Star Wars Shadow of the Sith Review

“I’ve heard a lot about Shadow of the Sith, but is it good?” I’ve seen this question a dozen times in the last weeks. This review will attempt to answer that question and help you decide if this book, written by Adam Christopher, is worth your money and time!

The Rise of Skywalker left an unusual number of questions unanswered even by Star Wars standards. With little to zero information to tie things up fan theories took over the internet and everyone had a different idea about how things ended up like that.

Whether you like the sequel trilogy or not, it can’t be denied that so many things were left up in the air. After two and a half years we’re finally getting some answers in Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith.

Shadow of the Sith is a novel written by Adam Christopher and published by Del Rey books. It was released on June 28th, 2022.

This is not an illustrated book so I’ll use images for illustrative purposes to help you visualize some scenes and characters. This review contains spoilers.

The Luke Skywalker we all know, for better or worse

Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Knight who defeated the Galactic Empire and saved the galaxy from a doomed existence. Many years have passed since the destruction of the second Death Star and Luke has built the new Jedi Temple on Ossus, a planet that many think is the place where the Jedi Order’s first temple was constructed.

Ben Solo, his nephew and one of his best students is a young, impatient Padawan who’s eager to prove his worth. A very dangerous trait when left unchecked, but Luke isn’t fully aware of this. He is a very patient and indulgent teacher but this could be one of the reasons why his attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order fails.

But honestly, how could he not fail? His task was titanic, far more complicated than facing the Galactic Empire. Building a new Jedi Order from scratch all by himself with just a few books and no one to guide him in the process?

Rebuilding the legacy of the Jedi is something that requires an incredible amount of time and effort. Resources that are required in many other places of the galaxy where chaos unleashes as the remnants of the Empire regroup in an attempt to reclaim back their power.

In my opinion, one of Luke’s biggest mistakes is to focus so much on the bigger picture that he completely misses what is happening right in front of him. Shadow of the Sith is a very good example of how this approach will cause Luke to fail not only himself but his friends on repeated occasions.

One of the things that disappointed me about this book is how little we dwell on Luke’s thoughts, he’s an important part of the story but we only see him from a third-person perspective.

Don’t get me wrong, this Luke acts as the Luke Skywalker we all love. His character traits are very well captured and his actions are coherent with his thoughts, it’s not a badly written Luke Skywalker, but it’s not an exceptional one either. This was a perfect opportunity to learn more about Luke Skywalker’s ideas and motivations, especially at this time of his life that is virtually unknown to us.

The author took the safe route with him. I understand that writing such an iconic character is a difficult task and not everyone would feel comfortable with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not underwhelming.

Miramir and Dathan, the unsung heroes

Miramir, a normal woman born in Hyperkarn, and Dathan, a genetically engineered man who is a “son” of Emperor Palpatine. His lack of connection to the Force made him useless to his father. Dathan ran away from his father’s empire, then met Miramir, and later, the couple got married.

It was when Rey was born that Palpatine regained interest, the child showed a very strong connection to the Force, making her the perfect vessel for Palpatine’s essence.

Knowing what would happen to Rey, the couple fled and decided to settle on Jakku, a desert planet where they could lay low and live peacefully working as junk traders.

This was until Palpatine sent a very determined hunter after the family. Unlike the Skywalkers, no one in this family is a great warrior or an important diplomat with connections. It is just a mother and a father, desperately trying to protect the most important thing in their lives.

Their skills, resilience, and occasional luck are the only things that allow them to overcome the direst situations. As their journey progresses, I could only think “this is it, this is when they’re caught”, but I was wrong almost every time.

Caring for a character hits differently when you already know the final outcome, especially when it’s a tragic one. Rey’s parents tried until the last moment to keep her safe, and they succeeded.

Even when death was watching them directly in the eyes, none of them hesitated, they were happy to die if that meant that Rey would be safe.

Now I can empathize more with her obsession with knowing what happened to her parents and why she was abandoned on a planet like Jakku. She never understood the situation they were in, she was only six years old. Leaving her behind was probably the most heartbreaking decision of their lives, but what ultimately saved Rey from Palpatine.

Lando’s heavy burden

Landonis Balthazar Calrissian; smuggler, gambler, businessman, and general of the Rebel Alliance. We’ve known Lando’s character for many years now, he’s a sassy, uplifting man who never misses the opportunity to crack a joke or mention how good he looks.

In The Rise of Skywalker, we got to see him again on a strange planet called Pasaana, wearing an even more strange armor, just wandering in the desert without any apparent purpose. Well, that’s certainly not the case, in fact, the reason is heartbreaking.

Lando’s signature smile hides the burden that he’s carried for years now. Kadara, his daughter, probably the person he’s loved the most, was kidnapped when she was just two years old.

He, Leia, Han, and Luke searched for her but every clue they had led to nowhere. Sadly, the universe didn’t stop and other matters needed their attention so they abandoned the search. Lando continued his quest for years, in every outpost, station, or planet he could think of, with no luck.

