Shadows of the Empire was a big event in Star Wars history. Next to the movies, nothing has received as much hype as Shadows did. Shadows of the Empire delivered a novel, comic, a Nintendo 64 game, action figures, and coming soon, a computer game. There has been some debate about Shadows of the Empire on whether or not it was a good story. Personally, I enjoyed it. I really liked how it filled in some areas that were untold before, like where Leia got her bounty hunter uniform, etc.

The book has received a lot of bad reviews on the net, but was probably my favorite part of Shadows. I thought Steve Perry did a nice job of keeping the story fast paced as well as telling an interesting story. Sure there were sections where you could say, there's an action figure or that's in the video game, but overall it was a good story. Perry probably had the hardest job of any of the Star Wars novelists in telling a story. Face it, he had to fit in things so they could make action figures and he had to make it compatible with the game. Overall I would say he was successful, while not at the level of the Zahn books, this book was enjoyable to read and is now one of my favorite Star Wars' books.

Shadows Pictures