Customer Reviews

Death Star (Star Wars)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

For the thirty years of Star Wars so far, the Death Star has stood as one of the single most iconic elements of the entire story. It burst upon screens in 1977 early in Star Wars, as an rapid camera cut leapt away from Tatooine to this gigantic menacing space station. We knew it was recently completed but little more. What was the conception of such a monstrous project? Who built it and how long did it take? Was the increasingly-insignificant Senate aware of the Emperor's plans for it? Why did someone with the evident powers of Darth Vader appear to bow to the commands of Grand Moff Tarkin? These questions and more have been bandied about in fans' minds for decades, some being touched upon in the Expanded Universe but most never directly addressed.

Adding to the general interest in the Death Star were its two appearances in the prequel trilogy. Attack of the Clones gives us a glimpse of the initial Death Star plans as Count Dooku takes them from Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser for "safekeeping." In Revenge of the Sith, we see the skeletal frame of what appears to be the real Death Star in progress as the newly-armored Darth Vader and his master Darth Sidious gaze upon it contemplatively. This shot raised new questions for me, chief among them being how did it take an apparent eighteen years to get from this skeletal frame to the finished station?

Based on the level of interest and the many questions surrounding the Death Star, the opportunity was ripe for a comprehensive look at the whole project from start to finish, whether in book, cartoon, videogame, or some other form. I had high hopes for Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's novel Death Star to take that opportunity and run with it. However, after having read it, I'll say the opportunity is still there. Death Star is a mixture of high and low points with some clear strengths and weaknesses, but inarguably it does not answer the many outstanding questions out there.

For starters, the book is set in a surprisingly narrow window of time. It only covers the months right before completion of the station and does not attempt to fill in the intervening time. Perhaps Lucasfilm instructed the authors to stick to this timeframe due to a potential conflict-of-interest with the forthcoming Star Wars live-action television series which will cover events in the years between Episodes III and IV. More likely is that Reaves and Perry wanted time in the book to introduce sub-plots and new characters of their own, which didn't leave much room for a story that jumps through decades of Death Star development.

There are a great many new characters and stories to keep up with in this book. Making this rather challenging is the rapid-fire shifting from scene to scene, sometimes more often than once a page. The movies sometimes move at this pace but it's disorienting in a novel. Midway through the novel, I felt unsettled as I kept wanting it to slow down and let me get to know the characters and settings a little better.

A very strong and memorable storyline from this book is that of Tenn Graneet, the Imperial Navy Master Chief Gunnery Officer who ends up being the one to pull the trigger on Alderaan. I'd never given much thought to how that would feel, since the films focus on the leaders giving the orders, but it's well done here. I love how they even work in the odd double "Standing By" at Yavin IV from the film - a nice touch for those of us who have seen the movies MANY times.

It was interesting to see Doctor Divini return from the authors' Clone Wars-era Medstar Duology and follow his continuing storyline. The inclusion of Admiral Daala seemed a bit superfluous - perhaps this was because her scenes with Grand Moff Tarkin were a little on the grotesque side. The authors do a solid job with Tarkin himself and Darth Vader, and I found myself frequently wishing there were more scenes with them. Most of the other characters were adequate but I'm not likely to remember them very long.

Reaves and Perry did a great job of altering my concept of the station itself. I had never pictured recreational areas, shopping and cantinas as being part of the Imperial facility, but now that they've brought that in it makes perfect sense. Military personnel should always have some place to blow off steam and the requisite civilians to help with those services. There were some scenes in the cantina that felt more Love Boat than Star Wars, but I'm glad they didn't set the whole novel in the hangars, conference rooms, and detention areas we see in the films, as that wouldn't have made much sense.

The climax of the novel aligns with the events of Episode IV. Scenes feature dialogue taken verbatim from the movie, although many new events with the new characters are woven around them. This did not bother me at all - the movies are so familiar that I would find it jarring at this point to attempt a restating of their dialogue. There's plenty of excitement despite knowing the fate of the station beforehand and the authors do a great job with presenting the Imperial perspective on the attack by the small groups of Rebel snubfighters.