That’s until he finds out about a family that’s being hunted by a mysterious hunter who allegedly works for the Sith. His target? the couple’s young daughter, Rey. He doesn’t know what he wants to do to her, but the second he knows what Ochi of Bestoon is planning to do he leaves to find his old friend, Luke Skywalker.

There were a couple of occasions when I genuinely felt Lando’s anguish and desperation to help this family. Despite knowing how the mother and father would be killed in their last effort to drive away the pursuers from her child, I really wanted Lando to help them in any way that could ease the pain of failing his own daughter.

I have to admit that I shed a couple of tears when I pictured the moment Lando realized he found the bodies of Dathan and Miramir. The couple who he’s been trying so desperately to help was murdered, and the child’s location is unknown. He failed to protect his daughter and he couldn’t save the family.

These tragedies are what make or break a person, no one would blame Lando if he’d decided to give up on depression or any sort of vice. Even Luke excluded himself from the galaxy when Ben Solo destroyed his new Jedi Order.

But not Lando, instead of feeling sorry for himself he decided to establish a base on Pasaana to keep an eye on Ochi’s ship and continue the search for his lost daughter. It’s strange to feel that of all characters, Lando is the one I’ve connected with the most. Shadow of the Sith has given me a whole new perspective of him and I’ve gained a new type of admiration for Lando’s strength and determination.

Exegol, the dark side’s Holy Grail

One of my favorite elements of Star Wars has always been planets with a deep connection to the Force. There are many that we know about; Tython, Nathema, Ossus, Korriban, and Malachor to name a few.

All of them have great importance in Jedi/Sith history, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen a planet with such a connection to the dark side as Exegol. There’s very little information about the planet or its population. We know that it was once a fertile environment but life in it was devoured when the Sith established themselves there.

Before Sidious and Vader, Darth Noctyss and Darth Sanguis were able to reach the planet in a quest for immortality. The Sith Eternal, a cult of the dark side occupied it and helped Darth Sidious create an immense fleet of Star Destroyers that were equipped with planet-killing weapons.

But, what happened before is a mystery yet to be revealed. Revan, Traya, Tenebrae, Bane, Tulak Hord, or Marka Ragnos, the greatest Sith to ever live couldn’t find it. It’s even possible that they weren’t even aware of its existence. How’s a planet that is called “the hidden world of the Sith” secret from even the Sith themselves?

That is a question that can’t be answered with this book but not because the author isn’t capable of it, but because of all the gaps that are still left to fill in the sequel trilogy. I really want to know more about Exegol, but we’re probably going to have to wait several years before getting the answers we want.

Shadows of the Sith

Exegol appears to be a place so strong in the dark side of the Force that it haunts Luke Skywalker in nightmares and hallucinations. There’s a moment in the book when Luke dared to look back at the abyss, before he knew what was happening he was surrounded by nine hooded figures, all of them wielding a red lightsaber and coming at him with everything they had.

These figures weren’t Sith Lords so Luke managed to hold his ground against the nine attackers, with a little help from someone very dear to all of us. It was an unexpected thing when Anakin Skywalker’s Force ghost jumped in to save his son from the shadowy figures, even if it lasted a few seconds, the scene gave me chills and is one of my favorite moments of the book.

Kiza is a Pantoran female, a member of Acolytes of the Beyond, and one of the book’s antagonists. She wears the mask of Exim Panshard, a Sith Lord that perished centuries before the rise of the Galactic Empire. But like many other Sith, he found a way to impregnate a relic with his essence.

When Kiza wears his mask, he’s just as present as everyone else. She has become a slave to the Sith Lord, and they will do anything to earn passage to Exegol, where promises of power and immortality await.

One thing that I tend to overlook when reading a story about villains in the “Skywalker era” is that not all of them share the same goals, in fact, they usually crave each other’s power. It’s obvious that Exim Panshard was using Kiza, just as she was using his power for her own goals.

It’s all a matter of who uses who, but in the bigger picture, none of them would really fulfill their goals, Ochi of Bestoon, Kiza, and Exim Panshard. All of them were just pawns in Palpatine’s plans.

Weapons from ancient times

Sith artifacts have always been dangerous and full of secrets, if not treated with caution, they can make irreparable damage. The Muur Talisman can create an army of Rakghouls, twisted and mindless mutations that can wipe out entire civilizations in a matter of weeks. Darth Momin’s helmet can possess its host and give his consciousness a physical form.

Thankfully for Luke, none of the relics used by Kiza aren’t as dangerous as the ones mentioned above. While Exim Panshard’s mask is of the same type as Momin’s, he’s not as powerful as other sith lords.

Darth Noctyss lightsaber is such a cool weapon, there are many lightsabers with alternative forms but most of them aren’t canon anymore. A lightsaber scimitar sounds like something very intimidating, even if its properties aren’t described in the book the fact that it was introduced is good enough for me.

I really want to learn more about Darth Noctyss, being one of the few to ever reach Exegol before Palpatine makes me wonder what happened to her after sacrificing Darth Sanguis for the immortality ritual (this isn’t mentioned in the book).

