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Joe Schreiber specialises in writing horror (personally I hate horror stories), Star Wars is rich of species right out of horror stories and you have them locked in in a fight club you cannot get more of a personification of a horror than Darth Maul. Horns, red skin covered in tattoos, yellow eyed, ferocious, and completely devoid of compassion. All that and he is Sith. Could you possible get a better character for a story like this? However I think Joe went a bit out of his comfort zone and add more mystery and complicate the plot more then it needed to be.Maul goes undercover into a prison called Hive 7, the prison is famous for 2 things and infamous for another. It is famous for hosting death matches between the inmates which are broadcast throughout the galaxy, and no one ever escaping. It is infamous for a legendary arms dealer using it as their base of operations. A mauls mission is to find this arms dealer and purchase a nuclear device from him. There are 2 catches one going into prison he will be unarmed so no lightsaber staff. Also he is not allowed to use the force in anyway as it might compromise his identity as Sith. There is a bit of manoeuvring between Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious in the background. The usual of the apprentice preparing to become the master.If I was judging the book by the first chapter it would have been brilliant. Maul’s first fight is with the prison’s current champion. A captured but unidentified species (Yuuzhan Vong). The fight is short, gory and most of all brutal. This is the theme for 80% of the book. If he left out the overly complications in plot the book would have been perfect. I fully appreciate Maul using all of his skillset, especially things he learned in the assassin’s academy, but I don’t think this was right book for some of them.The violence of this is as stated brutal. There is a lot of neck snapping, stabbing, biting, clawing, deboning and even cannibalism. The fights themselves are technically incorrect (if you are martial arts fan or practitioner you will notice many of these), but I think they were hoping to hide this by under the brutality of it. The other let down for me was the ending the final fight was a bit confusing, but the ending just seem out of Maul’s character and conditioning. I am not going to give it away here.The book is in short chapters of varying length, in some case they a chapter will just be 2 pages at most 10 pages. I quite like this format as it fed information in easy chunks. I think the book would have been better with less twists, and more fights but that is just me as that is what I was expecting from the book as soon as I saw it. I would have given the book 3 1/2 stars but I thought it deserved a round up then a round down.

This is a somewhat different novel to the usual Star Wars ones. The plot revolves around Darth Maul infiltrating a hi-tech, and highly dubiously ran, intergalactic prison to complete a loosely defined mission for his master, Darth Sidious. As such the majority of the story is set within the confines of the actual prison, giving the book a its own feel. The plot also means that there are no ‘good guys’ as such within the story. Echoing some of the episodes of the Clone Wars television series, the story features the struggles between various ‘villainous’ figures.The prison locale makes for quite a gripping atmosphere that offers a sense of claustrophobic entrapment. The gambling side of pitching prisoners against each other in a form of gladiatorial combat could easily be overplayed and the early stages of the novel do start to feel like a string a repetitive combats. Fortunately the author reigns it in just before it gets a bit dull and moves the story forward.Using Darth Maul as a main protagonist is fraught with issues. The obvious one being that what we see of Darth Maul in the films is barely sufficient to provide him with enough depth of character to sustain the role of main protagonist. Much of Maul’s character has been developed within other Star Wars media (mainly the Clone Wars television series) and some of that is tapped into here to make him more substantial. The author is relatively successful at walking the line between developing Maul’s character and not moving him too far away from the soulless assassin he was in ‘The Phantom Menace’. Furthermore, Darth Maul is certainly no hero, and his potential to fulfil an anti-hero role is somewhat dubious due to his lack of personality. It makes it very difficult to arouse the reader’s sympathies for the book’s main character. The author does make a good effort at this though.Much like Maul himself, the reader doesn’t entirely know what is going on throughout the novel. Darth Sidious’ objectives remain unclear, even by the close of the story. Part of the enjoyment of the story is not knowing what the objectives are of several characters and trying to work them out. The nature of the story allows for these to remain mysterious to some degree and gives a good sense of there being the wider Sith plot to dominate the galaxy. The various machinations of both Darth Sidious and Darth Plagueis also seem to reflect events featured in the novel ‘Darth Plagueis’ and there is some overlap between the two books. Knowledge of ‘Darth Plagueis’ is not necessary to enjoy this novel but it does give it more depth and intrigue.

This is a thoroughly interesting and entertaining Star Wars novel. The story is set shortly before the events depicted in 'The Phantom Menace' film, and the plot centres on Darth Maul. His Sith master, Lord Sidious, has sent Maul on a deadly mission - which involves going 'undercover' as a convict - into one of the worst prisons in the galaxy. While there, he's ordered not to use his Force abilities. So Maul must rely on his strength and agility, as well as the power of his will, to overcome the odds and survive. To make matters worst, the governor of the prison is operating an illegal fighting contest between the prisoners, and making millions of credits. Maul becomes a contestant, and is daily pitched against monstrous foes ... Meanwhile, he's secretly undertaking the mission assigned to him by Sidious.I really like the way this story fits into the wider Star Wars universe established in the novels - especially the  Star Wars: Darth Plagueis , to which it perfectly connects. It also nicely relates to the story presented in the videogame  Star Wars: Bounty Hunter . If you're a fan of the Extended Universe (now known as Legends, since Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm) then I think you'll enjoy this book.It's well-written and action-packed. Maul is presented as an enthusiastic apprentice determined to fulfil his master's wishes. He's a man filled with rage, and this empowers him, giving him strength. The essence of his dark personality is perfectly captured by the author. This is a much better book as compared to Maul's earlier outing ( Star Wars: Darth Maul Shadow Hunter ).Overall, I highly recommend this book.