Death Star is a reasonably entertaining read but I am still hopeful to someday learn more about the history of this icon of the saga.

This exciting book describes the development of the Empire's super weapon, from the initial construction phases to its untimely demise at the hands of the Rebel Alliance.

Grand Moff Tarkin has been placed in charge of overseeing the construction of this new weapon of terror by the Emperor himself. Construction has proceeded fairly well, but there have been several incidents of sabotage which has curtailed the progress. So, in an effort to get things back on track, the Emperor has dispatched Darth Vader to get construction back on schedule. Vader and Tarkin have a somewhat icy relationship; Tarkin has ultimate faith in his new super weapon, while Vader believes that the power of the Force is superior to any weapon.

The Death Star is an awesome weapon. Possessing a super laser the size no one has ever seen before, this menacing metal moon can destroy an entire planet with a single shot.

On board the battle station are several unique and skillful beings, including Atour Riten, chief librarian; Celot Ratua Dil, convicted smuggler, Uli Divini, Imperial surgeon; Memah Roothes, cantina owner; Nova Stihl, Imperial Marines sergeant; Rodo, cantina bouncer; and Teela Kaarz, architect and convict. Officers aboard the Death Star include Conan Antonio Motti, Imperial Navy Admiral; Dalla, Imperial Navy Admiral; Tenn Graneet, Imperial Navy master chief gunnery officer; and Villian Dance, TIE fighter pilot.

Throughout the course of the book, these lives will intersect in a way that will determine the ultimate fate of the battle station. After the prison planet Despayre and the peaceful Alderaan have been destroyed by the Death Star, several aboard her, including Dance, Stihl, Riten, Uli, Memah, Rodo, and Teela have become disenchanted with the Empire. They decide to try to escape and defect to the Rebel side. However, they still have Darth Vader and the other Imperials to deal with. Will these freedom seekers survive, or will Vader stop them first?

I found this to be an exciting book. Everyone who has seen the Star Wars movies knows the final fate of the Death Star, but I really enjoyed reading about the construction phases and the acts of sabotage. I thought the character development was very good, and I felt like I got to really know the characters. It was fun reading the actual lines from the movie, too.

I recommend this book very highly. The story is good and the action is fast-paced. I've read several other Star Wars novels, and I rate this one as one of my favorites. May the Force be with you.

As most people who are into Star Wars I was excited at the idea of learning how the Death Star was constructed and the people who built it, but there were too many characters to follow at times. I was constantly trying to remember who ran the bar, who was the architect, the pilot, the martial arts guy, and the libararian, oh and don't forget the bouncer and the escaped prisoner. I gave up on who was dating who.

What I did find interesting and would really like to read more about is Grand Moff Tarkin and his career. This book just wetted my appetite on this character. I agree with some reviewers that the portrayal of Admiral Daala was pretty weak. They tried repeatedily to stress the idea that she didn't sleep her way to Admiral. Personally I kept thinking "thou protest too much."

The last few chapters were intersting with direct quotes from the movie. I like the tie-ins. One thing I feel that they left hanging was the storyline about Darth Vader being interested in the Doctor wanting to know about Midi-Cholirians.

In general a good idea, not one of the best books, but not one of the worst.

So did anybody who watched the original Star Wars movie wonder about the origin of that massive battle station, the Death Star? Or were you intrigued by the image at the end of Episode III, with it slowly being built in the distance as the new Darth Vader, the Emperor, and Tarkin look out the window? Michael Reaves and Steve Perry have written Death Star, the story of not only the creation of the station, but also the Imperial story behind the first movie, all the way up to the station's destruction. Unfortunately, what they've forgotten to give us are interesting characters to wrap the story around.

