Books like Blood of the Empire

Special thanks to my goodreads friend Mogsy for making me aware of the SWTOR tie-in comic series' existence.The funny thing is, I never knew these comics existed until Mogsy mentioned The Lost Suns in her review of Drew Karpyshyn's Old Republic Tie in Novel, Annihilation. Did some research to see what it was, and I found that there were actually three tie-in comics done for The Old Republic, bioware's epic Star Wars MMORPG.I think SWTOR is an extremely underrated video game, or just that the immense vitriol it seems to get is almost completely unwarranted. I find there to be three big complaints with it: 1) that it seemingly ruined the characters of Revan and the Exile; 2) SWTOR isn't KOTOR 3; and 3) it is just a rip-off of World of Warcraft, and it wasn't Star Wars' WoW answer that many MMO players were hoping it would be at launch. So in less than a year the player base crashed, the game was forced to go to a Free-To-Play model (which another group of haters see this as making the game inferior), and now it seems to be the target of every KOTOR fan's hatred. Despite that, SWTOR is still going reasonably strong, with a new expansion pending called Knights of the Eternal Throne. Here's my take on the game: while it doesn't reach the greatness of either of the KotOR RPGs, I still really love it, and have had countless hours of fun playing the game with my girlfriend. While I can understand why people don't like the idea of the characters they defined and played as in the KotOR games being added to the MMO as NPCs, I don't think their story arcs as a whole were ruined by the MMO (or the book Revan for that matter) and even so they don't play so big of a role that their inclusion completely destroys the game. And when you take out the inclusion of Revan and the Exile, the world of SWTOR still has such a lush treasure trove of other great storylines and characters to offer. Even without the video game, Deceived does a decent job fleshing out the character of Malgus (as well as providing some good new ones) and Annihilation to me is the most underrated Star Wars novel out there. Also, it is completely ridiculous to call SWTOR a terrible game just because there is no KOTOR 3. While I don't think it works as a KotOR 3 replacement, it is a great MMO on its own that provides memorable new characters, worlds, and lore. I will admit the weakest aspect of the game is the gameplay, for the gameplay, especially combat, is clunky. But the story elements and being able to roleplay our characters with my girlfriend more than make up for it. I have taken a hiatus from the game but I have been really wanting to get back into it. So where does this comic fall into all this? Well, it's part of the comic book trilogy that ties into the SWTOR video game. I was excited to pick this up because I love SWTOR and the Old Republic era, but it ended up being a really big let down. THE STORY: The goal of this comic was to flesh out the backstory of a character that plays an important role in the Sith Inquisitor class story. It follows Teneb Kel, a young sith who was formerly a slave. He goes through some revelations, battles a female sith who turns out to be a traitor, and talks to the dark council about it. There's probably more, but I really can't remember. It is that boring.THE BAD: This is one of the most boring Star Wars stories I have ever come across. The characters are incredibly bland. If you asked me what made Teneb Kel different from the sith lady he has to fight, or any of the other characters in this for that matter, it is only because the plot demands it or its because I recognize them from the game. The plot is nothing to write home about either, in that it is just a straightforward rise through the ranks story. Yet, it focuses very little on those elements, basically just spitting out backstory and plot dialogue until the next action scene occurs. Speaking of which, you know there is a problem when your character dialogue is more exposition heavy than your narration. I thought Tom Veitch's comic book writing was bad. At least he acknowledged how boring all that text was by stuffing it into a narration box. This feels like Shymalan's The Last Airbender! Nearly every single line of dialogue is used for exposition, plot, or backstory. No character development, no emotional connections, nothing! Oh and did I mention the narration? THE GOOD: Even though I rated it lower, at least this comic is better than Dark Empire I. And even though it was incredibly boring, I found nothing so bad that it offended me.I will give a touch of credit that Alexander Freed at least tried to cut back on his use of narration... oh screw it I'm scraping for straws here. The one positive thing I can say about this comic is with the artwork, and that it does look nice. When we do get to the obligatory action sequences they have some pretty unique and cool visuals. Overall the action was as fun as it could possibly have been, especially taking into account how little the artists had to work with. However, the art is not spectacular in any way and does not save the comic.THE CONCLUSION: Final rating is 1 star.Blood of the Empire is definitely quite bad, but it is not offensively horrible. I gave it a 1 star because I couldn't pick anything out that was good enough to give it two stars. In comparison, even though Dark Empire I was a dated piece of garbage that was more painful to read than this was, at least it had a good portrayal of Han Solo. Also, at least that one had the advantage of being memorably atrocious. This was quite the borefest, but it wasn't as offensively horrendous as Star Wars: Princess Leia and it was much mercifully shorter than Fatal Alliance. Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is that this comic is dull, forgettable, an not visually interesting enough to stand out at all. Even if you just wanted to see some pretty looking comic visuals, I'd flip through Obi-Wan and Anakin instead. Even if you are attached to the Sith Inquisitor storyline in SWTOR, I still think Blood of the Empire is a waste of time.