S5 EP11: Review: Shadow of the Sith

Rebellion for build home health! And welcome to another episode of misery the weekend! Play Star Wars podcast, have your hosts, have your program at all, and thank you for joining us on another great Star Wars Saturday. I'm joined by a friend.

Hi cohost, it's back! IoT. How you doing, IoT? Uh I'm back!

Alright, good to have you back, it's been a couple of weeks, you've been busy, you been sick, while you're back, how are you doing? I'm doing well, as I told you in the process of moving out, so this is officially the last time you'll see me here in the set and it sucks because I'm getting the lighting all wrong, it looks like I'm in a dark room, it's all lit up, it's I don't know what's going on. But yeah, it's the last time you see me. People are going to get scared.

They think I threw you out. Oh, no, no, no. So last time you see me here. I'll have a very similar backdrop and everything.

But yeah, last time I'll be in this apartment. So yeah, so it's next. I don't know. Yeah, I think you can hear that.

It's a storm about to pass through. So hopefully we don't lose signal. I have like, since last time I put like two range extenders. There's a Wi-Fi point right there.

I'm looking at it. Don't fall down. Don't fall down. You gotta help me out through this today.

So we'll make it through. I mean, today we're talking shadows of the safe X-roll lightning. I think the mood is right for what we're talking about today. It's a sunny day here.

So I close the blackout. All right. Yeah. So as always, if you're new to the channel, thanks for joining us.

I'm sure you subscribe to the new episode. So when they drop on Saturdays, make sure you like this video. Comment down below if you're watching this later on your thoughts on Shadow Deceit. When it's Star Wars, thought, question, mind-rumbling, you might have let us know.

We'll answer them below. And I don't know. By the way, I have to mention something. It's the first time I've been here since the trivia and the the buckle.

Yeah, so let's talk about it real quick. So we had, I don't know, two or three weeks ago, we had our Vino 3.3. We divided the questions. I did have, you did have, one of the questions was, how many bounty hunters did Darth Vader hire to go search for lightning?

Yeah, for Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon. Someone said, six, I told him that we're wrong. Connor, we said it's five, and then the chat jumped in and said that we do nothing. We're amateur.

What do you have to say? I feel very sorry because he took all the heat and you didn't throw me under the bus, but it was my fault. And I tweeted it out and explanation. So I accidentally said that the wrong answer.

And I showed the answer. It had five and six and accidentally selected five instead of six. Hey, it happens. At least no one, um, Connor didn't win by, he won by a bigger margin than just one point.

So they didn't make me feel that bad. But yeah, I was watching from like, I was like, Oh, yeah, I went back and I watched that scene like three times I'm counting those five. I know you can see like, I don't want to spiel or something. And the background said that doesn't count.

One of the shots, it only shows five. Yeah. All right. But well, didn't go to play.

I'm working hard on the sequels and the final thing and double checking. Yeah, we're making sure we don't mess up next time. I'm starting to think some for the sequel to you. I don't have a lot yet.

I first check with that contest. I make sure everyone can make it and then we'll set a day, but that's not a big fun. I'm already working on it. And they all have to be heated up.

So yeah. All right. So it's gonna be great. I'm not always making sure that you're hoping I will be on the initiative, equality, Texas, the national network for our abortion funds and the what choice fund rates, all those links are always in the description of this video.

What choice does skyrocket? I think they started with a $5,000 goal. Don't they find a $50,000 they get about $2,000 left to go so much? You help out.

I'm a part of the group shot that's, you know, everyone who started it. And we were just like, every like three hours, across another $5,000. I was like, what? Yeah.

I've been away a little bit because, you know, reading and moving, it's been hard. But yeah, that group's amazing. And both the, yeah, it's been great. Yeah, it's, and as always, if you can donate, donate, if you can just spread the word and tweet it out, tweet it out.

Get educated, everything that's going on out there. It's certain a lot of people. So any little bit that we can do to help, appreciate it. You were selling a shirt, right?

Yeah, it's not this one. This is just my new shirt just for me right now. Right. Everybody in part, just to have one.

I did one. It's still there on Bonfire. I'll tweet it out afterwards, just in case I did a quick one just to have something out there, at least. Yeah, I made an emerald radus one, which I will be working on every episode when we do the ender thing and when we do the road one.

I'll clean it in between. Well, six days to watch it before we get back. Yeah, oh, I was. Yeah, it's MIT public.

You can, just find a link. You can find it. People know how to navigate the internet this day and age. I apologize if you're hearing a bunch of thunder, that's me.

