Star Wars: Maul - Lockdown

Star Wars: Maul - Lockdown

Author: Joe Schreiber | Language: English | ISBN: 034550903X | Format: EPUB

Star Wars: Maul - Lockdown Description

Review

“Schreiber . . . was a great choice for this novel, imbuing the story with a dark, foreboding tone while never quite stepping into the horror territories that Death Troopers and Red Harvest took us.”—Jedi News
 
“Fans of the Dark Side should rejoice. Lockdown delivers a can’t-put-this-down tale of scum and villainy.”—Club Jade
 
“[Lockdown is] an action packed ride that spins one entertaining chapter after another. The multiple layers of story keeps readers guessing what will happen next and just who will live and who will die. . . . It certainly adds to the character of Darth Maul while matching [Darth] Plagueis’s complexity with sheer fun. . . . Five out of five metal bikinis.”—Roqoo Depot
 
“Somehow, Schreiber is able to skate the line between hard-hitting prison story and the adventure and excitement I love from Star Wars in a way that doesn’t betray either genre. It’s really quite masterful.”—Big Shiny Robot
 
“Lockdown is an exciting, engaging read. . . . It actually lines up beautifully for a sequel, which I, for one, would love to read.”—Coffee with Kenobi
 
“The novel makes The Clone Wars better. It also illuminates The Phantom Menace. I think it’s the hallmark of the best tie-in fiction to resonate throughout other parts of the expanded universe in that way.”—Knights’ Archive
 
“By the fiftieth page, I was hooked. . . . Lockdown is a wonderful ‘antihero’ novel, where it’s just fine to root for the villain, because there are even worse things out there. This book was so fun and entertaining. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more Star Wars books from Schreiber.”—Seattle Geekly

About the Author

Joe Schreiber is the author of several novels, including Star Wars: Red Harvest, Star Wars: Death Troopers, Chasing the Dead, and Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. He was born in Michigan but spent his formative years in Alaska, Wyoming, and Northern California. He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.

• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Series: Star Wars
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: LucasBooks (January 28, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034550903X
• ISBN-13: 978-0345509031
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Maul: Lockdown was a book I anticipated with a mix of hope and dread. Maul is one of my favorite Prequel characters and I was also excited to see Darth Plagueis again. However, Joe Schreiber is best known to Star Wars fans for his Deathtrooper horror novels, which might suggest that the book would be a shallow bloodfest. While Maul: Lockdown isn’t a perfect Star Wars novel, I was relieved to find that it succeeds more often than it fails.

VIOLENCE WARNING

Joe Schreiber comes to Star Wars from a background in horror novels and as expected this novel is pretty violent. I’d definitely not recommend it for younger readers. The fights are pretty gruesome, not just because of the deaths but graphic detail with which those deaths are depicted. We see prisoners bludgeoning each other to death and even pulling out the bones. I think Schreiber does a decent job setting expectations and pointing out that the prison, Cog Hive Seven, is supposed to be a brutal environment, but, if you’re not into horror and violence, think twice about this book. I found myself barely able to tolerate some scenes.

PLOT

The plot is fairly basic. Darth Sidious tasks Maul to track down a weapons dealer, Iram Radique, who is allegedly hiding within a prison aboard a space station, Cog Hive Seven. It’s a bit of a contrivance, but that’s how Schreiber manages to get Maul deep inside a prison. If you can accept that stretch, I actually think the idea of throwing Maul into a prison works pretty well. It’s a brutal environment in which everybody is out for him or herself. The dystopian setting almost reminded me of one of Alien 3 (and, yes, there’s even a monstrous alien in Maul: Lockdown that goes around killing prisoners).

Joe Schreiber’s new Star Wars book Maul: Lockdown created a real conundrum for me. Darth Maul and his master are evil characters, completely on the side of the bad guys in the Star Wars saga. The things they do are not what you would want your heroes to do. However, I found that in Lockdown I was pulling for Maul to win a string of victories and accomplish his goals. Clearly, I am headed toward the Dark Side.

Mr. Schreiber is not new to Star Wars readers. He also wrote Death Troopers and Red Harvest. None of the books are quite what would be thought of as normal Star Wars fare, and Maul: Lockdown continues in that vein. They are just very different. However, as you can see from my rating of the book, I liked this one. I did. I couldn’t help myself. Part of my reaction may be because recently I have been reading the early books of the New Jedi Order series, and they occasionally bog down in deep philosophical discussions of the Force and whether or not a true Jedi should actually be using the Force. It was kind of nice to get to a book that is basically nothing but action.

Darth Maul is locked up on a space-station penitentiary, Cog Hive Seven, a place that is teeming with the galaxy’s most hardened criminals. Of course, he is there as part of a plan developed by Darth Sidious, and his purpose is to infiltrate a criminal empire that operates from the penitentiary. Entertainment in the prison consists of almost constant death matches between inmates. Maul wins a match against hopeless odds as soon as he arrives at Cog Hive Seven. From there he goes on to win match after match, and he does it without using the Force and giving away that he is a Sith.

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