Paul S. Kemp was given a straightforward brief: the Emperor and Darth Vader, in the field, together, in danger. Lords of the Sith delivers that brief with real enthusiasm and does very little else, and how much you enjoy it depends entirely on whether that sounds like a full evening.
The premise
The Free Ryloth movement, led by Cham Syndulla, downs the Emperor’s ship over Ryloth. The two most powerful men in the galaxy are stranded in hostile terrain with a guerrilla army hunting them. Everyone involved understands that the insurgents are not going to win; the interest is in watching the cost be paid.
The action is genuinely good
Kemp writes combat better than most people working this shelf. The set pieces are physical, legible and unusually brutal — Vader on foot in a jungle is a horror sequence, and the book knows it. There is a sustained sequence of the pair fighting through Ryloth’s wildlife and terrain that is the best pure action writing in the canon novel line.
Cham and Isval
The Twi’lek resistance is where the novel tries to be about something. Cham Syndulla wants a free Ryloth and is prepared to trade lives for it arithmetically; Isval, a former slave, wants the Empire to hurt and is honest about the difference. Their argument — liberation versus revenge — is a real one and Kemp gives it enough room to matter. Isval is the best character in the book by a distance.
Vader and Palpatine
Less successful. The interior access to Vader produces some effective material about the Anakin he is still suppressing, but Palpatine is written as a man permanently delighted by his own cruelty, and after two hundred pages of relish he stops being frightening. The relationship is asserted rather than explored.
Moff Mors
Delian Mors, an Imperial governor who is competent, indolent, grieving and gay, was the first openly LGBT character in the current canon and remains one of the more interesting minor Imperials — largely because her arc is about professional negligence rather than about her identity.
Who should read it
Read it when you want a fast, violent, well-choreographed Star Wars novel and nothing more demanding. It is the least essential of the early canon books, and it is also the one most likely to be finished in two sittings.
