Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno





The Doctor Who fever that was sweeping my condo has abated, replaced by Star Wars fever. In anticipation of the upcoming Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith I decided to read a few of the Clone Wars novels, set in the period between the second and third movies. As it turns out the order I’ve picked them up is exactly reverse chronological.

Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil kicks off with Obi-Wan and Anakin participating in an assault on Nute Gunray’s fortress on one of the Trade Federation’s main planets. Gunray’s forces evacuate in such a hurry that they leave behind the mobile chair/holo-communicator we saw Nute use to contact Darth Sidious in Episode I. This chair is a highly unique piece of work, and the bulk of the book is Obi-Wan and Anakin’s adventures as they track down who built it and how it got into Gunray’s possession. The trail leads Mace Windu to believe Sidious is hiding on Coruscant. As the Jedi Master closes in on the identity of the Sith Lord, Sidious orders General Grievous, commander of the Separatist armies, to launch an assault on Coruscant itself. The objective of the attack: Kidnap Chancellor Palpatine! Grievous succeeds, and the book ends with Palpatine a prisoner on board the Separatist flag ship in orbit around Coruscant. This brings us to the moment that Episode III begins.

No one is going to mistake Labyrinth of Evil for literature, but it’s a fun prequel to the upcoming… um, prequel. Besides moving all the characters into the places they need to be, James Luceno takes the opportunity fill in some interesting backstory. We find out where the cyborg General Grievous came from, and even get a rare tidbit about Palpatine’s history. (His Sith master was Darth Plagueis.) Luceno also tries to explain some parts of Sidious’ plots that have been left unexplained. For example, who really ordered the clone army and why was it kept secret? Luceno’s answer directly contradicts the dialogue in Episode II. That surprised me, because usually Lucasfilm usually keeps pretty good track of that sort of thing, and Luceno, as one half of the pseudonymous Jack McKinney that wrote the Robotech novels, knows a thing or two about papering over continuity problems.

While I’m on that subject, there’s another odd bit of discontinuity. All the other Clone War novels drive home the fact that the Republic is losing to the Separatists, badly. In Labyrinth the Republic is winning, and has pushed the Separatists back to the Outer Rim of the galaxy. There is supposed to be three month gap between this book and the previous one, but that hardly seems like enough time to completely reverse the course of the war. Moreover the opening crawl of Episode III (as released by Lucasfilm) stresses that the Republic is losing again. I wonder if the opening crawl has been changed, or if Luceno based his book on an out of date plot outline.

Coming up next: Review a Yoda novel, I do.

Posted: Wed - May 18, 2005 at      

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