“Five thousand years ago. After a Jedi ambush, the Sith mining ship Omen lies wrecked on a remote, unknown planet. Its commander, Yaru Korsin, battles the bloodshed of a mutinous faction led by his own brother. Marooned and facing death, the Sith crew have no choice but to venture into their desolate surroundings. They face any number of brutal challenges—vicious predators, lethal plagues, tribal people who worship vengeful gods—and like true Sith warriors, counter them with the dark side of the Force.

The struggles are just beginning for the proud, uncompromising Sith, driven as they are to rule at all costs. They will vanquish the primitive natives, and they will find their way back to their true destiny as rulers of the galaxy. But as their legacy grows over thousands of years, the Sith ultimately find themselves tested by the most dangerous threat of all: the enemy within.”



For the past few years, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was largely focused on a series of novels collectively called “Fate of the Jedi”.  One of the major antagonist groups of the story was the so-called “Lost Tribe of the Sith”, which pretty much came out of nowhere, spawning the rather memorable Vestara Khai.  It also introduced a compelling back story for the Lost Tribe, which was only marginally explored in those novels.

Concurrent with the main novels, however, a series of short stories were released (for free, no less) as e-books.  Knowing that they would eventually be gathered into one collection, I waited for that to happen.  Sure enough, here it is, and perhaps equally as predictable, the collection comes with a novella that brings the sprawling narrative to a firm conclusion.  (Notice that the novella wasn’t free, only the stories leading up to it; the novella is only available in the collection!)

The nature of the collection is such that some of the stories interconnect directly, one after the other, but it covers a period of 2000 years or so before all is said and done.  In essence, it is the long process of the arrival of the human Sith to Kesh, their early struggles with non-human fellow Sith and native Keshari, and ultimately their path to survival.  (It also leads into the recently started “Lost Tribe of the Sith” comic series from Dark Horse.)

By its very nature, the collection is rather narrow in terms of audience.  If you didn’t read a word of “Fate of the Jedi”, and no practically nothing of the much older comics continuity of roughly the same period, a lot of the references and context will mean nothing.  There is some basic arc structure to the collection, tying it all together, but I’m not sure it’s enough to make this a must-read for the casually initiated.

For my own part, the Lost Tribe has represented one of the few opportunities for those working on the Star Wars Expanded Universe to provide the Sith with a reasonable philosophical underpinning for their vision of galactic society.  Various books have delved into the struggle to balance Jedi righteousness with a free government, but the Sith (their equal but opposite) has rarely been anything more than monolithically evil and self-serving.

To some degree, this book does touch on the notion that the Sith themselves run into the problem of what happens when an entire society builds itself on the notion of individual hunger for power and control.  In short, society breaks down in such a situation, unless there is something for that society to strive for as a unit.  Looking at this notion from a historical standpoint in the real world, there’s some truth to it.

But it still retains the primary problem: the Sith remain two-dimensional villains.  They don’t pursue self-interest logically (a philosophy that recognizes that serving one’s own interests means attending to those of society in a rational, balanced fashion), but rather, by constantly trying to screw each other over.  It reminds me very much of the depiction of Slytherins in “Harry Potter” or Republicans in just about any Aaron Sorkin production; while there is lip service to the existence of well-balanced individuals in those groups, all too often, it descends into a skewed stereotype.

Still, this is not entirely the fault of the author, since this all derives from Lucas’ original inability to portray the Sith as anything but melodramatic villains of unimaginable evil.  It’s not as if Anakin was lured to the Dark Side by persuasive argument!  For what it is, the book delivers exactly what one would expect, and provides some solid short stories in the process.

Price: $4.99 (Kindle version)
Acquisition method: Amazon.com