Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith by: Adam Christopher

 

Let’s talk about the concept of a fix-it fic.  It’s a particular type of fanfiction where a plot point in the ‘canon’ work that was poorly received for some reason is retroactively fixed through some sort of story be it adding context in an original story or even just a complete rewrite of the original work.  Shadow of the Sith in a way is a fix-it fic for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a film that unlike the previously polarizing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, had one response, negative.  This novel written by Adam Christopher sets out in the very first chapter to take one look at the mystery box set up by J.J. Abrams as to who Rey’s parents are, realizes that their identities don’t actually matter to her because people create their own destiny that Rian Johnson was playing with in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and square it with the revelations of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, that Rey is secretly the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine and fated to join him before eventually defying her name and becoming a Skywalker.  Thematically the two films aren’t quite incompatible, but the latter is one that does a lot to undo what the former was laying down.  So it’s up to Adam Christopher to try to do something with these ideas, plus all of the additions in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and make something coherent out of it.  There’s a lot from the film that is explored in the novel: the potential resurrection of Emperor Palpatine which protagonists Luke and Lando put their heads in the sand at the possibility of that, the Sith assassin Ochi’s pursuit of Rey’s parents, the idea of the Sith wayfinder, and the planet Exegol.  There is the trouble of the fix-it fic being commissioned as a canon novel for Star Wars, it has to be in line with the films that have already been released.  While there is a tendency to claim that tie in media to established franchises as ‘glorified fanfiction’, the pithy commentary (often dismissing both tie in media and fanfiction entirely) ignores the fact that these stories have to fit under often harsh editorial teams.

 

Shadow of the Sith has several chapters from the perspective of Rey’s parents, Dathan and Miramir, that plays out like a tragedy.  Christopher writes this plot thread very much with the audience’s expectation that the pair are going to die, they spend the entire novel running away from several Sith assassins, eventually including Ochi of Bestoon who will kill them.  The climax of the novel even brings everyone to Jakku so we can see the death of Rey’s parents, the plot fulfilling the tragedy of the novel.  Rey isn’t really a character in the novel, she is a six year old and Christopher positions her as the thing her parents are trying to save.  A lot of the novel is about trying to save one’s children: Kylo Ren briefly appears as Ben Solo as Luke’s Padawan apprentice, but more importantly Lando Calrissian as secondary protagonist is hoping to find his own daughter Kadara, having been kidnapped as a baby by the First Order.  It’s a bit odd that Ben Solo, the only male child here, is given really any personality and a small active scene in the plot.  Rey at least gets to be a scared child in places, but Kadara is only seen in flashback sequences.  The children and the next generation are the motivations for everyone involved in the plot.  The Luke and Lando plot is one that deals with Sith assassins, a Sith cult attempting to resurrect the Emperor using an ancient Sith mask of Exim Panshard, an ancient Sith that transferred their consciousness to live on.  It’s a great adventure plot, Christopher being very interested to show how terribly static Luke Skywalker as a character is, something that will eventually be his downfall and where he is seen in the sequel trilogy.  This does have a lot of the novel be a midquel between the end of the original trilogy and the beginning of the sequel trilogy, it’s telling a story and we have to know exactly where the characters are going to be.  The further knock on effect is that the most interesting characters are Lando, who was barely in the sequel trilogy (and Christopher goes incredibly far to not just make him Han Solo, but give him his own drive and desperation to redeem himself and find his daughter), and the Sith cultists, all original characters slowly taking advantage of the New Republic’s struggles to learn from what led to the rise of the Empire in the first place.

 

Overall, Shadow of the Sith is a novel that has issues in tying into the pre-established story, it is attempting to make justifications for why the plot of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is that way, but Adam Christopher has written a compelling story about finding the future and trying to build that up even if it’s something almost doomed to fail until after the sequel trilogy takes place.  It’s a novel that is marketed as a space faring adventure, but it’s really quite a serious tragedy about stagnation and the past, owing more to Star Wars: The Last Jedi more than anything.  8/10.