Action & Adventure
![Paul S. Kemp - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_paul_s_kemp.jpg)
Deceived: Star Wars Legends (The Old Republic) (Star Wars: The Old Republic - Legends)
The Sith Empire rises from the ashes, set on a path of destruction and devastation in the wake of one of its most sinister dark lords-Darth Malgus.
Our time has come. For three hundred years we prepared; we grew stronger while you rested in your cradle of power, believing your people were safe and protected. You were trusted to lead the Republic, but you were deceived, as our powers of the dark side have blinded you. . . . You were deceived and now your Republic shall fall.
It is a time of vengeance in a galaxy far, far away.
Darth Malgus steps out of the shadows to lead the Sith in striking a fatal blow to the heart of the Jedi Order. Crimson blades rain death and pain upon the Republic, seizing control of Coruscant. But even in triumph, Darth Malgus discovers betrayal by his own brethren, a quest for peace with the Republic that will only corrode their hard-won power.
As the dark lord plots against the Sith leading their own kind to ruin, vengeance hunts him in turn. Her name is Aryn Leneer-a Jedi with nothing left to lose on a quest to avenge her slain master.
Our time has come. For three hundred years we prepared; we grew stronger while you rested in your cradle of power, believing your people were safe and protected. You were trusted to lead the Republic, but you were deceived, as our powers of the dark side have blinded you. . . . You were deceived and now your Republic shall fall.
It is a time of vengeance in a galaxy far, far away.
Darth Malgus steps out of the shadows to lead the Sith in striking a fatal blow to the heart of the Jedi Order. Crimson blades rain death and pain upon the Republic, seizing control of Coruscant. But even in triumph, Darth Malgus discovers betrayal by his own brethren, a quest for peace with the Republic that will only corrode their hard-won power.
As the dark lord plots against the Sith leading their own kind to ruin, vengeance hunts him in turn. Her name is Aryn Leneer-a Jedi with nothing left to lose on a quest to avenge her slain master.
Readers Top Reviews
Mr. O. BegRollo T
It's definitely a page turner and I enjoyed the book thoroughly. The only downside was that it felt a little short and could have done with some more side stories about the characters. You don't really have to play the game to read the books, since I haven't, but I did understand much of what was going on and it nice to see both Sith and Jedi getting almost the same level of focus in the book. Overall 7.5/10 (= 4 stars): it could have been a longer book, as I finished it in just under one week (~ 10-11 hours of reading time).
Lord DepravusMr.
Paul Kemp's first Star Wars novel, Crosscurrent, was a pleasant surprise and possibly one of the best Star Wars books I've read in some time. So it was with mixed feelings I picked up his second effort. Would it be as good as his first, or would he prove to be a one-hit wonder? Right from the opening page, this book was a good read. Paul Kemp has a way of writing that makes you want to keep reading and almost makes the text come to life. Although I felt the plot was slightly predictable, it didn't take away from the enjoyment. I thought the book was just the right length for the story being told. Any longer would have made it drag on. The half happy/half sad ending was also a nice touch in my opinion. My only real complaint - such that it is - is that Malgus was a little too much like Vader in terms of his appearance; the only difference seemed to be the lack of a helmet. In all honesty, I don't think it was quite as good as his first book but it was still very enjoyable. I'd certainly recommend it to a fan of the books...