While the concept of Death Star is extremely interesting, I have a lot of problems with the execution. Reaves and Perry give us all of these new characters to get involved with, anchoring them with the viewpoints of Tarkin and Vader as well, but they fail to make the new characters very interesting. Of course, they all pair up in various romantic entanglements, and of course none of the Imperial officers we see like what Tarkin and Vader are doing once the Death Star actually starts being used. It would have been nice to have a main character (perhaps not a viewpoint character, but one who is in the same circle as the ones we do get) who actually supports the bad guys. It would have made for some interesting conflict among them. But no, instead we're given a couple of normal military officers who quickly turn once they see the true evil of the Empire.

Because of the overwhelming disinterest I had with the main characters, the building of the station actually is a chore to read. This quickly goes away when Tarkin and Vader are "on screen," as we see just how determined Tarkin is to get the Death Star going. We see his ruthlessness, but we also see a (somewhat, anyway) softer side in his affair with Admiral Daala (I'll give those of you who have a twinge at the thought of Tarkin actually having sex a moment to collect yourselves, but take heart that at least it's all only implied in the book). Vader is sent by the Emperor to help the investigation into a couple of rebel attempts to sabotage the station before it's completed, which sort of explains why he's almost acting as Tarkin's lackey in the first movie. In Death Star, he's willing to let Tarkin's ego take apparent control, but he's ready to step in if necessary.

The book gets most intriguing when the first movie starts. It's almost like getting a behind the scenes look at the events of the movie as we see the thought processes from the Imperial side. It's all very interesting, and these sequences are also the only times the original characters become even remotely interesting as well. The characters start reacting to the events that we've already seen, and realizing what they may have gotten themselves into. The writing of the book also gets a lot more interesting here, as it becomes a bit more action than the more boring set-up at the beginning of the book. Thankfully, none of this continuity gets in the way of the story. I appreciated that.

This book would have been a standout if Reaves and Perry had made their original characters interesting. Instead, it takes the action in Death Star, at least halfway through the book, to make this reader become engaged with them at all. Thus, we get an interesting idea, some cool intertwining with one of the movies, and some cool Vader/Tarkin scenes to tide us over until we get to more boring scenes. This makes an excellent book thoroughly average instead. You won't regret reading it, but it could have been so much better.

David Roy

I joined the Star Wars novels clan about two years ago and have read around 20 such publications since that time. I really enjoy the "Legacy of the Force Series", which I have followed since its inception. My prior experience with novels written in the context of the so-called "classic era" (Episodes IV-VI) is that the lack of involevement of the main players (Luke, Han, etc.) made for somewhat boring subplots. This book managed to create very likable characters with very little intervention of some of the Lucas original cast and, even then, most of these interventions are a literal reading of the lines in the original "A New Hope" movie script. A refreshing read, which I highly recommend.

Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry is not a Star Wars novel that just happens to be written by Reaves and Perry -- it's a novel by Reaves and Perry that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. That's an important distinction, and may explain why fans of Perry and Reaves collaborations (or of Steve Perry and Michael Reaves individually) will enjoy the novel immensely, but Star Wars fanboys may be dissatisfied. The book is, in fact, an absorbing character study of a handful of ordinary people stationed on the Death Star just prior to its completion -- a TIE fighter pilot, a conscripted architect, a battle-weary surgeon (who is a character from a previous work by the same authors), a storm trooper who is also a martial arts expert, etcetera. We watch as each of these men and women (and several others) come to terms with their rationalizations for serving the Empire. As the Death Star begins taking millions of lives, each of these characters is forced to make a decision about the future.

The Death Star is a setting, not a central plot point, and thus it is dealt with only in passing (though we do get a better picture of what such a large station would actually contain). There are a few interesting passages elaborating on the relationship between Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin, which is not quite as two-dimensional or as clear-cut in terms of authority as it might appear in Episode IV.