The Sith Dagger that Ochi wields isn’t as powerful as a Sith Holocron or an ancient lightsaber, but it is for sure something you don’t want to mess with. A weapon that pushes its user to kill so that it can drain every last drop of blood from its victim? that’s some very dark stuff, I’m sure a whole comic series could be written about this macabre weapon. Perhaps one day we’ll learn about its origins and how many lives it destroyed.

The idea of droids being powered by kyber crystals blew my mind, I’m not sure if this concept already exists in the Star Wars canon but I love it. Perhaps the droids in this book weren’t as dangerous as I’d like, but opening the possibility is enough for me. I think the concept would fit perfectly in a Star Wars videogame!

Ochi of Bestoon

Born on Bestoon, Ochi is an assassin who has lived through important moments of galactic history. He used to hunt Jedi in the Galactic Republic era and even survived an encounter with none other than Master Windu. After the downfall of the Republic, Ochi served as a personal assassin for Emperor Palpatine.

He was tasked with killing Darth Vader, but after a weird succession of events he ended up serving the Sith Lord. This is when Ochi of Bestoon was taken to Exegol, where he witnessed things that logic could not explain.

As I read through each page, Ochi’s desperation to find a way to Exegol became more evident. Despite serving both Sidious and Vader and actually seeing the horrors of Exegol, he still had the idea that going there would allow him to be “whole” again.

I don’t know if it’s because of his age or his continuous mental deterioration caused by the dagger, but reading about how many resources he needed to find Rey’s family made me think about how incompetent he has become as the years passed. It’s hard to acknowledge him as the same character that we met in the Darth Vader comics.

The Sith Dagger Ochi possesses is always whispering in his ear, inciting him to commit the next murder to feed its bloodlust. A Sith relic, despair, and a non-existent moral compass are the perfect combination for any puppet of the dark side. He may have been a great hunter in the past, but his own delusions of grandeur would be Ochi’s downfall.

Tying in with the sequel trilogy

The sequel trilogy is full of questions and moments that made little sense when the movies were released. Due to the number of events that happened between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens I’ve always thought that a trilogy to connect these events would have made it easier for fans to accept what happened.

That idea might be ridiculous and I’m totally aware of it, but the amount of time and projects that are going to take to connect everything is just as ridiculous. Shadow of the Sith is the first step in this process. The story of Rey’s parents, Lando’s quest to find his daughter, and Luke’s acknowledgment of Exegol prior to The Rise of Skywalker are essential to have a better understanding of the sequel trilogy.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Star Wars book if it didn’t leave us with more questions than answers. I can’t wait to learn more about Exegol and the storylines of more characters involved. Maybe we’ll be able to explore it in a future game or perhaps a live series, who knows?

Final Verdict for Star Wars Shadow of the Sith

Shadow of the Sith is a first step in the right direction to answer some of the questions that the last trilogy left. It has everything; action scenes worthy of being in an animated/live series, drama, interesting characters, it dwells into the lore and it might even make you cry if you’re a sensitive person like myself.

However, there are some things that felt underwhelming, to say the least. First of all, the number of details described per scene was too much for me, I understand that some important moments require a powerful description to have the desired impact, but describing something like a cave or color with so many words felt like it was a little too much.

Sometimes I had the impression that Luke and Ochi of Bestoon were secondary characters. It’s so weird to say that about Luke considering all the things that happened to him, I probably feel this way because of what I mentioned earlier about watching him from a third-person perspective.

I understand that maybe it wasn’t the author’s call to write him that way, we all know how restrictive Disney can be about some things, but it still bothers me a little bit.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved Lando, Dathan, and Miramir. I was so invested in their story despite knowing how it ended, that speaks a lot about how well-written their parts are. I really want to learn more about Rey’s parents and also the destiny of Kadara Calrissian.

I honestly thought that Shadow of the Sith was going to be a “filler book” and I’m so happy to be wrong. It answers some of the questions I had when watching The Rise of Skywalker in a very convincing way while also opening the possibility for future storylines.

Like every other Star Wars book, there’s the option to listen to the audiobook. I really recommend that you give this one a try. William DeMeritt does an exceptional job narrating the story, his Lando impression is amazing! It feels like hearing Billy Dee Williams himself, adding Star Wars music and sound effects to the formula gives us an incredibly fun and complete experience.

This book rises the bar for future Star Wars books and I couldn’t be happier about that. There are things that I clearly don’t like about it but that makes me enjoy the things that I appreciated about it a lot more.

Adam Christopher made a really good job and I can’t wait to see what the future has prepared for him and Star Wars. This book is definitely a must-read for any Star Wars fan that wants to learn more about the background of the sequel trilogy. I really hope we get an entire book about how Luke meets Ahsoka Tano, if Adam Christopher could write it would be the cherry on top.

What do you think about Shadow of the Sith? Do you agree or disagree with my opinions? What stories do you want to learn about?