My last book read of 2023 and what a way to end it. I further fell for Darth Vader. His struggle to come to terms of what happened and what he has become. It’s frustrating and heartbreaking because everything went so wrong when it could have gone right.

I know much of Anakin and Vader but the early days of him becoming Vader isn’t much known to me. This book fills that gap taking place the first months after the fall of the Republic and rise of the Empire. There is still a part of Anakin in Vader those first months and it shows when he talks back to Palpatine in certain moments. He knew towards the end that Palpatine was manipulating him and he decided to go along with it for the purpose in saving Padme’s life since the Jedi order wouldn’t understand. The way he describes his suit, his tomb, is heartbreaking to read. In the end he decides it’s not considered living.

We meet Jedi Master Roan Shryne and Padawan Olee Starstone who survived Order 66 but just barely. While Roan is slowly accepting the changing world, Olee is reluctant to leave behind the Jedi way. Roan plans to join a smuggler crew and move on while Olee takes it upon herself to find any Jedis that survived Order 66.

No matter what road either Jedi took, it will not be an easy one. Roan unexpectedly found his birth mother which is a shock to him. Attachments were forbidden to the Jedi but the Jedi Council no longer exist. For Roan, it made no sense to follow those teachings when it’s those very lessons they stood by that made them arrogant and blind of the incoming danger. Olee being much younger than Roan, she’s not ready to forget. She stills has hope and believes that The Force will reunite all the remaining Jedis.

I cried in the beginning and I cried in the end. Vader describing this suit, his prison, is everything. The adjustments he has to make to keep on living. By the end of the novel, he has come to terms to what he has become and those around him learned, one way or another, to respect him and fear him.

“It won’t matter if you find and kill every Jedi who survived Order Sixty-Six. I understand now. . . the Force will never die.”
-Roan Shryne