A.H. Lloyd recommended this last week, so I decided to pull it off my shelf, blow the dust off it, and reread it. It's a very faithful novelization of the film, but as Lloyd pointed out there are a few additions which I think enhance the story a bit. The Emperor, Darth Vader, and Luke Skywalker have a little more dialogue in the book, as the Emperor attempts to turn Luke to the Dark Side of the Force. The idea of destroying Endor when the shield generator is destroyed adds a little more tension at the end, as Lando Calrissian races to destroy the Death Star's reactor before the Death Star can fire it's main weapon. Because this is a novel, we also get to peer inside character's heads from time to time, so we see why Darth Vader is finally redeemed at the end because he's willing to own up to his failings. Commander Jerjerrod is portrayed as a tyrannical popinjay. The classic obstructive bureaucrat.

The Makers created the Bright Way, a portal network linking a multiverse of Earth-like planets in a long chain. A million years ago, the humanoid Founders on a distant alternate Earth discovered how to travel the Bright Way. Their mission is to unite the various flavors of humanity on each of the alternate Earth's to form a utopian society that will last for aeons. Unfortunately, not every human society they discover along the Bright Way has the same goal in mind. Far, far down the Bright Way, many, many Earths from the Founder's homeworld, they encountered the UnFound, a version of humanity that knows only war and killing, determined to conquer and devour the countless Earths along the Bright Way.

I bought this many years ago when it first came out and just never got around to reading it until now. I thought it was an interesting take on the multiverse concept. It's similar in many ways to The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. The technology in Down the Bright Way is vastly different, but it still relies on travelers going on a linear path up or down the Chain of Creation (as P.C. Hodgell describes it in her Kencyrath series). I like the various epigraphs that are used at the beginning of each chapter or section. They provide a lot of interesting world-building context. We get to see some of the personal journal entries of two conflicting Founders as the events in the story play out. As science fiction stories go, it's not bad. Definitely an interesting read.

Jabba the Hutt died eight years ago at the hands of a few plucky Rebels. In the aftermath of his death, the Hutt criminal empire scoured the ruins of Jabba's palace to find the darkest secrets buried within. Now the Hutt seek to create their own Death Star-equivalent superweapon to put their criminal empire on a more equal footing with the New Republic. Or to destroy the fledgling Republic and take over the galaxy. You know how Hutts are (Jabba was representative of his species).

The Hutts' genius plan--and I swear I am not making this up--is to build a Death Star laser that looks like a giant Jedi lightsaber in space. Using that weapon of terror, they will force the rest of the galaxy into submission. Being Hutts, they are cheap bastards, so they hired Three Stooges, LLC, to construct their superweapon. It goes about as well as you would expect.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy (quite literally since Hutt Space and the Imperial Remnants are on opposite ends of the Star Wars Galaxy according to official maps), the Imperial Remnant is stirring up trouble, hoping to crush the Republic and restore their beloved Empire. Naturally, the original heroes from Star Wars--Luke, Han, and Leia--are caught in the middle.

Darksaber was written when the Star Wars novel publication rights were held by Bantam Spectra. The writers of that time didn't have too many original ideas, so they kept falling back on bigger and weirder superweapons for their main plots.

When the rights were purchased by Del Rey, they had the good sense to do a soft reboot of the franchise and developed The New Jedi Order series of stories, which are about a race of invading aliens from outside the galaxy who exist outside the Force somehow. Much better stories overall. The Bantam Spectra storylines are still "canon" within the Del Rey storylines, but the overall storylines tended to be much more varied and complex as the writers explored other Jedi besides the original power trio of Luke, Han, and Leia.