Star Wars: Shatterpoint [Hardcover]

In this book you learn of Mace's journey back to his home planet in his search of his missing Padawan: Depa. Depa had been on a mission to make the local Guerrilla join the Republic and fight the planetary forces which had joined the Separatists.
You will see how Mace finds out by himself how has his ability to control the force diminished and lost many of his capabilities.

But I was mentioning before that you the good thing was in the last pages. It's true. You have to endure boring chapters and chapters of Mace's adventures in the jungle until you find interesting stuff. This almost made me leave the book but somehow managed to keep on reading.

The story is not bad, but it could have shortened to a 200 page book, and you would have gotten the same...

Something goes wrong. The Council receives a message that shows a massacre of civilians (women and children) that is purportedly orchestrated by Depa herself. This should be unthinkable for a Jedi. Against the judgment of Chancellor Palpatine, Mace Windu decides to return to his birthplanet and investigate. You see, Depa Billiba is more than just a Jedi; she was once Mace Windu's Padawan apprentice. Palpatine wonders if Mace would be able to strike down Depa if the situation calls for it.

Mace journeys alone through the jungles of Haruun Kal in search of Depa. The war that is taking place is one that has been going on for generations (it is, ultimately, a civil war), but with the Clone Wars having begun and the Separatists having interfered, there is a new level of brutality and genocide taking place. It is into this horror that Windu arrives.

"Shatterpoint" is unlike any Star Wars novel that I have read. It is much darker (which fits the jungle theme), and it is a violent novel. It is also a much better written novel than what one might assume with the Star Wars name attached to it. No matter what universe this story takes place in, "Shatterpoint" is a very good novel. It just happens to be Star Wars. I appreciated the switching of viewpoints between the typical third person storytelling to excerpts of "the private journals of Mace Windu". Between the two perspectives, Matthew Stover did an excellent job of storytelling, and both felt appropriate. While in the movies, Windu has a very limited role (even being a Senior member of the Jedi Council), but "Shatterpoint" gives Mace Windu a voice and a personality and we get an excellent idea of what sort of man Windu is and what drives him. We see his strengths and his flaws and he in one novel he is a stronger character than I had possibly imagined him to be. No longer is Mace the Jedi who is interesting only because he is played in the movies by Samuel Jackson. He is a character who was given a dark, gritty novel. "Shatterpoint" brings the Clone Wars into perspective and shows how it impacts individual planets, what it is going to bring to the Jedi and why, and the difficulty the Republic will have in possibly winning the war. We even see what it might take and all of this is told in a story about one little planet and a fallen Jedi. I can only hope that "Shatterpoint" will be indicative of the quality of the Star Wars novels (past and future), because this is a very good one.

-Joe Sherry