Darth Plagueis remains one of the great Star Wars books

polygon.com:

Call it a disturbance in the Force, but early on in watching The Acolyte, I had a feeling it was time to read James Luceno’s 2012 novel Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. Set about 100 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, and with Sith clearly on the mind, Leslye Headland’s show would either rewrite over, or double down on, the exploits of one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe’s most notorious off-screen characters. Star Wars: Darth Plagueis was decanonized as part of Lucasfilm’s “Legends” rebranding in 2014, but suddenly it felt like the summer’s big reading assignment.

And I’m glad I tore through it: Wouldn’t you know it, The Acolyte appears to be all in on the Muun commonly known as Hego Damask II, and that’s great fun, because Star Wars: Darth Plagueis is one of my new favorite Star Wars books.

First name-dropped in Revenge of the Sith, when Sheev Palpatine regales Anakin with the Dark Lord’s “tragedy,” Plagueis’ story was yet another instance of George Lucas world-building without toiling over the details. Like the Clone Wars before it, the mere mention of “Darth Plagueis” in Episode III expanded the history of the galactic timeline — and sent viewer imaginations spiraling — while leaving the heavy-lifting to whoever grabbed the storytelling baton in the future.

For Plagueis, that would come down to Luceno, a reliable author in the Star Wars stable who had written a Darth Vader-centric follow-up to Revenge of the Sith. As Luceno tells it, the assignment for Star Wars: Darth Plagueis was pitched and left pretty open-ended — but the proposal sat on the shelf for years as Lucasfilm debated whether to commission a Palpatine-specific novel. Luceno eventually got his way, and worked with George Lucas to vet much of the plot, as he would deal in “canon at the highest level.” The stakes feel high even dipping into the first pages of Star Wars: Darth Plagueis, which find Palpatine in full Darth Sidious mode defeating Plagueis, his master. The other 480-plus pages