Review: Deceived

The other day I was finally able to track this book down at the library here in the city. I'm still getting used to the system here, but I dove in head first and now have about 8 books on hold waiting for me. But back to Star Wars. I know Paul Kemp is new to the land of writing Star Wars novels, and for that I definitely cut him a bit of slack. However, the first book I read of his, Crosscurrent, was much better than I had expected from a first time Star Wars novelist. Going on that I decided to give Deceived a chance even though I typically have a hard time getting through the books that take place thousands of years before anything I'm used to reading about in the Star Wars timeline. It's not so much that I mind not having the usual characters around, it's that I get very confused when they start tossing around the words 'Republic' and 'Empire' and I have to keep reminding myself it's not the same factions that I'm used to because they don't exist for another thousand or so years according to Star Wars history.

Anyway, once I did some Wookieepedia searches to get an understanding of what was going on and who fought in what war and all that I was able to really get into the story. I'm still not entirely sure how this book and the other Old Republic book, Fatal Alliance, fit in with the game that's coming out but that's ok by me since I don't plan on playing the game anyway. The only thing I can tell is that the novels are being used to introduce characters that will be seen in the game. But I could be wrong, that's just a guess on my part.

Part of the reason why I'm not sure how the book is supposed to tie in with the game- assuming it's supposed to at all- is because to me the story was a little weak. I don't know whether that's Kemp's fault or lack of support from those in charge who give out book assignments to authors. Even though I say the story is weak, that doesn't mean it wasn't enjoyable. It was also very well done in terms of how the different character story lines fit together and the pacing of the book was also well done. It's pretty exciting throughout and I didn't always guess correctly what was going to happen next.

I really enjoyed the characters in the book, from Zeerid to Aryn and even the characterization for Darth Malgus was quite interesting. I will give Kemp a lot of credit when it comes to the fact that even though Darth Malgus is the bad guy, it's hard not to almost want to see him succeed just so he can show up all the other Sith. And so when the good guys win it's that much better.

Overall, Deceived may not be one of my favorite Star Wars books ever written but it was still a fun read. I hope Kemp gets to stick around writing books for us Star Wars fans because I think that he has some really good story-telling qualities. I recently read the first few pages of Riptide thanks to StarWars.com and let's just say that I'm looking forward to that much more than I was to reading Deceived.