I can't do anything about it. This is in a soundproof room. So you're gonna hear it. It's the shadow of the Sith.

It's the shadow of the Sith. And we did. You know what? If you guys are ready, I'm no one ready.

Let's talk Star Wars and Shadow of Dust Sith. All right, I'm not expecting that. No, I know. Sorry.

It's a bit loud, but I want to have some music for this. All right. So, all day, Shadow of the Sith. Finally, big spoiler review out there.

I mean, spoiler, yeah, we do have spoiler reviews. So anyone listen to this, make sure that you've read this book. It's a long book. We're gonna discuss it.

But all day, let's start right there. Let's actually before we start, how excited you were for this book? Because I am pleased of her about two years ago when Mandalorian season one ended. It was announced that he was writing a new original novel about the Mandalorian.

We didn't know if it was gonna be between season one and season two before season one. And then all of a sudden, that got shot down and then he got announced that he's writing this book. He's got Luke. He got lambda after return on the Jedi.

We're gonna learn who raised parents are. We have all this stuff. So how excited were you when Shadow of the Sith was announced and you were finally able to get it? I think I mentioned it here.

But this is a book I've wanted since I watched, right? The Skywalker when Lando says, yeah, we were on a venture. I was like, okay, there's a book coming out of our comic. So when it got announced, I was super excited.

I was so happy when it got to me. I was so intimidated when I saw how long it was. But yeah, I was over the moon for it. Yeah, me too.

Oh, what's gonna ask? We'll get to it. I saw a bunch of tabs. This is not something.

How do you read a book that you're going to, I guess, review on your podcast or how do you take notes? So you just take a little bit, make notes inside? No, I buy these if I post it, they're somewhere where they're and I actually use them as bookmarks. And I basically just put a post or whatever on whatever I find interesting or want to remember later.

It's also a good device if I want to go over the book again and not necessarily sit down and reread it. Oh, like I did this last week? Oh, you reread it? Three quarters of it.

By the end, I was screaming to the parts that I wanted to double check. But yeah, I read most of the 467 pages. I probably read 300 and then skin the rest. So one of the things I want to say is like, I'm a very slow reader and I went through this book in a week.

And for me, that's like a milestone. I told you that. Yeah, we'll get to it. We'll get to that part.

So I don't, I keep notes on my phone on the notes app. I just write down whatever I thought I have. And I think that kind of takes me longer than to read the book. I don't want to write on it.

I know a lot of people take not annotations on their book. I don't want to do that. I didn't have to stick notes. I don't know.

Anyway, yeah, but what I do is like, I do this. And then when I do my review, I sit like and go through each one. And okay, is this like a fun fact? Is this like an important thing?

And yeah, we spoke. I don't know. There was a high republic book. I can't remember which one.

When I finished, I had like 15 pages of notes. I like this is too much. I don't know. Oh my God.

Yeah, I had to start over almost with all my notes. But similar to you, I was extremely excited when this book was announced because they said that there was going to be some kind of dog side influences. We all wanted to know what Luke was doing between the return of the Jedi and the first Awakens. Always fun.

I'm going to get that backstory to raise parents. So of course, as a SQL 3.0 fan, I was extremely excited for this book, high expectations. And just rather than the bad, let's jump into the story. And at least for me, the expectations were met.

And in some points went over. I love this book. I said last time when I talked about Brotherhood that I enjoyed it wasn't on my top 10. I don't know how to rank books because there's so many.

But shut the seat. It's going to be in that conversation of top five, top seven. As we get into details about the story, just very general, did you like the story? Were there some parts that you like more than others?

Because it's like three or four different stories that still work together for the main action that's going on. So it's an interesting one because I love the story overall. There were times where I just wanted to jump over a certain part of the story to get to another story. But there was never like this specific, I'm just going to mention like group of characters.

There was never like a group of characters that I like this like spending time with. At different points, I like spending time with each of them. I don't know, I'm like voicing it correctly. Like there was like not one story that dragged for me all the time.

All of them dragged at different points. And I wanted to get to the other ones. But overall, as a complete book, as a complete story, I loved it. It went places that I was not expecting.

I stayed away from all the the excerpts. I didn't know the context. So I didn't know the context. So I was surprised when you happened, but I was waiting for it because I knew it would be there.

I didn't know how much raised parents were going to be in the story. That was really surprising for me. And it got me a little bit nervous. But thankfully, it didn't throw me out.

I think it closed perfectly. And yeah, that's basically general thoughts on the story. Yeah. Same.