spalanzLord Depra
I've been a longtime reader of Star Wars novels, from the glory days of the Bantams right through to the present day. There are a fair number of turkeys in the run, and while I wouldn't necessarily say this should be among their number, I did find it lacking in some respects. As a standalone novel, Deceived is largely okay, but there are a lot of good points that make me like it, but I couldn't help thinking that it was somehow flawed. Set in the Old Republic era, the novel ties into the MMORPG "The Old Republic", and the opening sequence of the novel has already been seen in one of the trailers for the game. That was a nice touch. However, I do have a slight issue with the Old Republic novels (that isn't limited to Deceived alone, I should add), insofar as they reference events that it is assumed we, the readers, know about, but which have not been "seen" by us, the real-world public. Fatal Alliance had the same problem, and I was left feeling a bit lost, like I'd missed something important, when things like the Battle of Alderaan were mentioned. I assume, though, this is nothing to do with the author, but by design of the publisher. I'm sure someone who has played the game would not have these same feelings, either, but nevertheless it did make me frustrated whenever such references cropped up. The story is basically about one Jedi's desire to avenge the murder of her master during the sacking of Coruscant. Now, Star Wars fans the world over know that Jedi do not seek vengeance, etc etc, but this seems to be a disturbing trend of a lot of the EU literature to try to make Jedi more "human", but this is misplaced, to my way of thinking. I accept that it was the whole point of Anakin's fall to the dark side, and as an isolated incident I have no problem with it per se, but we now have so many others doing the same thing as to make it a regular occurrence, and to an extent, the story of Anakin's fall has lost a lot of its force because of this. Personally, I would like to see a story about a really ascetic Jedi who was completely dispassionate in the face of personal loss - that would be really different! There is, of course, a smuggler character, who is again a distressing stereotype of "the noble rogue". There is a sort of romance between the Jedi and the smuggler, which is so under-developed that it completely surprised me when I got to the end because I genuinely didn't see it happening! The smuggler storyline is, for me, one of the absolute worst parts of the book. There is a long sequence where he goes to visit his daughter on what I think is supposed to be his homeworld, and the location is described in such terrestrial terms that it doesn't feel like Star Wars at all. For pages of the book I felt torn out of the GFFA setting by this effort to depict normality. And on a side note, I thought there were entirely too m...
K.spalanzLord Dep
The asking price of $27 as of this review is too much for the audiobook. Better to get it with a deal under Audible. The reader's voice is terrific in this. He does a couple of ranges from the narrator to a female's voice to an elderly man. What's great is that they even got a different voice actor for Malgus. I don't know much about the game but it might be the same voice actor. Splendid job from them both. The book was written well. For each chapter, the book likes to jump between the story of a smuggler and back to Malgus. In the beginning, it's fine to skip every other chapter if you want to. If you're new to audiobooks, it will take an entire day of listening if you are capable of doing so. If you feel like you've missed something important, it's okay to go back. I find myself missing in and out of the story sometimes but was still able to connect the pieces later on. I am currently interested in Sith lore and the more ancient eras of Star Wars and this was definitely satisfactory for that. If you want more visuals and a more condensed version, YouTube videos made by fans would be a better fit.
Mike S.K.spalanzL
This is a Star Wars Legends story (meaning not a part of the canon storyline of the movies and the books that have been put out since Disney acquired Lucasfilm). It involves a Sith Lord named Darth Malgus, who ransacks the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and kills Jedi Master Ven Zallow while on On Alderaan the Jedi and Sith are trying to work out the peace treaty. Jedi Knight, Aryn Leneer, who had sensed her Master Zallow's death in the Force, turns her back on the Jedi Order to go to Coruscant, find out who killed her former master and kill the murderer. There are a couple of intertwined plotlines in the novel. Aryn looking for Malgus and the Jedi-Sith peace negotiations. Malgus hates that the Sith Empire is negotiating peace with the Jedi, and Aryn hates that the Jedi are negotiating a peace treaty with the Sith after the Sith attacked the Jedi Temple. The crux of the story is whether Aryn will fall to the dark side in her quest for revenge, and Malgus's plan to take over the Sith Empire. The book has pretty steady pacing with the action spaced out well and does a good job with character development. In the Legends timeline, it is set about 3500 years before A New Hope, so not even Yoda is around at the time of the events of the novel. Even though none of the "major" Star Wars characters are in the book, it is no less entertaining than any of the novels that were set after Return of the Jedi. Of course, it is not part of the official Star Wars canon anymore, but it is still worth reading if you are one that picks and chooses different Star Wars novels to read.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Day One
Fatman shivered, her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantell's atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighter's cockpit.
