Cheap Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Book) (STEVE PERRY) Price

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Customer Reviews of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

One of my favorite Star Wars books
I've read other Star Wars Expanded Universe books (like the Thrawn Trilogy) and been less than impressed. Some of them are [unsatisfactory] (like the Jedi Academy trilogy and The Crystal Star) and some are good (like Dark Force Rising). That being said, I wasn't sure what to expect of Shadows. It had a huge multimedia push (toys, books, games) which makes you wonder about the quality of the source material. So I picked it up feeling somewhat jaded.

All this time later, I've read Shadows at least three times and each time I like it even more.

The book takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. While Luke works on his Jedi skills (and building a new lightsaber) on Tatooine, Prince Xizor plots to destroy Darth Vader's influence over the Emperor by having Luke killed. Meanwhile, Leia and Lando attempt to recover Han Solo's carbonite-frozen body from Boba Fett with the help of Dash Rendar, a smuggler like Solo.

The main reason why I like Shadows so much is because of Prince Xizor: he has much more depth to him as a villian than Darth Vader does. At times I liked the character so much I wanted his plans to actually succeed; unfortunately, if they did, most of Return of the Jedi wouldn't have been able to happen. Xizor's character I found to be one of the most interesting I'd ever encountered in a novel. Perry developed him to be much more than a simple villain with a simple plan; he's infitely more realistic a character than Perry's other creation, Dash Rendar (to whom I thought was a low-rent Han Solo clone). The only real fault with the novel is that it doesn't do much with Boba Fett, but, then again, I've never got the appeal behind Boba so it wasn't that much of a fault.

Shadows of the Empire might be my favorite of the Expanded Universe novels, and Prince Xizor might be one of my favorite Star Wars characters. So, it's pretty obvious that I liked this book a lot and would highly recommend it. It's vastly superior to the other Star Wars novels out there.

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Recaptures the spirit of the original movie.
Shadows was probably the most-hyped book in the whole Star Wars line, which I consider unfortunate. Many people went in believing all the spins, and came out disappointed. What they missed was that it's a very solid action novel which is very much in the same spirit that Lucas created. All of our heroes are here, except for Han Solo, who is encased in carbonite and en transit to Jabba's Palace. Much of the story revolves around their unsuccessful attempts to rescue him. These adventures also resolve many of the questions raised by Return of the Jedi, such as where Leia got her Boussh disguise, or exactly how those Bothans died getting the Death Star information. The other main plotline involves a previously unseen foe, Prince Xizor (she-zor), who leads the criminal empire called the Black Sun. Much of the book is concerned with the power struggles between him, the Emperor, and Darth Vader within the Imperial Capital of Coruscant. It is these political games which were the most facina

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Pretty good
This was my first venture into Star Wars books, and being a longtime fan of the movies I decided to read some of the books.

The plot was decent, and I enjoyed reading what happened in between Empire and Jedi(and it answered some questions about things in Jedi).

Well, I dont think I can say anything positive that hasnt been said before about this book, so I'll explain why I gave it 4 starts instead of 5.

There are parts in the book that borrow lines from the movies, and its hard to picture Xizor there with the Emperor. Vader also seems weak in parts of this book, and like he's Xivors puppet(which ruined my vision of Vader as being powerful and only bowing to the Emperors will).

After reading this book, I will most certainly continue to read Star Wars books.