There's basically this takes 17 years after Return of the Jedi. Death Star 2 has been destroyed as Lando keeps telling everyone. That for Lando is like the castle realm. They didn't know all the death star.

I just saw that. It's me. I'm the hero of the rebellion. The only difference is that the story that that star is relevant.

Come on. He saved the corruption before everyone exploded and gave it. But yeah, he has more of a, it's more relevant. People are not going to roll their eyes and safety around them.

But then we have like four different stories. We have raised parents as well. They got named finally, they then and Mira Mir. They have their own story.

Then we have Luke Skywalker that's searching for artifacts, either Jedi artifacts or Cis artifacts. They like them post as his thing in his temple in also that goes revealed finally. Lando that we know from revenge, that's a Skywalker that his daughter was taken was kidnapped when she was a child and he's looking for her. So we get into that story.

Ocho bestoon for everyone, loving the Ocho Renaissance out there. And there's a bunch of people I love Ocho. He's still for me like, okay, he's there. He's there again.

I love to hear him. Yes. Oh man. We hate him after he treated the deal like he does in this book.

So he has his own story, the Emperor, talked to him directly and given you this dagger, we kind of figure out how the dagger was built. And then we have this dark side, someone that we get revealed through the story that's been possessed by this mass. It's a knacolad of the beyond. And then all these stories kind of intersect in the middle.

Same as you. Hopefully people will hear me other the story that I especially read reading that I kind of okay, it's just more of the same. It's a race, fire and story. Even though I love reading about them and learning more, their story was very similar.

Every time they're running away from something and we're gonna get there and then we're running away. It didn't, I don't know, it didn't have kind of a moment of peace for them, which I guess is part of the point. But I don't know, it kind of just didn't drag, but I wanted to get to something else. That's why I mentioned that not all stories dragged all the time.

I'll say I love that the beginning learning about them from the beginning to basically almost the end it dragged. But then at the end, I loved how their story is sent off and it connects to Luke and everything. Right. We'll talk about that.

We're gonna divide this breakdown into story, ease of reading characters, canon connection, how it expands Star Wars and overall. And maybe canon connection. We'll talk more about how this connects to the sequel to it, because we'll get to that point. But so this book, at least for myself, was a lot more fantasy than sci-fi.

People are not saying how Star Wars is fantasy sci-fi, but here this is almost like Lord of the Rings. We have all these things, kind of the one ring processing, whoever is holding them, the dagger, or she's dagger, he's slowly is a common to it, the mask that key size wearing, everything with the dodge side is fantasy. They talk about nine rates, very similar to the ring rates in Lord of the Rings. Did you like that this book was kind of not, I don't know, it was Star Wars, but it also felt like something different.

Quick cut. I forgot to sign into Streamlabs, so I don't have any of my privileges, but there's, I'm always in the chat. I guess I'll have to do double duties because you're out for two weeks and you forget. Mo, how are you doing, Mo?

Thanks for joining us. Mo will be here in a couple of weeks where our Rogue One watch along, she'll be also here for one of the Andor breakdowns when that comes. So thanks for joining us. Mo, hopefully you've read, shall I do this?

Yes, hopefully. Okay, so I actually like that, because I agree it's totally a fantasy, but for me Star Wars is a fantasy. I'm not so hyped on Star Wars when it gets very sci-fi, shout out to Mabeesan. I know a lot of people that Sir Jam, but it doesn't always work for me.

But I totally agree with you. Again, there's this mass that possesses people. There are some crystals that speak to you. There's a nine that speaks to you.

There's a very specific part where I was reading and I was like, what the hell is going on? When Kaisa is building the droids and just like, I don't know, I don't care. That's awesome. Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. Darchside magic secrets only that's if we had our boyfriend, Bowman Kinney's here. We know why. I'm talking later.

I really want to talk about it. When we have two characters, we'll talk about it. But I did not work for you in that way? Or do you like a balance of not us through that.

I know. Okay. It's like, I'm like, this is fantastic. I love everything.

It's weird. It's scary. It's not gory, but it's freaky. Did wait the Darchside works.

And I said in my review, I think I threw it out. And when I said on my review on the written review, we have on our website, go check it out. Even though I'll be repeating most of it here. For me, my favorite thing about Star Wars is how the force works.

The daylight, they see it, how they connect to the force. And that's why I love the high republic so much because it's giving us a different view of the force, the way the jet I connect to it, how that balance between the following the jet I order, following your connection to the force. That's my favorite thing ever. And here we get that a little bit from the Darchside because we're used to the force and the way that jet I connect to it.

