Why didn't I read it first time around? This book exists solely because of a 2009 trailer for TOR that went viral, particularly amongst - and I'm really sorry to be so uncharitable so early into this project - the type of person whose concept of what Star Wars should be begins and ends with aesthetics. Like, the trailer clearly is good Star Wars, but do you really watch this and think "Malgus is a cool and interesting character who deserves a whole novel about him"? See also: people who hold Darth Maul up as an interesting character.
Ancillary reading. It's not just the novels that scrambled to put Malgus front and centre in the wake of the trailer. He's barely in TOR, beyond a rushed-feeling coda at the end of the main campaign, which I (somehow) found time to play through during paternity leave. God bless sling carriers!
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Well, the Malgus bits are good. Paul Kemp takes the blank slate of the trailer and mines out both an interesting worldview / concept of the Force, and a satisfying tension between Malgus and the rest of the Empire. Shame that's about a third of the book, and we spend the rest following some of the most boring, forgettable characters you'll ever meet on an incredibly dull adventure.
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The book ends with Malgus concluding that the Empire is unsustainable and needs complete reform, which he undertakes to bring about. In TOR, he recruits a bunch of aliens to his cause (offscreen), launches a coup and names himself Emperor (largely offscreen), and then immediately gets killed. It's a strangely abrupt way to deal with a potentially fascinating arc.
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