Review: Star Wars The Old Republic, Vol. 1 “Blood of the Empire”

Star Wars The Old Republic,Vol. 1 “Blood of the Empire”

Based on trade issues #28 – 39.

Written by Alexander Freed

Pencil by Dave Ross

Cover Art by Benjamin Carré

I must admit I am not familiar with the world of the Old Republic. I think it’s a great concept. Tales about what happened thousands of years before Obi-Wan and even Yoda. What was the galaxy about when Sith and Jedi were evenly matched. The sky or space is the limit with the tales you can tell. However when I think about how visually the galaxy would look, what I see in this trade is not it. I feel that everything looks too modern, too familiar to be literally over a thousand years before Darth Vader. If we look at our own history and look at what the world looked like just 500 years ago, it’s quite different then what we see now. But I digress; the point is that the overall look of the Old Republic to me was not what I expected and a bit distracting.

I will say however that if you look past this and think of this as a stand-alone story in the Star Wars universes regardless of what time period, then you can really enjoy this tale.

This is the tale of the Young Sith Teneb Kel and his servant Maggot. Send on a mission by the Sith council to find and destroy a rouge Sith who is planning on taking down the Sith Order led by a mysterious Emperor. (Not Palpatine)

What I find fascinating about these tales is that the Sith are really the heroes of the story. We are following their adventures the way we would follow the Jedi. It was hard not to root for Teneb as the antihero of the story. There are plenty of twists and turns that leave you guessing at every corner. You can’t expect the best of him or any of the key players because after all this is a tale from the dark side point of view and as we know from Obi-Wan, many a thing is learned from a certain point of view.

I will not give anything else away because if you haven’t checked out this trade then I don’t want to spoil anything. All I will say is that watching Sith fight is a lot more entertaining. It is no holds barred.

Over all I enjoyed “Blood of the Empire” volume one. I look forward to seeing what happens next. The story by Alexander Freed was solid. The art by Dave Ross was solid as well. I only wish the entire book was done in the style of Benjamin Carré who did the cover art. He is fantastic.

So will I continue to explore the tales of the Old Republic? I most definitely will. In fact I may even be tempted to check out the video game series these tales are based on.

Star Wars of old or new, Dark Horse can’t go wrong with these titles.