star wars, Steve Perr, journey, journey band, steve perry journey, journey revelation, journey tourFans of the original 'Star Wars' movie will remember the Death Star as a the moon-sized space station possessed of enough firepower to blow up a planet. 'Death Star' tells the story of this space station through the lives of the people who lived and worked there. It's a tightly written novel that matches the pace of the movie and keeps the reader engaged from first page to last.
What makes this book so entertaining is the way characters and events from the first 'Star Wars' movie are carefully woven into the plot. The first two-thirds of the book takes place prior to the capture of the 'Tantive IV' above the surface of Tatooine. Readers are introduced to a variety of new characters, some soldiers of the Imperial military, while are others civilians of one sort or another. Drawn from different backgrounds, these characters end up on the Death Star as it nears completion. They are there to serve the Empire in different ways: as engineers, as stormtroopers and even as bartenders.
By following these characters, the reader gets to see inside the Death Star in a way that simply didn't happen in the film. Not all those who work for the Empire necessarily subscribe to Imperial values and this is sharply brought into focus when the Death Star weapon system is tested on the prison planet of Despayre.
Not all the characters are new creations though. In the movie, there's an important scene where Governor Tarkin address a group of Imperial officers on board the Death Star. The scene itself isn't very long, but it neatly reveals the antagonisms between these men ostensibly serving the Emperor's agenda. Admiral Motti lauds the Death Star as the ultimate weapon, but in doing so incurs the wrath of Darth Vader. Tarkin, Vader and Motti are all key characters in the book and their motives and actions become much clearer and more detailed in the novel than they ever were in the book.
The real pay-off comes about two-thirds the way through the book where the plot starts tracking the events in the film. Some scenes from the film are re-told in the novel, but this time from a different perspective. Stormtroopers, TIE fighter pilots, artillery officers and even Darth Vader himself deliver radically different takes on familiar events. This upside-down view of things is hugely entertaining, and any 'Star Wars' fan who gets to this point will find the book very difficult to put down.
The climactic scenes are tightly paced, jumping from scene to scene at an almost breakneck pace as all the different plot lines are brought to their conclusion. Readers will of course know a great deal about what will happen simply because they've already seen the film, but the authors manage to maintain the tension right to the end through cleverly juxtaposing familiar events with those involving the new characters.
'Death Star' is a highly entertaining book that will be thoroughly enjoyed by any fan of the original films. Highly recommended.
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