Night of the Jedi, for example, talks about the connection of the Jedi after the force. And it's so beautiful how they, it feels like a song or a leaf in a forest. I'm in the sea, I'm a wave in the sea and it's you're giving the day I give themselves to the force and to the flow of the force. And here the sea from the Darchside is just it, they're taken by force.

They're processing you every kill, every blow that you spill feels that hatred. It's about taking that power. It's a complete opposite. So I love financing the dichotomy of, yeah, look how the force can work and also how evil it is.

And not just, oh, we're too safe to take over the world. Nicely Darchside, how it possesses everyone. Just for control and to everyone to live longer. So I just love that part.

And all the fantasy elements of it made me love this book. And that's what's my favorite part of the whole story was everything with Kisa, with Comat, with Luke's journey to have the name of that planet where they go and they find the Kyber shorts and see if we find it. All that was everything. Yeah, there's something I really loved about the book.

It's how it presents the Darchside and the Lightside. I always say like, the Lightside is the middle and the Darchside are the extremes. And I think the book does a great job presenting that. I think like balances in the middle with the Lightside.

But it's also like, the Darchside, it never has enough. Like, Ochi keeps killing people with the knife and the knife is supposedly fed. But it keeps asking him to kill other people. So it's, it's never enough.

Like, it's like with Vader. It's like an insatiable thirst for vengeance doing evil things, I guess. Yeah. And I love also, I don't jump in a little bit, but Luke's eye walker went after he, I don't know if it's before after he talks to Anakin.

He says about how meeting Anakin and the way the force was around him, he was this fire, this light that burned bright and the emperor was this cold, almost nothingness. Again, that balance, not that balance, but two extremes of the Darchside. But let's go real quick. Let's go back to race parents because that was a big thing for the whole tree, like who was race parent, who she connected to?

Okay, Palpatine, we get to that, this strand cast, is it Palpatine, son or not a clone that's not really a clone? Do you enjoy finally getting to know who race parents were? Their backstory, how they fan, escapes, exegol, how Miramir doesn't care, she knows his backstory, she doesn't care, she loves him completely. And the way they spend the whole boot just trying to find a safe place for Ray, basically, and then how that story ends.

I did like a lot learning about them. It's that question from the sequel trilogy that we all wanted to be answered and maybe should have been, but that wasn't that story. This was that story. And if last yet, I suddenly turns into a flashback of this, you high jack that movie completely or right, so Skywalker or Force Awakens.

So I did love learning about them. I, as I said, that story dragged a little bit for me more in like in the middle, but I did love spending every time maybe a race showed up. I know where I know where. Yeah, and it's like you're gonna be like goddess in a couple of years.

But you know, those, we know where it's all going. We know they're gonna die. We know she's gonna kill them. So it's kind of a tragedy.

It's kind of like in that sense, we know where it's all going to end. But it's that journey, seeing how much they really love their, it makes like that gut punch of her waiting for them even worse because they were so sure that we're gonna come back and they, you know, 10 minutes after they left their trap without she. So, but I really like learning about it. Yeah, I love that we got a lot of those questions answered.

How, why were they on Oshisheep? Why did Ray see Oshisheep leaving? Why is she in the care of on-call plot? I still don't like the explanation that's one thing I like, really?

There's this whole thing because I totally agree. They're constantly saying how horrible he is and then they go, but he's the only one we can trust. Why? Yeah, it's a business man.

And then next person to offer a better deal is gonna give your daughter away. We should know this a few years later. But that, and again, I don't blame Adam Christopher because he had to find a way to make that work. But Hannah, really?

You haven't trusted anyone through the whole book. It's three days. So if you left Jakku, and as given to this guy that's been treating us badly, but he's a business man. He'll understand here.

Have a token. Don't kill your daughter. I think it's one of the last lines in the mirror, where it has it's like, I know he screens, but he doesn't mean it. It's like people on the internet.

They don't mean it. So that's one thing. Again, I love learning more about them. And we get, of course, more with data because we know from Rayso Skywalker, he's the grandson of not his son of Poppatine.

He's a clone. Here we learn they call it a strandcast. Does it have any voice powers? But it's normal, basically, not like the other ones.

So he's not killed. He's let to leave. He says that he's not killed because he thinks they have other, they might have another purpose for him later. Like that explanation, I think we get it in the Rayso Skywalker book.

So I don't remember the Rayso Skywalker book at least that part. And when I was rereading it, that's when it kind of clicked. He said, oh, this is the only clone that wasn't killed. It's normal as a regular upbringing for the most part.

