I find myself rather fond of the Star Wars books that focus on the Sith side of the story; maybe I'm just a dark kind of person.

This one lays out the Sith plans for toppling the Republic and the return of the Sith to power. Darth Plagueis is the master of Darth Sidious, which is not something that is explained in the movies; only the brief mention of Darth Plagueis the Wise to Anakin. In this book you will find the answer to the connection between Darth Plagueis, Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Count Dooku and many others from the prequel movies. The story itself spends most of the time centered on the politics and plots that interweave the story we know from the movies. There are only two action sequences, but I did not find that taking away from the book at all.

On the critical side, I was a bit disappointed that there was not a good deal more exploration of Darth Plagueis' work on using the Force to create/sustain life. The scenes that were in the book only scratched the surface of where that could have been taken.

This book does do a great job filling in many of the missing pieces from the first prequel movie and should be a must read for Star Wars fans.