Customer Reviews

Rebel Agent: Dark Forces (Star Wars Dark Forces)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Soldier for the Empire is a rather odd graphic novel. It combines a short book with illustrations that vary from strong to below average. It expands on the Dark Forces series of video games, and follows Kyle Katarn from his days as an Imperial agent to becoming one of the most trusted agents of the Alliance, to his days as a Jedi Knight.

The book had its moments, and most of the illustrations did the games, and the Star Wars universe credit. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the story (the sequence on the asteroid was a bit questionable so far as realism goes), and the drawings sometimes referred to the wrong pages. The book is better than its sequel, Rebel Agent, but comes up short when taking on the finale to the series, Jedi Knight. Buy that one instead, it isn't hard to figure out what's going on, particularly if you have played the game.

I really enjoyed this book AND the illustrations. These beautiful paintings are really imaginative. It is an exciting adventure with new characters and some really amazing images. It made me want to know more and more about Kyle Katarn and the other characters they introduced. Although I don't get into the computer games, if they are anything like the images in the book, I bet they're really cool looking. I'm looking forward to reading the other books in THE DARK FORCES series while I wait for the new film.

"Soldier for the Empire" is an entertaining and fun Star Wars story on its own, but it's really geared toward those who are already fans of the "Dark Forces" computer game. While I enjoyed this book, I felt that the (often odd) illustrations hampered my experience as a reader. The book would have been better served using the artwork as chapter breaks, rather than having it so often disrupt your own mental picture of the story. Also, and more purely from a continuity point of view, "Soldier for the Empire" takes some liberties with established Star Wars characters, which may be annoying to those readers who are fans of the "Dark Forces" games and the Star Wars universe in general.

All in all, "Soldier for the Empire" is an entertaining piece of Star Wars fiction, but it is not particularly well-written or especially well-illustrated.

I had this book for a year before I actually read it. Since I primarily bought it for the great, poster quality, painted, full page illustrations it didn't matter. Besides I was under the impression that it was a "juvenile", a kid's book. Yeah, right, this is about as much a juvenile as is Heilein's _Starship Troopers_. There are some very gritty combat scenes here- and very well developed characters of depth. This is amazing in a novella of less than 120 pages (after you subtract the illustration pages.) There are hack writers out there that would have told this same story in 300 or 400, or more, pages, but Dietz does it in less than 120 without ommitting any detail, atmosphere, or continuity. That's the mark of a very skilled writer. Combined with the cover quality illustrations this book is practically a cinema quality experience all by itself. Moreover, I had not read the first two books of the trilogy, nor played the games, yet the book held together on its own.
Another thing, for a book that is so good on the combat and technical atmosphere, the metaphysics are also very satisfying. The tale of Lord Hoth and the Army of Light is truly worthy of the best of the Star Wars mythos. Indeed, it could almost be a grand finale in itself.
As a measure of how "in" to this I got, I finally ordered that universal remote shaped like a light saber for the TV. Hey, I needed a new remote anyway....

This book continues the adventures of Kyle Katarn, a young man who is training to become a Jedi. It is by far the best of the trilogy, which began with Soldier for the Empire. The novella is generally pretty good, connecting chapters (levels in the game) pretty well, and developing on Jan and Kyle properly. The plot is not too bad, and the illustrations are great. The drawings alone make this the best of the series, but the plot thickens as a bonus. Still, the novella fails to improve on some of the other books failings. The long and drawn out lightsaber battles in the movies and the game are shortened to just a few paragraphs in length, if that. Maw's duel with the young Kyle lasted no more than three sentences, and Selonia somehow manages to lose a battle she clearly has the upper hand in. While not quite as dissappointing (or as humorous) as Gorc's demise in Rebel Agent, the battles are still far too short for their own good, and a character who ends up dying early is developed almost as fully as Jan and Kyle are. Still, this is probably the best of the series, and a fine ending the trilogy. If you don't have the other two, buy this one first to see if this is the kind of book you want. It won't be very hard to catch on to what happened in the others, and the money you save if you don't like it will be worth it.

The illustrations and writing style, as in the first two, are excellent. I just have one question about this: why is it so relatively easy for Kyle Katarn to defeat Jerec? I mean, Jerec has a lot of the Valley's power here! It took thousands upon thousands of Jedi to defeat Exar Kun, and the combined Force power of at least 100,000 Jedi - good and evil - are trapped in the Valley of the Jedi! Yet it took only one Jedi's Wall of Light - Kyle's - to defeat Jerec! How does that work? Is Kyle's own power increased temporarily by using the part of the Valley power that Jerec hadn't taken yet? That seems the most probably thing, but I wish Dietz had specified. Oh, well. It's a masterpiece all the same. And one more thing: the "visions of the past" that Kyle receives can be confusing at times, but are really nifty!

Great book, actually, a great trilogy, if you get the hardcover editions they also make a great display for any respectable collection. The writing is down to earth, yet descriptive and complete, leaves you wanting to know more, especially great is the step by step narration Dietz makes of the first Dark Forces level. The illustrations are great, but i found a couple of errors in this book: Acording to JK game, Kyle doesn't get his lightsaber until level three of the game, this book refers to Dark Forces, so why is he painted with a saber in the cover and other 2 illustrations? Also, when he meets Jan, the description tells us he's wearing a Stortrooper armor, yet in the drawing he's not...great book, nevertheless...

At first, when I knew this book and its two companions were based off of video games, I was a bit cautious to read them. I received Soldier for the Empire as a gift on my birthday and immediately began reading it that night. I was pleasantly surprised to find a deeper plot than the game and fully developed characters that seemed almost alive as I read about them. I reccommend this book and the other two, do not let a video game title fool you. -Jesse Hutchinson

soldier for the empire (SFTE) is an awsome read and it fits the storyline of dark forces and jediknight perfectly, the authors are excelent Starwars writers and I have a collection of over 60 Starwars books, thats quite a feat. I liked this book because it has some excelent action and, its about my favorite computer games. I hove found only one fault in the book and that is that the oficer who thrusts Morgan Karatan's head on a stick is incorectly named.

Overall this was a well writen book. Good characters, exellent story and good writing. My only disapointment with the book is that it containes certain discrepencies with the story overview from the game. Such as the cercumstaces of Kyle and Jan's meeting and his "conversion" to the Alliance. However the author had a good grasp of the storyline and characters and worked the game into the book quite well. If you loved the game like I did you'll love the book.