And when he says, oh, maybe there's another reason they're letting me leave his own. Maybe Poppatine is just letting him leave to see if he procreates and has a son or a daughter, then then can connect to the force. And then that's why Ray becomes important. And I think that makes sense.

So I did like that part. I love when he's on X ago, he's explaining how he's just treated like crap. I love and feel so bad for him when he said, when there's a line on the book that says they didn't even name him because naming him will give him meaning or give him importance or something like that. It's like he's treated like nothing.

He has one little friend, a little monkey man that sings species that builds Kylo's rent home. Okay. Okay. I didn't know if it was the same species.

Yes, but it's not the same one because that one has a name. And then we learn here that that one is named Nathan and that's who he takes the name from. So I did like that backstory. I love that Mira Mira doesn't care.

She just wants to be with him. Ray's Ray properly, she comes from this planet. She leaves with her grandmother. We learn here that's where Ray gets all her knowledge of how to pilot, how to be an engineer and all this thing is not because she's strongly the force or Poppatine.

She gets this from her mother. So I love all that. But the thing that kind of drags for me is that we start a book with them escaping Jakku. Then they get to this, they get rescued by the new republic.

We don't trust them, get sent to night side, getting to trouble, they're running again, then they're going to this refilling station on the run. So there's always in the run. So it's like, hey, just give me something else because it feels a little bit repetitive. And I was thinking, have you read Rebel Rising?

Yes. So I love in that book that we have Jean very similar running from place to place until she finds a family and is able to settle down for about a year. So when things go bad, again, you feel extremely bad for everything that happens to her. If they had a chance to at least be safe for a little bit and then getting trouble again, I think I would have wouldn't have felt kind of disconnected with that part of the story.

I agree. And I also have similar beef with, it's not beef, it's just like random complaint in the book. And I'm jumping ahead to something else. But I think sometimes the book could have been a little bit shorter in the sense and the story could have been a little bit more concise.

Because for example, later on, we have that moment when Luke fights, Chris Akreisa, and he leaves her for dead for like 20 minutes and then he's like, I shouldn't have left her. It's like, dude, it's been like 20 minutes. Come down. You're gonna let the planet is.

So I sometimes think like it could have been just like, hey, maybe not have her fake out death and continue their fight. It could have been a little bit shorter in that sense, but I do agree. Yeah. All right.

So that's more or less race, foreign story. As we're talking about connecting to Ken and I'll talk about another thing that I didn't like too much again, whatever. We have Lando, like I said, he's looking for his daughter, Kadara, Calrissian, got taken like six years ago when she was to, he's suddenly dumb. She's depressed, feels bad that he is not searching for her.

And then here's Ochi talking about the Steve kidnapping kids, kidnapping a girl and that kind of wakes him up a little bit. He goes on his own journey after getting a good information, finds Luke Skywalker and then hey, we gotta go help this family. Maybe the only connection to finding my daughter. And about half of the book is with Lando.

I would say he's one of the, maybe the main character of this book. Do you enjoy how much I focus on Lando and the way his story kind of grew throughout the book? Yes, I definitely want to have my stand outs. Ever since I was a kid, I loved Lando Calrissian throughout the entire trailer.

It was like when he was really deep coming back. So I really did like spending a lot of time with him. It's a very different Lando. I think we get that transition from Return of the Dead Eye to where we see him in Rise of Skywalker very well.

And it's Lando who's dealing with, yes, what happened to him with his daughter, but also with getting older and realizing that hey, maybe acting like you're 22. It's not going to work. And it's that first scene, it's kind of sad. He's like, maybe in his 50s and he's trying to act like he used to when he was Donald Glover.

But yeah, I loved spending a lot of time with him. Yeah, I mean, I like Lando. He wasn't always my favorite. He's a cool character.

I wasn't really connected to Lando. He's sorry. He didn't invite me back. I did like what they did with him in solo.

But I think it feels like a perfect progression for the character. Like you said, this is 17 years after Return of the Dead Eye. It's kind of here in that middle age, just not kind of depression because he's getting older, they got looks and all that he even says here a few times, still get by with my charm. But something is not there when he finds the recent Chronicles, chapter 57, and he's like, oh my goodness, I still did.

I love when he goes like, maybe we don't need video. Yeah, at the end. But then of course, just feeling so bad for kind of giving up for his daughter. He's in this place, just the dagger and whatever, just getting drunk.

