Book notes: Star Wars: Maul by Joe Schreiber

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Star Wars: Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber

Synopsis:

“It’s kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy’s worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object that will enable the Sith to conquer the galaxy.

Sith lords Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious are determined to possess the prize. And one of the power-hungry duo has his own treacherous plans for it. But first, their fearsome apprentice must take on a bloodthirsty prison warden, a cannibal gang, cutthroat crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and an unspeakable alien horror. No one else could brave such a gauntlet of death and live. But no one else is the dreaded dark-side disciple known as Darth Maul.” -Audible

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Opening thoughts:

Picking up this book to follow this year’s trend of reading Star Wars books as it is very enjoyable for me. Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is easily my favorite movie as it’s what I grew up on and my introduction to the Star Wars universe, so I’m interested in seeing how this side story covers Darth Maul.

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Key notes:

Chapter 1: Cog Hive Seven

• Maul was in a prison facility and was fighting other creatures 

Chapter 2: Sadiki

• The warden of the prison ran a gambling fight club and the Zabrak (Maul) who won recently caused a lot of people to lose a lot of money to the odds 

Chapter 3: Hot Mess

• His mission was to identify and make contact with a specific person in the prison

Chapter 4: Coyle

Chapter 5: Knockout Mouse

• The aging human fighter traded credits to a guard to potentially help him and his son escape

Chapter 6: The Whole Thing Runs on Blood

Chapter 7: Gravity Massive

Chapter 8: Mute Math

Chapter 9: Straphanger

• He continued looking for Inmate 0

Chapter 10: Skin in the Game

Chapter 11: From the Land of the Ice and Snow

• Maul managed to fight off the savage creature and survived his second match

Chapter 12: Face Time

Chapter 13: Cautionary Tale

• He learned from Zero that the man he was looking for was a myth. Maul then agreed to take care of Zero’s gang problem in exchange for a communication device

Chapter 14: Jar of Flies

• Maul managed to appoint himself as the leader of the two gangs

Chapter 15: Limerge

• Maul contacted Sidious. His master secretly gained a lot of respect for what Maul was able to accomplish in the prison in a short period without the use of the force or his true powers

Chapter 16: Night Side

• The dad revealed his plan to pay a guard to help them escape

Chapter 17: Ghost Voltage

Chapter 18: Black Start

Chapter 19: In My Time of Dying

• The father and son didn’t manage to escape

Chapter 20: Open Secrets

• The father told me that his son knew the information he was looking for

Chapter 21: Spindle

• He met with the warden

Chapter 22: Blue Witch

Chapter 23: Factory Floor

Chapter 24: Wishlist

• He got the list of names of all the prisoners, and the one name Rook stood out to him
• He asked the prisoner to set up the next fight with him and Rook

Chapter 25: Skull Game

Chapter 26: Old Man

Chapter 27: Varactyl

• Maul managed to kill and procure the skull of the beast that the other prisoner needed

Chapter 28: Submerged

Chapter 29: Spectators

Chapter 30: Tank

• He managed to kill the prisoner named Rooke in an underwater and unfair fight

Chapter 31: Clarity

• He got a call from his master Darth Sidious, who said that Maul was disappointing because he didn’t accomplish his mission sooner

Chapter 32: Whiteout

• He barely managed to escape being torn apart, and then he rescued the delirious old man

Chapter 33: Reconfig

Chapter 34: Hooligans

Chapter 35: Ready Room

Chapter 36: What the Fever Said

• He got the son to ask the father about Radique. The father said Zero has another name

Chapter 37: Bestiary

• The warden had the two gangs massacre the handful of guards who were traitors and planted there by a crime mob boss Jabba

Chapter 38: Antidote

• He slipped the poison into Zeros food in order to get information, but it was too late and Zero died

Chapter 39: Crawl

Chapter 40: Nobody’s Hero

Chapter 41: The Main Money Business

Chapter 42: Bleed the Freak

• By fate, or exactly as someone planned, he was matched against Radique
• In the end, he was forced to kill him

Chapter 43: Kaldani Spires

• Plagueis and Sidious watched Maul’s last match together. Sidious felt like his master was testing him and trying to read his intentions
• Plagueis ordered Sidious to tell Maul to destroy all of Cog Hive Seven

