Probably the most cumbersome writing style I have encountered in the Star Wars Disney canon. It somehow feels straight out of a 80s hard sci-fi AND wattpad fanfiction at the same time.

Usually, an underground planet filled with somewhat-sentient fungi and lovecraftian silk creatures would be right up my alley, but the cool world building just became annoying when we kept stopping mid scene to paragraphs-long analysis on the fauna. It got repetitive very fast.

I think if Lucasfilm is going to hire people to publish what is basically official fanfiction, the very least they could do is have them consume a lot of the original material beforehand. This is a Mace Windu book, and yet, Mace Windu's characterization is all over the place.

I like how it emphasized Mace's feelings, breaking him out of the stoic and strung-up stereotype, but it pivoted too hard and by the end he was just? Totally okay with killing a bunch of people and plotting a planet civil war? He could've been a random smugler-hero in an original sci-fi story and it would've worked better than trying to shove it in Star Wars.

While the plot itself was overall ok, the writing made the whole thing feel cringe, jumping from the technical world building to clunky dialogue; including a ridiculous romance, a cartoon villain and multiple inconsistencies.

Honestly I felt like the author wanted to write a in-universe encyclopedia and got handed this instead, and no one got out of it happy.