When Anakin Skywalker sealed the deal to become a Dark Lord of the Sith, he did it with the caveat that Emperor Palpatine would help him “save Padme’s life.” And to do this, Palpatine promised that he and Anakin would “work together” to “discover the secret.” But, Palpatine implied, that would all come later, because in the short term, there was a ton of housekeeping to attend to, namely: slaughtering all the Jedi, destroying democracy, and building the Empire. And so, Darth Vader’s one condition of joining the Dark Side, to prevent Padme’s demise and maybe bring her back to life, was Palpatine’s ultimate bait and switch. Basically, Anakin took a job that promised him some health benefits for his dependents that extended beyond the grave. Then, when those benefits didn’t materialize, he took the job anyway.
But why? Or, more to the point, did Darth Vader ever try to ask Palpatine to deliver on his Sithy promise? And, did anyone in the Empire really understand that Vader was once Anakin? The answer to those questions, coming two decades after the release of Revenge of the Sith, can be found in the new Star Wars novel by Adam Christopher, Master of Evil.
Like the abusive boss that he is, Palpatine uses Force lightning on Darth Vader in the opening chapters, simply because Vader asks the basic question of when he’s going to get the fabled bringing-people-back-to-life spell from Palpatine. As he says in the book, “It is what you promised.” Vader has a point, but Palpatine is more concerned with the anonymity of the Sith rather than, say, actually teaming up with Vader to make Dark Side magic. Instead, after shocking Vader into submission, Palpatine points out that Vader’s “old identity is a liability,” and then sends Vader to the Diso system to find a Force-user who might be a “resurrectionist.”
Thus, Master of Evil is basically about two things: Vader’s quest to locate this resurrectionist who may or may not have the secret Palpatine promised. And, at the same time, it's the story of an Imperial Guard named Goth, who, along with his droid TC-99, is trying to crack the case about Vader’s true identity.
The subtext of Master of Evil also dances around a somewhat familiar Star Wars trope: Information is siloed in so many ways that manipulation of the facts is easy for those in power, but also means it's paradoxically hard to know anything for sure, even if you are the Emperor or Lord Vader. Case in point: Palpatine sends Vader on this mission to try and find the Force shaman because even Palpatine doesn’t know for sure. Meanwhile, throughout the first half of the book, TC-99 tries to track down raw data fragments about Vader’s transformation, which results in finding some half-fried hard drives of medical droids who performed Anakin’s surgery in Revenge of the Sith. In short, the science fiction aspect of data in Star Wars is that, even at the height of the Empire’s power, data is extremely analog.
Relative to Star Wars lore, this is how it should be. Though it's a paperless galaxy, the digital files in Star Wars — whether they’re hologram footage of Vader’s surgery, or details about how to bring people back to life with the Dark Side — aren’t available in the cloud for anyone to Google. Recall in Attack of the Clones just how easy it was for Count Dooku to erase a star system from the Jedi library archive, a process which might sound outrageous, but, relative to actual processes for storing star chart data today, isn’t actually that nuts. The larger point here is that Master of Evil is about the pursuit of information as much as it's about trying to nail down certain deep-cut abilities of the Dark Side of the Force.
One could argue that if the Star Wars galaxy were less analog and did have a more robust cloud-based data system, it might be more democratic. But the cool thing about Master of Evil is that if you think about these problems as a metaphor, it’s essentially the same problems we face today. Corrupt leaders, even if they’re elected officials like Palpatine was initially, can move information around mostly because the vast majority of people are deeply uncurious. The reason why Anakin even discovered Palpatine’s whole deal in Revenge of the Sith is that Anakin is a curious person. Ditto Goth and TC-99 in Master of Evil: They question the status quo, and interesting stories happen as a result.
In the prequels, despite their supposed wisdom, the Jedi were blinded to the presence of the Sith because “the Dark Side clouds everything.” Mace Windu pointed out that the Jedi’s ability to use the Force had “diminished,” but the other thing we saw in the prequels was the Jedi asking fewer and fewer questions and making more and more assumptions. The plot of Master of Evil is about Sith powers, Vader’s tragic soul, and some Imperial folks who are curious about the truth. But the story and theme of the book are a kind of inversion of what you might think a Dark Side-focused Star Wars tale might be. Turns out, the power of the Force is insignificant next to a good fact-finding mission.