He's just an excuse to not do anything. But then I love that by the end, he said like, no, I'm staying here, Passana, our last kind of hints of Ochi and Ray were here. Maybe I said this of us my best of operation for looking for my daughter. So I love that through this old book, he found his purpose again because he had lost it by the beginning.

I love how he where his story ends and then how he connects to Rise of Skywalker. I mean, it's been 15 years, he's still there, but he connects perfectly and it kind of helps them with the story moving forward. I'll go quick. I say hi to our friend, let her report cast.

Definitely can't wait for more Star Wars from Alan. I think we all in agreement, he did a great job with this book. He had a lot of things to balance from legacy characters, new characters, connecting a bunch of stories. I think he did great.

Yeah, well, we're still on Lando. I want to ask you. So we still have, I think we all would agree, we still have a story with Lando with his daughter and what he does with Jaina after Rise of Skywalker. Are you excited for the show after this book after what you read here?

It depends what the book is about. I mean, the show is about this. I mean, if the book is at the show is about if it's after Rise of Skywalker, yes, because I now have invested interest in what happened to his daughter and trying to learn everything. I'm finding myself being like, I really want the story.

I want to know what happened to her because it's turned into a big thing. Yeah. In that sense, yes, I want to learn what happened. Hopefully he can find it because he's so close to Rey.

Even when he meets Rey in Rise of Skywalker, they don't know each other. Even though he was... That's something I really want to talk about later. Okay, so let's just hurry up a little bit.

Yeah, I don't know. The thing, the reason that I'm not extremely excited from the Lando series is because that's taken away from the Solo series or Solo 2, because a lot of people gravitated to, I don't know, glory to the with Lando, which was great. And it's one of those things that people are complaining about Star Wars is, oh, something is hot or dark. People are talking about it.

Let's just focus on that. Instead of it's there a story there to tell. People love that. Okay, let's make a series about it.

Okay, it's there a series there. So that's kind of my jealousy thing, I guess. Oh, they pass on Solo to do Lando. But give me the story and I might be there.

And we talked a little bit about Luke. His whole story just trying to find all these relics. He gets dragged into searching for this family, but he's more focused on these dark side presents that he feels and let's just get to it. Anakin Skywalker's ghost comes to save him from a vision or something.

He's transported to Exego. He's on Python on the scene stone. The little baby Grogu's gonna be there in the world. And then he's transported.

He doesn't know his vision or am I actually there? How am I gonna get back? An Anakin goes next to him. Goes to Exego, faces against Kisa for the first time.

No, I think at that point is against the acolytes or the Sith Eternals. Yeah, they're like the Nazgos or Demogorgans or Dementors. I don't know. Yeah.

So okay, so you said you cannot stay away from the excerpts. You can't know anything was coming. You didn't know where and how surprised were you and did you like the interaction that father and son had? I did.

It was shorter than I thought it was because people were losing their minds. I was like, oh my god, we're gonna have it. Let's go Sannekin. All through this book.

And it's just that chapter. But it really worked. It's I think it's it was interesting because it's both Hayden Christensen and Sebastian Shaw, which was fun. He's like morphing and everything.

So it's like this thing about force goes that I really don't want to know that much of how it works. I like the mystical element of it all. But I love what he says. It followed the river or something like a father of the forest and follow your instincts or one of the same something like that.

I really like. And it really worked for what that moment was. And you know, people getting fed with their force goes fighting other things. People always want to see.

Yeah. Same thing because I don't know how the force goes works. Is that it for for those Anakin? Can he not transform himself again or show himself because he uses all of his energy to bring Luke back to the scene stone?

He fights all these nine acolytes of the Sith. But I love it. I love saying Anakin back. Like you say, he was going back and forth between young Anakin and older Anakin.

Unfortunately, this was spoiled for me very early when the excerpt came out. I don't know why they used this as an excerpt. I know you want to sell tickets. Sorry, I'm not what.

Who put something there? Who's here? Oh, of course, giving all these shirts of love. All right.

Yeah. Alexander the link. This store. But this was spoiled for me very early.

And not just all Anakin's social sub. It's it's happened on Titan. He's on the scene stone and he says, it's the force. So as soon as he said, I'm going to Titan and I'm like, okay, here comes Anakin.

And they almost got Niggas, the book Lucas thinking that Obi-Wan even he calls him Obi-Wan and then oh, maybe something else. And then no, it's like, for a second, I was like, oh, is it not going to win? But I love what he said. And he tells him something else.