He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.
He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky he'd encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when he'd carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.
You always hope to hit deep water, they'd say. But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock.
Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didn't matter, really. The effect would be the same.
"Coming out of the dark," he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.
No one acknowledged the words. He flew Fatman alone, worked alone. The only things he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He had his reasons, but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.
He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.
"Deep water and it feels fine," he said, smiling.
On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere he'd have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.
And those were just the people who ran the place.
Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-being's-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.
And all that suited him fine.
Fatman broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantell's northern hemisphere filled out Zeerid's field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on Fatman's hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the water's surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its north–south axis.
Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.
He pulled back on the ion engines and slowed still further. A yawn forced itself past his teeth. He sat up straight and tried to blink away the fatigue, but it was as stubborn as an angry bantha. He'd given the ship to the autopilot and dozed during the hyperspace run from Vulta, but that was all the rack he'd had in the last two standard days. It was catching up to him.
He scratched at the stubble of his beard, rubbed the back of his neck, and plugged the drop coordinates into the navicomp. The comp linked with one of Ord Mantell's unsecured geosyncsats and fed back the location and course to Fatman. Zeerid's HUD displayed it on the cockpit canopy. He eyed the location and put his finger on the destination.
"Some island no one has ever heard of, up here where no one ever goes. Sounds about right."
Zeerid turned the ship over to the autopilot, and it banked him toward the island.
His mind wandered as Fatman cut through the sky. The steady patter of ice and snow on the canopy sang him a lullaby. His thoughts drifted back through the clouds to the past, to the days before the accident, before he'd left the marines. Back then, he'd worn the uniform proudly and had still been able to look at himself in the mirror-
He caught himself, caught the burgeoning self-pity, and stopped the thoughts cold. He knew where it would lead.
"Stow that, soldier," he said to himself.
He was what he was, and things were what they were.
"Focus on the work, Z-man."
He checked his location again...
Day One
Fatman shivered, her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantell's atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighter's cockpit.
He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.
He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky he'd encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when he'd carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.
You always hope to hit deep water, they'd say. But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock.
Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didn't matter, really. The effect would be the same.
"Coming out of the dark," he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.
No one acknowledged the words. He flew Fatman alone, worked alone. The only things he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He had his reasons, but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.
He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.
"Deep water and it feels fine," he said, smiling.
On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere he'd have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.
And those were just the people who ran the place.
Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-being's-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.
And all that suited him fine.
Fatman broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantell's northern hemisphere filled out Zeerid's field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on Fatman's hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the water's surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its north–south axis.
Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.
He pulled back on the ion engines and slowed still further. A yawn forced itself past his teeth. He sat up straight and tried to blink away the fatigue, but it was as stubborn as an angry bantha. He'd given the ship to the autopilot and dozed during the hyperspace run from Vulta, but that was all the rack he'd had in the last two standard days. It was catching up to him.
He scratched at the stubble of his beard, rubbed the back of his neck, and plugged the drop coordinates into the navicomp. The comp linked with one of Ord Mantell's unsecured geosyncsats and fed back the location and course to Fatman. Zeerid's HUD displayed it on the cockpit canopy. He eyed the location and put his finger on the destination.
"Some island no one has ever heard of, up here where no one ever goes. Sounds about right."
Zeerid turned the ship over to the autopilot, and it banked him toward the island.
His mind wandered as Fatman cut through the sky. The steady patter of ice and snow on the canopy sang him a lullaby. His thoughts drifted back through the clouds to the past, to the days before the accident, before he'd left the marines. Back then, he'd worn the uniform proudly and had still been able to look at himself in the mirror-
He caught himself, caught the burgeoning self-pity, and stopped the thoughts cold. He knew where it would lead.
"Stow that, soldier," he said to himself.
He was what he was, and things were what they were.
"Focus on the work, Z-man."
He checked his location again...
