Product Description

Not long before the events of The Phantom Menace, the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, is meeting via hologram with the Neimoidian Viceroy, Nute Gunray, and his seconds in command. But something is wrong: Where there are three Neimoidians, there should be a fourth. Where is he? No one knows. Angry and suspicious, sure that the fourth Neimoidian, Hath Monchar, is out there blabbing Darth Sidious' secrets, Sidious sends his apprentice, Darth Maul, out to investigate. His mission: Find and kill Hath Monchar. Then figure out whom Monchar might have spoken with, and kill them, too. Lorn Pavan is an information broker, who makes his living finding information and selling it to the highest bidder. When the Neimoidian, Hath Monchar, shows up with a very interesting holocron with information about an actual, living - and evil-plotting - Sith Lord, Lorn knows he's got something really hot. So when Monchar is murdered, Lorn manages to get his hands on the holocron anyway. His motives are anything but noble. Darsha Assant is a Jedi Padawan. She and Lorn find themselves thrown together unexpectedly, and when they realize that it is a Sith Lord on their trail, they realize that they must somehow get the holocron to the Jedi Council. But Darth Maul is too good a tracker. What's more, he's never failed his Master, Darth Sidious, and he doesn't intend to this time, either...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418086 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 411 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Here's another Star Wars spin-off novel, a brisk and extremely uncomplicated action-adventure romp set on planet Coruscant immediately before the events of The Phantom Menace. After a few setting-up exercises, it's essentially a prolonged chase sequence whose implacable pursuer is Darth Maul--the almost absurdly villainous-looking Sith Lord with the biggest light sabre and worst make-up job in the entire saga to date.

The plot? Insidiously evil Darth Sidious is poised to launch the Naboo trade blockade featured in The Phantom Menace. But one of his alien henchmen has sneaked away to betray this scheme, and must die. So must the traitor's contacts, small-time crook Lorn Pavan and his uppity droid I-Five. Likewise Darsha Assant, the female Jedi Knight apprentice who gets entangled with Pavan through either mind-boggling coincidence or the mysterious ways of the Force.

Michael Reaves makes a reasonably slick job of all this nonsense, and is not afraid of clichés. "I've got a bad feeling about this", people say. "Too many questions, and not enough answers". Meanwhile in the Jedi council, Yoda makes characteristic remarks: "A good choice he would be ... No accident this was". Yoda's style to imitate, shooting fish in a barrel is.

Unfortunately, the well-known storyline of The Phantom Menace defuses suspense in Shadow Hunter. That trade blockade has to happen despite the good folks' doomed heroics, and horrible Darth Maul (already far more powerful and deadly than the puny opposition he faces here) is fated to win through. For dedicated fans only. --David Langford

About the Author
Michael Reaves is an Emmy Award-winning TV writer, screenwriter and novelist. His work includes hundreds of teleplays (including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Sliders), screenplays (including the co-written Batman: Mask of the Phantasm), and thirteen novels. He has also been nominated for several awards.

Customer Reviews

A very nice lil Darkside book.
This book in some ways is a total brake from the usual tradition of Starwars Novels... it has a bad guy in a leading role, rather as supporting cast (like Thrawn or the Yurzon Vong) and its set for the most part on one planet and there is very little mention of space travel or fights.

This book takes place in the dark underbelly of Coruscant before the creation of the empire (obviously) and I think shows the under belly in all its twisted nastyness, even if some of the reasons characters end up there is rather flawed (Darsha). It gives an almost Blade Runneresque feel to the novel in the prolonged chase sequences. With some very plausable characters, I just wish there had been more interaction with them but that would have made the book longer than I suppose they wanted it.

I also found the ending to be rather nice thou I won't say anymore as I don't want to spoil it for you... If you love Starwars and esp if you like the Darkside of the force this book is brilliant.

One little thing that bugged me was at the begining of the book we got some of Darth Mauls feeling about the whole light/dark battle which were quite intresting then dropped and never mentioned agai *GRRR* I feel that if they had been developed it could have cast the whole Starwars universe in a slightly different light, nothing major but just a touch more realistic.

Just Great!
A clever book, which, introduces you to the real thoughts and opinions of Darth Maul. It's one of those books that has got everything: action, adventure, romance, suspence...and the list continues! a defenite buy for any Darth Maul/Star wars fan.

Different...
You don't need the force to tell Michael Reaves had a hard time writing this book. In any good story, good must triumph over evil, but in this book Darth Maul, the evil, is fated to live. The characters get into all sorts of odd situations where in any normal book the evil would die - but to make the events in Episode One make sense, the good characters must be defeated. So we have a odd book where evil wins. Pretty good, though, and it has a wonderful setting - the forgotten slums of bright, colourful Coruscant.