rollingly bad moments. Not a trainwreck, but certainly not a triumph. Recommended for fans of Star Wars, as well as fans of space opera in general.

It was fun to read and tune in and hear some cool people dissect the story. Glad I decided to do this book club! Also omg the monologue of Darth Vader and Luke is what made this book so good.