Deceived: Star Wars Legends (The Old Republic)

By Paul S. Kemp

The second novel set in the Old Republic era and based on the massively multiplayer online game Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ ramps up the action and brings readers face-to-face for the first time with a Sith warrior to rival the most sinister of the Order’s Dark Lords—Darth Malgus, the mysterious, masked Sith of the wildly popular “Deceived” and “Hope” game trailers.

Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace would transform him into something far more heinous—something Malgus would never want to be, but cannot stop, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching.

Her name is Aryn Leneer—and the lone Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master. And now she’s going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book.

Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9780345529886

Paul S. Kemp

Paul S. Kemp is a lawyer. That is bad. He is also the million-selling author of the Erevis Cale sword and sorcery series, and several Star Wars novels. That is good. Very good. He has appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list three times (twice on the hardcover list, and once in the mass market list). It’s a little known fact that Paul has maimed eight men and three llamas using only an unsharpened pencil and a stick of Wrigley’s gun. Now you know too. He does not hum show tunes. Ever. Paul lives in Michigan with his wife and twin sons.

Reviews for Deceived

[kurdziel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Touches on the continuity b/n the dark and "light" sides of the force and questions whether love can be had on either "side"

[clairefun-979518 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was alright. The characters were okay. The plot was good enough. I wasn't excited to pick it up at any point, but I also didn't want to give up and move on, so all round, a completely 3 star read.

[revan97 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Star Wars The Old Republic: Deceived is one of the few Star Wars novels that jumps right into the action and that captures the readers attention straight from page one. I was immediately mesmerized by the feel of the book. It's full of great new characters, most of which are recognizable from the Old Republic E3 game trailers. There are excellent battles and action sequences but there's also some great quieter moments that give the story a really great feel. I would highly recommend this book to any Star Wars fan.

[samuel_j_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I thought it set the seen of that time really well and the novel provides a great lead up to Star Wars: The Old Republic game. The characters are well constructed, the story is interesting, and the overall journey is thrilling. A breath of fresh air in an era mostly unknown.

[empress8411 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a novelization of event from the online MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic. Darth Malgus razed the Jedi Temple on Coruscant about three years before the game begins. There is a video of the fight between Malgus and Zarrow here. It's called Deceived, same as the novel. This was an okay book. It's my first Star Wars novel (dispite living with a man who owns all of them - and yes, I do mean ALL of them). I picked it up, along with Revan and Fatal Alliance, because I play SW:TOR and it's my favorite MMORPG of all that I've played. I was hoping this book would flesh-out the bare bones story of this event in the game. It did, kind of. I'm not sure if that was the author's doing or the constraints he was placed under by the game makers. For this reason, I won't blame the author, being that I should read his original work and how it compares to this before passing judgement on his abilities. That beings said, I'd rather they'd gotten some of the other Star Wars writers - like Zahn - to write this story. It was a good story, but it lacked humor, depth, connection to the characters - I'm not sure. I have no particular complaint, just a vague "meh" about the story. I appreciated how the author brought the four classes into the story (if you play SWTOR, you understand this, if not....sorry). This book will appeal to any Star Wars fan, but I know there are better Star Wars stories out there.

[burningtodd · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In this tale from the old republic the Sith and the Jedi are coming to a truce. It is at this moment that the Sith launch a surprise attack on the Jedi Temple and Kill A master. This is a novel about looking for revenge and what it does to you. It is also a novel about a father doing what he must to protect his family. That being said, there is great promise to this novel, but the delivery is a little bit lack-luster. The actions of the Sith seem unmotivated and it feels as if the truce and deception are just devices to tell this story. The plot is predictable and the characters are transparent and flat. If “Deceived” wasn’t a Star Wars novel I would have given it a lesser rating and may not have even finished it. It just goes to show that just because it has the Star Wars name on it doesn’t mean it is worth reading.

[bryanthomass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For me, Star Wars books are often like comfort food -- familiar, not overly surprising, but good, an enjoyable way to pass the time. So when I scheduled Paul Kemp for my interview chat, I was surprised to learn his Star Wars books didn't include those familiar characters I'd grown to love--the characters who made me fall in love with science fiction, made me want to tell stories. But Paul Kemp wrote a Star Wars book (three now in fact), and we're close in age, so I wanted to commiserate. He must have viewed the saga at the same age I did with similar awe. What was it like to now be a part of that universe as a storyteller? So I ordered up some reading copies and read.Imagine my surprise when I found myself engaged, even captivated by the characters. Kemp's ability to create immediate connections between characters and readers is admirable. He had me at "hello," you might say. And like a stalker, he never let me go, but in a good way. Even the antagonist, Darth Malgus is someone you can't help but feel sympathy for. He's relatable. He may be evil and dark and hateful, but he's human, just like the reader. And Kemp brings that out so well you almost root for him at times against the protagonists. That's great writing.Like most Star Wars tie-ins the prose is kept simple, a few challenging words here and there, but not many. After all, these books are intended to be accessible for fans of all ages. And that requires talent, too. When the competition are sometimes books with extra effort at complex prose, to have written a book written simply but well which engages adults as well as children is a real accomplishment. One to be proud of.I can't wait to chat with Paul and find out more about his writing journey, to soak up the lessons he has to teach us about writing, and to call him my friend. He tells me his assignment was to do a story with Darth Malgus, a character from the forthcoming online multi-player game "The Old Republic." He wrote a Malgus story with spades.The book revolves around three central characters, the dark Sith Malgus, a rogue Jedi Aryn, and a pilot Zeerid. Malgus wants to conquer the universe for the Sith and rid them forever of the Jedi menace. Aryn wants revenge for the death of her mentor/father-figure at Malgus' hands. Zeerid, an old friend of Aryn's, is just trying to pay off a debt and provide artificial legs for his young daughter. Each of them gets sucked in by circumstance to a web of deception--both internal and external to themselves--and struggles to accomplish their goal. All of them wind up taking paths far different than they'd imagined in doing so. And all of them learn lessons that forever change them in the process.Filled with action and moving at a steady clip, "Deceived" even includes a cute astromech droid character, who may remind us of ancestors to come. It has romance, betrayal, political intrigue, and rivalry. It's a well told tale that could be set in any universe but works exceedingly well in the confines of the familiar Star Wars one. Truly these are characters worth discovering and enjoying. I'd like to see more of each of them.I can't wait to read more from Kemp. Highly recommended.

