Book Review - Star Wars The Old Republic: Revan

So, time for a good old fashioned book review. Unlike the delectable EJ, I'll be sticking to boring old written words rather than a video. I'm camera shy. Honest. It has absolutely nothing to do with that really embarrassing video of me dancing the Macarena. Really.

So today's offering is Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn. I'll keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but only so far as the book itself goes. If you haven't played Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, stop right here, spoilers abound. Mind you, if you haven't played at least the first game in that series, I'm not entirely sure you'd even want to read this, it being the 'proper' third instalment of that series, more so than Old Republic itself.

Right then, are we ready? Nobody here that shouldn't be? Okay. The first thing worth mentioning here is that I was not really a fan of Karpyshyn as a novelist. I'd previously read Mass Effect: Revelation, and struggled to get to the end. Despite being set in the über-awesome Mass Effect setting, and featuring none other than Saren Arterius in a staring role, it just never managed to capture that Mass Effect vibe.

"But I'm a writer's dream, damn you!"

Not that he's a bad writer, of course. Were talking about a bloke who worked on some of my favourite games ever; Baldur's Gate II, Jade Empire, KOTOR, and the Mass Effect series. But writing a novel and writing a video-game (which I assume is a bit like writing a script, rightly or wrongly) are two different kettles of fish, and Karpyshyn didn't seem to have found his feet for that one.

But I went in with an open mind, I promise. I mean, this is Revan we're talking about. He's pretty much a blank slate as far as characterisation goes, but still manages to bring a massive amount of awesome to the table. Let's face it, finding out who Darth Revan's real identity was about a thousand times cooler than Vader turning out to be Luke's dad, and like Vader he also had that awesome, iconic look.

"Ignore my fugly apprentice, there's a reason
the artist made me look taller than his two
meter ass."

 So needless to say, I was a bit disappointed that the way Karpyshyn deals with this setup is to take a brand new character and split the book fifty fifty with him. I can understand the reasons behind it, but lets be realistic; 90% of the people who pick this up are probably doing it to read about Revan, not Lord Scourge.

Yes, Lord Scourge. In the long line of bad villain names, that one deserves some kind of award. I'm not sure Karpyshyn named him mind, seeing as he's a character in the new Old Republic game, and has his name mocked within the narrative, but it's still cringe worthy. It doesn't help that despite half the book focusing on a Sith warrior, at no point do we really get any insights into the Sith themselves, or the rise of the new (or rather old) Empire Bioware have created for Old Republic. Instead we're left with what feels like a really long introduction to a fairly two-dimension character. 

Revan himself fares much better, though he still comes across a touch bland. He's not you're typical Jedi even after his redemption, and still seems unable to resist winding up those he doesn't like (his meeting with the irritating Atris from KOTOR II is one of the more entertaining moments), and when he's not playing the family man with Bastila he's spending time in cantinas with Mandalorian sociopaths.

Canderous Ordo: Apparently Mandalorians are
so cool even being stalker-ish Revan fanboys
doesn't make them any less badass.

But even here, Revan doesn't seem to really pop. There's no real characterisation, just Revan as a sort of pop culture icon swinging a lightsaber from time to time. And that's a problem; nobody expects these sort of books to be amazing examples of literature; I don't expect a Warhammer 40k book to be the new Kerouac, and I don't expect Shakespeare from Star Wars. But books based on IPs stand or fall on their representation of the setting and the representation of their characters.  

So, all in all not great. So the really surprising thing? Despite all that, I actually didn't hate it. It's not a good read but neither is it a difficult read, so it didn't take long to finish. For me, the real enjoyment was in closing the story started in KOTOR; frankly, Old Republic doesn't do that at all. It's not what I hoped for, but for the sake of a few hours it was nice to revisit things.