When I first saw this book at the store, I was beyond excited to read it. I knew right away it would be filled with awesome backstory from the prequels and I wasn’t disappointed. The writing was wonderful. It sucked you in with it’s eery tone and deep thoughts. There were so many interesting revelations that gave some new meaning to a few of the elements from the prequels. For example, it goes into a little more detail of midi-chlorians and what they are. In fact, it even goes into quite a lot of detail about what Darth Plagueis learns about the prolonging life through dark side which ironically, his apprentice doesn’t learn. One delightful surprise was seeing Palpatine as a teen. And his story wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. In fact, it’s the backstory that I thought Anakin had until the prequels came out. I loved that we also get to see a lot of familiar characters show up in unexpected ways.It was also very fascinating to read about Sith training and compare it to Jedi training. Sometimes the dark side in the Sith training was very subtle. Sometimes the dark side was manipulative. And sometimes the dark side was violent and disturbing. The biggest contrast I saw in Sith training was the complete lack of trust and faith that is the standard for Jedi training.The plot towards the end got a little confusing since I couldn’t keep track of who was killing who and who was getting revenge on who for what reason any more. I suppose it wasn’t terribly important, but I felt left out from what was going on for a while.Overall, it was one of those deep books that made me think – especially about the nature of evil. The characters, new and old, were well-rounded and interesting. The plot and the rich backstory for the Star Wars prequels had me loving this book.This book is also reviewed on my blog Books: A true story