Of particular interest to me was the subplot involving the chief gunner aboard the Death Star, a loyal Imperial trooper who, eager to fire "the big gun," realizes to his horror that he has become a killer of planets after the Death Star goes operational. A few of the other characters will seem eerily familiar -- particularly a cantina owner and her loyal security man -- to anyone who has read Steve Perry's work (starting with The Man Who Never Missed). The prison-planet setting in which the novel opens is particularly familiar ground for Reaves and Perry, who collaborated on the excellent The Omega Cage (which is about a prison break from a bleak, futuristic penitentiary on an inhospitable world).

Towards the end of the novel, scenes are taken verbatim from Episode IV and woven into the tales of the various characters, in some cases amplified slightly as we hear the thoughts of those involved. Given that any fan of Star Wars knows how the novel must end, it's no mean trick that the reader will still be curious to see how this novel ends.

I enjoyed Death Star immensely and would recommend it to both those who enjoy work in this genre, but to fans of Reaves and Perry especially.

I found Death Star enjoyable, but there was one short-coming. At the beginning, there were so many new characters not from the movie that it was sometimes difficult to remember who was who. The book came together nicely, though, into a good story that parallels a New Hope.

The development of characters who were introduced, but never expounded in A New Hope was refreshing. Putting in dialog direct from the movie helped me see exactly who each of those people were.

I applaud the authors for not putting us through a rehash of A New Hope. Death Star could easily have become a "See how much we know about the movie" type of book. (Oh, and I LOVE that they gave reasoning to Obi-Wan Kenobi's calling Darth Vader "Darth" instead of Anakin or Vader.)

I really liked the first 250 pages. Interesting read about the process of constructing the Death Star, from the technical details to the daily nuances. Vader and Tarkin were interesting characters, too.

Then around page 250 the story reached events that happen right at the beginning of the movie "Episode IV: A New Hope", and from then on any scenes with Vader or Tarkin in them are simply word-for-word re-enactments of their scenes from the movie, and themselves as characters lose their spark.

I read Star Wars novels to experience something different from what I've already seen in the movies. I would've liked this book much better if it had ended with the Death Star still under construction, or ended with the destruction of Alderaan. But after the events from the movie intertwined, I lost interest pretty quick.

The blurb on the back cover promised "the untold story of the ultimate weapon". I was expecting something that traced the Death Star's history from initial concept to end product. Instead, the authors limited the story's scope to the final construction phase.

The book follows several characters: an archivist, a bartender, a bouncer, a doctor (who previously introduced in the Clore War era MedStar books), an escaped convict, a guard, a gunnery officer, a TIE pilot and of course Grand Moff Tarken and Darth Vader. With such a large cast, the storyline is occasionally unfocused and there isn't a lot of in-depth character development.

The first part of the book moves at a slow, steady pace, but it didn't really fully engage me. The second part, however, had me riveted as the familiar events of A New Hope unfolded from totally different points of view. The moral dilemma of the gunnery office is particularly well done but ultimately, like most Star Wars books, this one shied away from a truly gut-wrenching ending.

Bottom line although it wasn't exactly what I expected, I found this to be an enjoyable read.

A well written tale about the intersecting lives of people that live, work, and play aboard the Galaxy's most devastating weapon. There are some that gave this story one and two stars because, ick!, there's a couple of love stories intertwined amongst the TIE fighter battles and appearances of the Dark Lord of the Sith. But, that's sort of the whole point of the story. It's not as much to focus on all the whiz bang stuff as it is to look at the lives of people as they relate to what's going on in Episode IV. The book is a bit short and doesn't flesh out the characters as much as you'd like it to, but in the end you're hoping they move on to a better place, which is anywhere but the giant moon-like structure about to go 'BOOM'.

I liked how the lines from "A New Hope" were woven into the fabric of the story. Ever wonder what happened to Leia after she was interrogated by that nasty black droid with the syringe? How did the gunner that pulled the trigger on the monster laser feel after he saw Alderaan blown to smithereens because of HIS action?

Worth reading, but the book comes out in paperback soon. If you're short on the cash flow, you can wait until then. Not a masterpiece of Star Wars fiction, but certainly an entertaining story worth the time it takes to read it.