Shadows of the Empire: Star Wars Legends [Paperback]

Shadows of the Empire illuminates the shadowy outlines of a criminal conspiracy that exists in the background of the events in the movies, ruled by a character new to us. Prince Xizor is a mastermind of evil who dares to oppose one of the best-known fictional villains of all time: Darth Vader. The story involves all the featured Star Wars movie characters, plus Emperor Palpatine and, of course, Lord Vader himself.Steve Perry is an author and television writer. A native of the Deep South, he is the author of more than 50 novels and numerous short stories, including The Forever Drug, Spindoc, The Trinity Vector, and the Matador series. He also penned books for the Alien, Conan, and Star Wars franchises. A practitioner of the martial art Silat, he is the father of science fiction author S. D. Perry.He looks like a walking corpse, Xizor thought.  Like a mummified body dead a thousand years.  Amazing he is still alive, much less the most powerful man in the galaxy.  He isn't even that old; it is more as if something is slowly eating him.

Xizor stood four meters away from the Emperor, watching as the man who had long ago been Senator Palpatine moved to stand in the holocam field.  He imagined he could smell the decay in the Emperor's worn body.  Likely that was just some trick of the recycled air, run through dozens of filters to ensure that there was no chance of any poison gas being introduced into it. Filtered the life out of it, perhaps, giving it that dead smell.

The viewer on the other end of the holo-link would see a close-up of the Emperor's head and shoulders, of an age-ravaged face shrouded in the cowl of his dark zló'