At the end of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, viewers got to see a glimpse of the construction of the first Death Star as the Emperor and Darth Vader were meeting with Grand Moff Tarkin on a Star Destroyer. This book pics up right where that movie stops and caries readers through the events surrounding the moon-sized station as it is built through its destruction at the end of the original Star Wars movie.

The difference is the story is told completely from the persepectives of characters that are usually behind the scenes in such story. While we get periodic glimpses of Vader and Tarkin and the characters run into many of the primary characters of Star Wars, they are not the narrators. Instead we get a glimpse into the minds of a TIE fighter pilot, a cantina owner and her bouncer, a doctor, a librarian, and engineer/political dissident, and a few other characters. Some are drawn from the Expanded Universe of books that have been written over the years, but most are new characters. This does a nice job of tying together the various forms of Star Wars.

The space station actually becomes a character of its own as it is built. The authors also do a great job of showing how perspective plays a big role on who is considered good and evil. The Rebel Alliance takes on the form of terrorists fighting against the organized government of the Empire. It really makes you think, particularly as many of the characters do the same. They start to see that the Galactic Empire might not be as wonderful as they thought, particularly as the station's monstrous weapon is used on planets both to test it and to use it to instill fear.

This is one of the best books in the Expanded Universe that I have read.