As both a budding author and also someone that has spoken to his fair share of writers, one of the most common comments you hear when it comes to writing an effective story is that the main character must be capable of creating empathy with the audience; they don’t necessarily have to be good, or nice, or even sympathetic, but the reader should, in some way, feel that their actions and reactions are justified (or at least appropriate in the circumstances).
This is why, I think, so many otherwise good stories about “evil” main characters fail; when we think about bad guys, we often cannot resist thinking about them as the moustache-twirling, beret-wearing, two-dimensional types seen in Saturday morning cartoons. Real evil, however, usually stems from real people with goals beyond that of kidnapping the princess and laughing maniacally, and it is this kind of character, who believes that every step down the wrong path is right or justified, that can be more interesting than any other.
Why the long winded intro to a book review? Because Darth Bane, the titular character of this novel, is most definitely a bad guy walking down the wrong path. The good news is that author Drew Karpyshyn (who I interviewed recently for The Escapist) has captured the humanity of Bane even as he proceeds to do his best to lose it, and every step along his sad, sordid path is one that any one of us could have made in similar circumstances.
Make no mistakes; Path of Destruction follows a similar path to the other more recent Star Wars novels by being quite a dark, bleak story. In fact, it almost plays out like a Dark Side opposite to the basic story of Luke Skywalker; boy grows up in crummy place, boy gets off planet, boy joins galactic struggle, and boy learns the ways of the Force. The difference is in the detail, and in this case we have child abuse, a fatal brawl, a brutal war, and a Sith academy that epitomises everything wrong with the Dark Side. and in this regard Karpyshyn excels in weaving existing Star Wars lore (including that established within the Knights of the Old Republic games, particularly the tale Darth Revan) together to create a believable origin story for one of the most important ‘historical’ characters in Star Wars.
Bane, for those who are unaware, was the Sith Lord who created the ‘Rule of Two’ (as mentioned by Yoda): a Master embody power, and an Apprentice to crave it. Path of Destruction plots the rise of Bane in the Republic a thousand years before The Phantom Menace, and is an interesting look into Sith culture and what it is to willingly embrace the Dark Side of the Force. This kind of ‘historical’, canon establishing story is very dependent upon the author’s ability to weave together all the disparate lore into a cohesive whole, and in this regard Karpyshyn delivers, even referencing various events and characters from the Knights of the Old Republic game (which he was the lead writer on) in a successful effort to create a deep, entertaining story about a very influential and important character
With this novel (and it’s sequel Rule of Two, which I am currently in the process of reading), Drew Karpyshyn has succeeded in creating a novel that manages to tell the almost heartbreaking story of an interesting, compelling, and ultimately fatally flawed (not in his opinion I would imagine!) character who manages to have just enough inner conflict and brief flashes of goodness that the reader keeps hoping he might somehow be redeemed, even though we all know, deep down, he is going to become about as bad as they come.
At the end of the day, this is exactly what we really want; don’t we all occasionally wish we could just lash out, Force Lightning flying and crimson-bladed lightsabre swinging, and consequences be damned?
I rate Star Wars: Darth Bane – Path of Destruction: 4.5/5 (A very well crafted take on the traditionally heroic youth-coming-of-age story; instead, the man in question gives into his urges, revels in his Dark Side, and in the process a terrifically compelling and somewhat disturbing tale is told that no Star Wars, or indeed Science Fiction fan, should miss.
- Tim Sweeney
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