Star Wars: Tarkin Paperback – June 30, 2015 by James Luceno (Del Rey)

If viewed as a stand alone Star Wars story this novel is very good. It tells of the adventures of Tarkin and Darth Vader as they travel around in space to stop a band of rebels who stole an Imperial ship. It lacks as a Star Wars novel because much of the book is in space and because it is mostly gray-scale in backdrop. Intertwined in the novel is the story of Tarkin's youth as he is taken on survival training trips on his homeworld. These parts are short and don't utilize a lot of the exotic planets that is common in the Star Wars universe. This Vader/Tarkin adventure takes place entirely before the events of Episode IV. The story takes place in a manner of days and doesn't explore the relationship between Tarkin and Vader as it existed before or after. It mentions Trakin's suspicious of Darth Vader once being Anakin Skywalker but doesn't explore it any more than a mere mention.

I read this book after reading the author's previous novel Darth Plagueis. By comparison Tarkin is not as good. Darth Plagueis goes into great details about the histories of Senator Palpatine, his master Darth Plagueis, and his protege Darth Maul. Darth Plagueis has a great tie-in to the Star Wars movies and was very wide in scope and has great character detail. Tarkin by comparison is very narrow in scope and vague in details. Tarkin meets the requirements for Star Wars "canon" where Darth Plagueis is just an extended universe novel. Because of this I felt like Tarkin was restricted from going into many areas that the reader would like to explore. Too much detail about the Death Star construction or about Tarkin's last moments might conflict with the anthology movie Star Wars: Rogue One to be released in 2016. The book is lacking because of this. We do not get a great sense of Tarkin's motives or the actions that were going on in between the scenes during the movies like the destruction of Alderaan or the Battle of Yavin. When I think of Tarkin those are the most infamous moments Star Wars fans know of him and what a book about him should be about.