The book starts with a dream or maybe a vision Vader has where his son Luke is at his side and the two have been joined together as what appear to be Sith Lords, a master and his apprentice. Soon the Emperor shows up and appears to be seeking revenge for the betrayal by Vader. At this point Vader awakes from his vision in his mediation chamber and we are then treated to a series of chapters that are treated like flashbacks of Vader's life as a young Anikan.
It begins with his arrival with his mother Schmi on Tattoine and does a decent job of explaining what we already new from watching The Phantom Menace, how he was a slave owned by one of the Hutts and how Watto was able to win him away. As the book jumps back and forth with Vader's flashbacks and back to his current actions, we are able to get a deeper look into what was making Vader tick. We learn a few secrets we may not have known about him and what was driving him to do what he was in the name of the Empire, and a few explanations as to his actions in the movies that were never fully explained. Such as how he was able to come back as a force ghost.
What other things does this book do? To be blunt it wets your appetite to hear about all the mishaps of a young Anikan and the dirty deeds of one of the Dark Lords of The Sith but only glazes over it and fails to do anything other then serve as a tool to help explain actions we already knew about.
I wanted to love this book and I wanted to be able to get a deeper look into what made him tick but I was left with nothing more then a taste of what could have been an exemplary look into Vader but was cheapened into a condensed attempt to cash in on it with no real revealing information.
