Heart of Purpleness

A second Star Wars novel bites the dust. Much better, though still written for a target demographic that finds depth in a shallow puddle.

Although it was better written it was also annoyingly written, full of paragraphs with separate, single-sentence payoffs

Like this.

It's written how Jeremy Clarkson speaks.

It's based on, or at least takes as its point of departure Conrad's Heart of Darkness but the author isn't Conrad. That's OK, very few people are Conrad, but it undermines the intended impact of the book I think. Most obviously, I wasn't convinced that the internal monologue and travails of the protagonist were those of a Jedi Master. It's essentially an episode when it could have been more than that. On the other hand, firstly I don't think the publisher was wanting anything more and, second, I suspect the writer was trying to slip things in that would otherwise have bypassed the target audience, which is admirable.