Bane of the Sith

I'd like to announce the newest fanfiction Knight and I will be working on together. It's going to be a parody of Drew Karpyshyn's 'Darth Bane' book/s. The title is 'The Marvellous Misadventures of Darth Bane'.

This post will likely double as a little review for the books and a discussion of Karpyshyn in general. He's the head writer at Bioware, the games studio who made our beloved Mass Effect and our even more beloved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. As such he is a genius. Both of those games utterly sucked us in and turned me into a videogame fan and a Star Wars fan all over again after I had successfully given both up. Really, the quality of the writing in those games is superb. It's a popular saying among fans that the Star Wars game is better-written than the newer movies, and I agree.

On the sucess of these, the giant machine that makes the decisions at Lucas Arts commissioned Karpyshyn to write a Star Wars novel set in the distant past, like his game. And so we at last have a fully fleshed-out biography of Darth Bane, the Sith Lord who introduced the idea that there should only ever be two Sith at any one time. Personally I find this 'Rule of Two' idiotic - what if one of them dies? What if both of them die? And how much of a massive drain on the master's time must this apprentice be?

Anyway, if you suspend your disbelief about that, then Bane is kind of a legend in the SW lore. He has a silly name, too. You have to suspend your disbelief a lot when it comes to Star Wars novels.

The first book was good, but perhaps took too long to get going. The second book was also good, but was clearly rushed. The structure is all over the place - it's more like a series of short stories than a novel - and certain characters (including Bane, who is almost relegated to a supporting role in his own book) are a little two-dimensional. Both were great fun, though - epic and exciting and full of unique and imaginitive new lore. Better than a lot of Star Wars titles.

But! The problem we both had with the first book is that the legendary Darth Bane comes across as a bit of a stooge. The first book starts with his unhappy childhood then goes onto his sucky life in a mining colony, his prowess in cheating at cards, his accidental manslaughter of some guy and subsequent freakout... he is a lot less driven and dominating than one would think. When the other characters almost force him into the Sith, he spends the next 100 pages at school - he's the new student at the evil wizards academy, and as such gets picked on by everyone and keeps getting beaten up and losing his nerve. After this a new girl starts - and she makes a fool of him too. In the third act he finally gets his act together by studying really hard and kissing the girl - then he kills aaaaall the other Sith so that he can rebuild them with this whole 'two people' thing. Again, this sounds a like a very silly plan to me, espescially since he's still brand new and has barely learned anything... but you know.

The second book - I won't spoil it but suffice to say, he comes across as an utter idiot. During many of the chapters about him, I was laughing out loud at his neverending incompetence. In one chapter he crashes his own spaceship because he was too busy yelling at hallucinations to drive. In another he spends five years building a holocron then smashes it by mistake (I was howling with laughter when Drew described his reaction).

(I should point out that most of the ridiculous episodes are not really Drew's fault. The book is apparently based on the aptly named short story 'Bane of the Sith' by Kevin J Anderson - and the majority of Bane's greatest failures can be attributed to this. Similarly, I think the stupid name 'Bane' is the fault of Terry Brooks, who wrote the dodgy Episode 1 novelisation.)

The guy achieves literally nothing in this book, except training a more useful apprentice during the 'Ten Years Later' period. All we see him do is bugger things up over and over again while she picks up the pieces and furthers the plot.

So - yeah. Darth Bane was apparently a bumbling fool who only rebuilt the Sith order by pure luck and with great help from more sensible people, like a bartender and his own apprentice.

Hence the parody. Although we love Drew Karpyshyn deeply, we're going to make fun of these books. Should be a laugh for anyone who has read the books. This is one that Knight is already working on and I've just joined in with some ideas. I've read what he has so far and it's very funny.

Coming soon!