Like something that he's never alone as long as you have someone you're never alone or something like that. I love that sentiment. And I guess before I loved everything, we should look ahead. I just want to say it really, I read Midnight Horizon and like that same day started this book.

And it was funny because it really reminded me of spoilers for that book, by the way. That scene when Yoda shows up, it really reminded me of that scene because it's both a hoda figure, we'll turn around and yeah, it really liked that. Both with green lights, no, no, Luke has a green light. But yeah, so I love all that.

Like I said before, everything that had to do with the Sith, the holocron that he finds on Yoda's tuba when they go with Noresanteka, the possession of everyone that's close to their mass, close to the Sith holocron to the lightsaber crystal shorts. I love all that. I love how they connected that all these red kyber crystals came from a bigger piece. And that's why they're connected.

They can use a tracker to find each other. And that crash ship was trying to use that instead of having a Sith wayfinder to get to X-A-Gol. Everyone wants to go to X-A-Gol. That's a big place, I guess, for people to vacation now.

So I love how they connected all that. So again, everything with the Sith and learning more about Dark Noctis and her Cimitar lightsaber blade, Viceroy X and Punch-Oi, the way that he kills people and the the match just has solved all those screens, like this in energy. I love that scene when Luke is like jumping from time to time with him. Yeah, because then you get the his old backstory there.

And why is the mass so powerful? What is it called? Rop in Kisa? And it's like, oh, this meteor came, but the blacksmith couldn't melt the mass or whatever he wanted to build.

He jammed the lightsaber into the furnace and that gave him that dark side power to then mold it. I love all that. Again, that's fantastic. Yes, give me, give me, yeah, one more.

And of course, we get the Rigo power trailer and I'm going all crazy with middle earth. So, yes, I love everything about that. Sorry. So real quick, and we'll jump out of the story to talk about some other stuff.

What's your best tune? So I'll say, one of the things that a lot of people complain and I have my questions, how this blade that weird ochi has shows the fallen dead star exactly perfect word that we find is going to be how did they know this one a crash and all that stuff? But if I'm not mistaken, there's a part early on when he's given the blade and he's talking about how it's designed. And it says, oh, it looks like the edges were just formed.

It's like, yeah, the end-of-the-job, they feel the map. So this is this blade to tell you where the blade shows or something like that. So I don't know if we get that explanation. I'll just, yeah, whatever, forget about it.

Not just an explanation why that star design is there. I never really put so much stock into why that was the way that it was. Because I kind of made sense in my mind. Like, yeah, maybe someone knew where it was and they did throw it out.

It was so smart. Everyone loves Easter eggs. Maybe they can find it. But ochi, we talked, we know ochi is not going to win at the end.

He's going to die in the sense of pasaana. Wonderful idiot. He's an idiot. He, whatever, he gets the weird, droid pirate army of best-dune that suck.

He gets told by steadfast that, oh, when I just get out here, I got to go drink and smoke some dead sticks before I'm elevated. So yeah, ochi is cool. He's dead. That's fine.

But did you like ochi the way he's tracking this family? Everything I hear goes to the end. He's very hateful. And he's like these characters that you love to hate because you know he's going to fail.

Yes, he's going to kill them, but he's never going to get too ex ago. And it's like, I loved how consistent Adam Christopher is with the Darth Vader comic where he's just an idiot. Every time they mention he's a Jedi killer, I'm like, how are the Jedi getting killed by this guy? I think that's another guess or wrong thing.

Maybe killed one by mistake. And the greatest Jedi killer ever. We actually see him try to fight the probably below and yeah, no. Yeah, makes window gets there.

I don't know why mace didn't kill him, but that's another story. We'll get all right. So let's jump to our second point. Esoph reading, we mentioned it a couple of times.

It's a big boy. It's a big almost 500 pages of Shadow the Sith. And as someone who was just reading other Star Wars books, the letters are a bit smaller. They are pretty small.

So all the you've mentioned here before, you've mentioned Twitter, you mentioned a bunch of places, you take your time reading books. Was this an easy read or did you find yourself struggling through it? So listen, if I hadn't committed to this episode today, I would have taken more time with it. But as I told you, I read the first 100 pages in one sitting, which is completely rare for me.

I don't usually do that. And it's a Star Wars book. It's based on like a Star Wars book that scenes are, the action scenes are quick. When I saw the length of the book, I got scared.

I was like, is this going to be like a drawn thing? Because that's my go to here. Those aren't not only long, they are dense. And this is long.

This is not dense. I think it's very straightforward with everything. So in that sense, and it has the shorter chapters, I think it has like 67 chapters. So it helps with the pacing of it.

