On the run from vengeful Republic forces, Dessel, a cortosis miner, vanishes into the ranks of the Sith army and ships out to join the bloody war against the Republic and its Jedi champions. There, Dessel’s brutality, cunning, and exceptional command of the Force swiftly win him renown as a warrior. But in the eyes of his watchful masters, a far greater destiny awaits him.
As an acolyte in the Sith academy, studying the secrets and skills of the dark side, Dessel embraces his new identity: Bane. However the true test is yet to come. In order to gain acceptance into the Brotherhood of Darkness, he must defy the most sacred traditions and reject all he has been taught. It is a trial by fire in which he must surrender fully to the dark side — and forge from the ashes a new era of absolute power.
When starting Path of Destruction I expected it to be a very dark novel. Having only read the Corelian Trilogy before, I didn’t really know what to expect, so I started at the beginning. The very beginning.
I knew that Bane would be dark, but he was the darkest of the dark. When Bane joined the order, it wasn’t just one sith, one tutor. There were training academy’s – just like the Jedi and loads of apprentices. There were equal numbers of Jedi and Sith, two proper armies. The sith were simply known as lords, not Darth’s and Bane wanted to bring back the Darth prefix. A large part of the story was searching for Darth Rubens holocron. He wanted to be the baddest of the bad, the darkest of the dark.
To succeed against The Brotherhood of Darkness who were training him you rooted for him, because they were really difficult with him. They really didn’t realise his potential, which gave him too much scope to go off the rails, as he did. Like a predecessor to Emperor Palpatine.
The Rule of Two – one master, one apprentice – was explored deeply here. This is where the rule returned to the sith, which was an interesting and exciting turn.
The best aspect of the book was towards the end, where he kills all the sith as well as the woman he loves because they are not capable of being Darth’s. This was my favourite scene in the novel. As well as this, the scene where he chooses his apprentice was interesting. He chose a female, and I wanted to know more about this in relation to the Star Wars timeline.
Having not read many of the books there were likely continuity glitches that I’m not aware of, but I still don’t think that would have spoiled my enjoyment of the book.
I think Drew Karpyshyn wrote very well and look forward to further books set in this era.
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