Reading: Lost Tribe of the Sith

How excellent that the first books on the list are free e-books? Lost Tribe of the Sith is a series of 8 e-books written by John Jackson Miller (who also wrote the Knight Errant novel- this guy knows his Old Republic Era). The free e-book series was released alongside the Fate of the Jedi series (set after 40 ABY in the Legacy Era), describing the ancient events that led to the Sith that Luke Skywalker encounters in that series.

They're fairly short: the entire collection is 324 pages according to my Kindle. That's including the table of contents, timeline, and the excerpt from Fate at the end. I'm really pleased to have such an easy introduction to my journey.


Because everyone loves a complainer, I'll launch that off. I was very swiftly reminded of why I tended to not read the Star Wars novels in my younger days. Before the Wookiepedia existed, before Google was as fantastic as it is, you had very little chance of finding an image of a particular alien species if the book description confused you. And in the Star Wars novels, it invariably will...

"We've got nothing, Commander!" The serpent-haired engineer flickered before him, off-kilter and out of focus. Korsin knew things belowdecks must be bad if his upright, uptight Ho'Din genius was off-balance. "Reactors are down! And we've got structural failures in the hull, both aft and-"

That's all we get as a description of this engineer (named Lohjoy). "Serpent-haired?" I thought, "upright, uptight? How do those apply to an alien species?" I struggled to get a good picture in my mind of this race and could not recall any such from the movies, games, and shows I've seen. So I took to the Ho'Din article on Wookiepedia.

Is this what you imagined? Certainly wasn't for me. Their hair is not serpents, but simply looks similar and are thermal sensors. What is disappointing is the implication, based on the article, that Lohjoy must have been a rare one of his kind. Not many leave their planet and they really only expanded their own technical capabilities as of 300 ABY. This book is set around 5,000 ABY. I somewhat wish such an interesting possibility had not been used for such a throwaway role. I feel like JJM just wanted an obscure alien to use on page 1 to make it hit home that this is  Star Wars, there's aliens and stuff.

Either way, that nit-picking aside, Korsin is an interesting character so far and I am enjoying the book.