And I didn't really find it a hard read. I don't know about it. Same. I probably took me close a week to finishing maybe a little bit less because I wasn't dying to read it.

And I don't mean that in the sense that I didn't want to read it. I read it during my lunch break at work. I need a little place that I couldn't find. I wasn't sitting okay, three hours.

I'm just going to read for three hours. So I'm just okay, I'm at work. I'm not doing anything. I'm at lunch.

I have this break or whatever. I'm going to take 25 minutes and read as fast as I can. And it went pretty fast. Even though, yes, 466, whatever pages, it's a lot.

You mentioned Thron. And I said here, 20,000 times, I love you, Thron. I'm not the biggest demo that is on fun. The way he writes, I'm like, come on, dude, you gotta give me something else because I don't care that the vector that the Starship came in wasn't at the same point of entrance from the gravitational pull of the planet when the bigger Starship from the whatever, maybe like, I don't care.

Just tell me about the people inside and what they're feeling. I just want the PPPU. I care about the PPPU but more the people getting PPPU. Sure.

Yeah, no, no, sure. But it's something we've talked about. But it's not that some of these on is a poor writer. He's not.

It's just not for me. I just like, I just like things to be concise. And the X-wings came in and they shot everything. I'm like, yes.

Yeah, always. We're going to the rail of whatever. I don't care. I compare Timo Tistan's writing Starship battles and Space Battle to what I'm.

Let me look for his name. I can even read from the free. Alexander free. Thank you.

Shadowfall, the Shadow Wind Trilladi or the Alpha of its quad. The Alpha of its quad. I just saw Shadowfall. You know what?

You guys know what I'm talking about. Those are long books. They have a lot of Starship battles for their personal. You feel everything that each character is feeling inside their Starship because most of them are smaller vessels.

Thrown and all those books are these big, massive dreadnoughts. And he's talking about how. Yeah, I don't care about how much damage that ship took. If the people inside, I don't feel nothing about them.

That's my problem with the way he writes. It's very technical. This book wasn't that. It's long as a Thrown book.

Short chapters that you said, I love that the titles of each chapter tells you where they are and at what time. Things are taking place. So you know, okay, I'm here. I know where the story's going.

So he made the story flow a lot faster. So I didn't have a problem with it being as long as it was because the story kept me coming back to it. So in that sense, I loved it. And we said before he had a lot to deal with here, connecting the sequel to the original trilogy, writing legend, legend characters, bringing new characters, creating a bunch of lore.

He had a lot to do. I think he was done in a way that all fans of Star Wars can get into it. So I think it's a writing I'll give him. It's a plus long book, but you can get into it.

All right, characters. We took a lot of our characters already. So maybe we'll go quick in here, but again, working with a bunch of legacy characters or not a bunch, Luke and Lando, but two very loved, beloved legacy characters. Did he hit him for you?

I think you said already that it feels like those characters from the movie and where they would be at this one in their life between those two trilogy. Yeah, totally, totally agree with that. And I was just thinking, I think Lando and Luke kind of have opposing arcs. Lando starts in a dark place and ends up in a hopeful place.

He's got to do everything he can to find his daughter. Luke, on the other hand, he starts out in a very good place. And he doesn't end in a dark place, but he's starting to go there. And I think we see the first shadows of what's going to happen later and him not knowing how to deal with his relationship with Kylo.

And that kind of broke my heart. Kylo, Ben Solo, sorry, Ben Solo sees him as his uncle. He clearly loves him. And maybe he has a connection to him, and maybe seeing Luke pushing back a little bit.

Master Skywalker. Master Skywalker. Yeah, I'm Padawan. Maybe that is pushing Ben a little bit closer to Kylo.

I love that line with the... Ben has like very long hair. I'm still not sure I'm gonna force him to cut it. It's too late.

It's funny because my wife just got my son's hair because it's too long. But just a little. So I was gonna leave it for later, but since you brought it up, this relationship between Luke Skywalker and Ben Solo. And I think it's touched to show how it's breaking that you said, after being more formal, which I understand, you're a master, but they're by themselves.

It's not like they're in a group setting. But to me was, how Luke is not there. He got back from this journey that took, I don't know, let's say a week, he's there for one day, and then just leave again. Yeah, you can take care of them.

Yeah, just show them. They're like, do them. They just call me Padawan. I'm new to this.

I'm 16 years old. It's just leaving, leaving by himself. Here's Luke. I told you, it doesn't want you.