Chapter 44: Shop

• The undercover agent Smite stumbled upon Radique’s weapons factory in the prison after escaping for his life from a white worm creature

Chapter 45: Red Saber Dreams

• He had a dream he got back his red lightsaber, and cut down himself
  • But then he became the victim in the dream, cut down by someone he didn’t recognize named Plagueis

Chapter 46: Hangar

Chapter 47: Airborne

• He realized that all the claw birds who served Radique now served him as their new master

Chapter 48: Watch the Throne

Chapter 49: Cabal

• Maul found his way to the weapons workshop and came face to face with Coyle, Zero, and Slifer. The blind workers there were manufacturing synthetic lightsabers but weren’t fighting
• Maul offered to fix the malfunctioning lightsabers for the real Radique but then got shot by Zero

Chapter 50: Behind the Mask

• Zero wore a mask. Underneath it he was Sadiki’s brother Dakari
• Coyle shot him at Radique’s command

Chapter 51: To the Hold

Chapter 52: Purge

Chapter 53: Is There a Ghost?

Chapter 54: Hot Box

• He was caught by the warden in the elevator lift and was offered a job. He turned it down

Chapter 55: Inbound Flight

• The delivery cargo ship was a Trojan horse for Jabba the Hut and his crew who wanted to infiltrate the prison

Chapter 56: 12/18

• Maul managed to escape the heating-up elevator lift

Chapter 57: Killing Box

• Sadiki managed to survive the ambush and escape with her 3D droid

Chapter 58: The Dark Backward

Chapter 59: Syrox

Chapter 60: Closing Time

• The son unlocked his fighting potential and slaughtered the men sent by Radique who killed his father

Chapter 61: Pressure and Time

Chapter 62: Ready Appliance

Chapter 63: Sojourn

Chapter 64: The Tombs

• The Bando Gora (militia group) with the former Jedi as their leader, infiltrated the prison

Chapter 65: As Below, So Above

• He finally met the real Radique 

Chapter 66: Hush

• She went back to the data center to remotely terminate all of the prisoners but then was attacked by the large wolf worm

Chapter 67: The Man Comes Around

• He made a deal with Radique to fix his lightsaber problem in exchange for the nuclear weapon

Chapter 68: Malefactors

• The Bando Gora dispatched Jabba’s forces

Chapter 69: Low Numbers

Chapter 70: The Killing Room

• The former Jedi fought the worm that took out her entire regimen but decided to leave
• However, she changed her mind because she wanted to defeat Maul

Chapter 71: The Sum of Its Parts

• After a fight in the med bay, the sun managed to kill Radique and get revenge for his father

Chapter 72: Stick It Out

• They both fought a lightsaber duel until and Maul was winning until the worm interrupted their fight

Chapter 73: The Wreckers

• Maul saved the Jedi’s life by killing the worm
• She didn’t recognize that he was truthful about wanting to simply deliver a weapon to her and offered to help with his situation with the bombs in his heart

Chapter 74: Diastole

• She used the force to deactivate the charges in his chest
• They managed to carry the crate to Jabba’s ship to escape

Chapter 75: 500 Republica

• Sidious and Plagueis discussed how everything went according to plan, in which the prison facility was destroyed, and all successfully escaped with the nuclear weapon

Chapter 76: After Image

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Closing thoughts:

I really loved this book. Even despite Maul being someone who we should not like, it was hard not to root for him as he showed a lot of admirable qualities like resourcefulness, resiliency, grit, intelligence, and overall competence. His badass fights were awesome, and he overcame impossible odds even without the use of the Force. Also, this story and all of the characters were very interesting. A prison is always a unique setting as there are many pieces and opposing forces to consider. Not only that, but it was almost like a murder mystery in figuring out who Radique was. All of these elements made this book very enjoyable for me to read. It’s easily my favorite book so far of the series, maybe closely behind Shatterpoint which focuses on Mace Windu, my favorite character.

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Nutshell:

Darth Maul must accomplish an impossible missing inside a prison that doubles as a money-making fight club without the use of his force powers.

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Similar books:

• Star Wars: Ahsoka by E. K. Johnston
• Shatterpoint: Star Wars Legends by Matthew Stover
• Star Wars: Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno
• Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein

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Rating:

4/5

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