Tarkin: Star Wars

It’s a good novel but not great. I think Tarkin and Vader working together as well as the interactions with the emperor were the highlights of the novel. I like the lead up to the Death Star. I do wish we had gotten more history of Tarkin’s rise as I felt this barely scratched the history and the “challenge” of his childhood didn’t ring as something true to the character but that might just be me.

The origin story part of this book is great, but it felt very slow to read. I had trouble finishing this one, but it did fill out Tarken as a character in my mind.

To many of us Governor/Moff Wilhuff Tarkin is the Imperial Officer who wielded the power of the Emperor’s greatest weapon, stood on even ground with Darth Vader, and destroyed an entire planet to make a point in his small but effective screen time in the original Star Wars movie. Now you can experience his childhood. Thus providing him the foundation to conquer the galactic Politics in a galaxy far far away, and the nerves to mercilessly lead in Imperial Navy. If you truly want to know how he becomes the man on the moon sized battle station you will have to pick this book up and be astonished.

To learn of the back story of such a beloved Star Wars Classic Character on this journey was beyond words. The character development that you'll encounter is second to none.

This book was horrible. People will read it because "Star Wars" but I hated it. It dragged on and on going back and forth between Tarkins past and present. I know technically it's all the past "a long time ago in galaxy..." But you know what mean. It's very confusing to be reading about Tarkin and Vader, and then the very next sentence Tarkins a boy on his home world. It took me a month to read it because it felt so tedious I just couldn't bring myself to read more than a few pages a day. It's disappointing because I felt like this could have been an interesting story. I'm actually worried about buying anymore of the books from the Disney era of Star Wars.

I'm not going to lie I didn't want to read this book, but I saw that it was James Luceno and I thought why not he's never disappointed me before. From the start I was pretty much hooked. I have no idea how James does it but he really knows how to bring the whole Star Wars universe together. I would strongly suggest reading this book especially if you enjoyed Darth Plagueis.

Like some other recent Star Wars releases from Del Rey, I did not get what I expected from this novel. The hype I’d heard leading up to this release was basically – “Wilhuff Tarkin gets the Darth Plagueis treatment.” I assumed this was more than simply because they had the same author. I was braced for a decades-spanning biographic narrative - similar to Plagueis & Sidious - telling Tarkin’s story from his backwater birth to his meteoric rise within a fledgling Galactic Empire. I did not get that. And, in truth, I got something far better. Wilhuff Tarkin has made enough appearances (in and out of Canon) in the past that there are just too many things to fit in and too many things to exclude. Luceno takes an excellent approach and tells a very narrow tale that spans only a week or two in the span of galactic history. Through that tale, though, he has woven smartly-placed flashbacks showing us Tarkin’s most formative years as an early teen and young adult. He doesn’t spend unnecessary pages on this – just enough to give you an idea, and then it’s back to the story. I found this approach to be very effective and enjoyable. This particular story shows us the mind of Tarkin in sharp detail – his cunning, his analytical process, and his ruthless pursuit of order. Much like in Darth Plagueis, the reader simply can’t help but root for the bad guys. The plight of the “dissidents” in this story doesn’t particularly engender any sympathy in the reader as we might expect. I found myself actually wanting Tarkin and Vader to squash these guys like bugs. Speaking of Vader, he plays a supporting role in this story but an important one. Like in “Lords of the Sith,” we see hints of the humanity that still lurks inside that helmet and armor – not to be confused with sympathy or empathy, but at least the raw emotion that fuels him. There is recognition of his past experiences before the epic duel on Mustafar that claimed his former identity. Make no mistake, this is NOT Anakin Skywalker, but you can see that he once was Anakin, and his memories are carefully dealt with by Luceno. I found some of my favorite moments to be the personal discussions between he and Tarkin – two unlikely partners in the shaping of galactic events. One would never mistake them for friends, but this novel does an excellent job of painting their relationship as one of mutual (if grudging) respect – perhaps even admiration. Ultimately they both want to serve the Emperor, the Empire, and (perhaps most crucially for Tarkin) the establishment of order. This book was a quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters were accurately portrayed and my brain couldn’t help but play out the dialogue in my head in the voices of James Earl Jones and Peter Cushing. The Emperor appears slightly more fallible here than we saw him in “Lords of the Sith” but a powerful presence none-the-less. The would-be rebels in the tale are largely forgettable (as perhaps was intended) but the ending leaves open the possibility of at least one of them appearing again – perhaps in the “Rebels” series? Time will tell.

This is a biography of Tarkin. It's like looking at a blueprint of an X-wing. Interesting, but superficial. An X-Wing zipping through space and blasting away at TIE fighters is much more exciting, and so is a book with some character development. There is no "spoiler alert" because nothing actually HAPPENS in this book. We find out that Tarkin had a childhood and became a man and that his development process involved no higher thought or reasoning process than Pavlovian conditioning. Also, Tarkin worked his way up to Grand Moff. And finally, Tarkin and Vader get together to chase some rebels. The most interesting part of this is that Tarkin suspects Vader was once Anakin. This is like Lois Lane finally suspecting Clark Kent is Superman (except, you know, with a good guy, instead of the dark lord of the sith). The events of this novel have almost nothing to do with the Clone Wars tv series or the movies with the exception of the fact that they fit in the timeline. I could use one fourth of the 5120 characters remaining for this review to summarize the relevant parts of this novel, but I think those characters would be better spent encouraging readers to implore Disney Publishing to commission Timothy Zahn to write novels for the official Star Wars Canon.

This was a great read, I loved the depth added to Tarkin. I also enjoyed the subtle tie-ins to Luceno's Plagueis. It was nice to see familiar characters from that novel continued in this effort. And cannon confirmation that Plagueis was master to and killed by Sidious.

Great book, especially since it is a part of the new Star Wars canon. Makes you wish Tarkin didn't die in a New Hope.