[stefferoo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We first met him in a Star Wars: The Old Republic game trailer — the mysterious masked Sith that brought down the Jedi Temple during the sacking of Coruscant. Darth Malgus, dark lord of the Sith, was the one who led this brutal assault and cut down countless Jedi on their own sacred ground. Now he is one of the main characters in Deceived, the second book in the SWTOR series by Paul S. Kemp, which tells the story of the attack as well as the calamitous events which came afterward.On the surface, Deceived might just be another novel based on a video game, but after reading it, I admit the quality of the storytelling took me by surprise. Even as Star Wars novels go, I have to say it is better than most. Granted, it is still your standard Star Wars fare — you have your archtypal tale about a Jedi and her comrade pitted against a Sith Warrior and the dark side and such. But still, it was refreshing to read a game book for once and get the sense that the author is actually more interested in telling a good story rather than trying to write a blatant MMO marketing piece that attempts to showcase every single player class and their abilities (which, incidentally, was my main complaint about the first SWTOR book).That is not to say Deceived is completely devoid of references to the upcoming MMO, just that I feel they are much less pronounced. In fact, in true BioWare fashion, what I think the book attempts to do is to set the stage for the type of light-side/dark-side interactions we can expect to see in TOR. Deceived does this by delving deeper into character motivations and ambitions, and treading the line of morality.Instead of hobbling the story, the addition of this interplay actually made things better. Subsequently, I felt the characters of Deceived were more fleshed out than I would have expected from a video game tie-in or Star Wars novel, because of the personal reasons and internal conflicts that drive them. The angry and hate-filled Darth Malgus, for example, may surprise you with his tenderness towards the woman he loves. Similarly, the Jedi protagonist Aryn Leneer has her own reasons for turning her back on the Order and going rogue. The reader will also find the smuggler Zeerid struggle to make some difficult decisions, in the name of keeping his family safe.As such, even though this book can be read as a standalone novel, if I have to relate it back to SWTOR, I want to say Deceived prepares us for the kind of moral dilemmas and questionable choices and we will no doubt face in-game. In the context of the novel, however, this also serves to provide in-depth characterizations for the heroes and villains, and helps readers connect to characters who are otherwise new to the Star Wars expanded universe and are thus relatively still unknown. It’s a win-win situation, really.There were a few things that annoyed me about Deceived, and I feel I need to mention them. One of them pertains to Darth Malgus, who was the one I was most looking forward to reading about, but unfortunately he also turned out to be the weakest character for me. I felt that his evilness, anger, hate, and all that lust for destruction and melodrama was just a tad over-exaggerated, making him just another broody Sith Lord in the Star Wars line-up, overshadowing what depth he could have had. Aryn and Zeerid, on the other hand, were much more interesting to me.The book also changes points-of-view very frequently, bouncing around, sometimes only after just a few paragraphs at a time. Word of warning, it can get taxing if you are unused to that. Thankfully, there are blessedly few subplots in this novel, which made the constant shifts bearable. I liked how the storyline in Deceived has a clear focus, and Kemp follows through with it very well.I would recommend this book to fans of Star Wars, fans who are looking forward to the MMORPG, and even those who are just looking for a quick but fun video game-related read. If you enjoy scenes of lightsaber combat and space encounters, you will not be disappointed — in fact, you can even expect to read about the Sith attack on the Jedi Temple in all its glorious detail and appreciate it anew. However, there is also more to Deceived than just constant action; there is also a deeper poignancy and intensity behind the events that I honestly didn’t think I would find in a Star Wars game novel. Perhaps other readers will be pleasantly surprised as well.

[morganic_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While Paul Kemp does a good job of developing the three main characters in a way that you end up caring for them, overall this book is sort of a disappointment. The storyline is rather uneventful and the universe is in much the same place as it was after the opening sequence. The actions and reasoning behind Lord Malgus' actions through the tale seem disjointed and is probably the weakest character overall. The smuggler and Jedi Knight are much better written overall and you find yourself rooting to succeed in their missions.