More Covenant backstory and the return of Shel. Good, good! ( )

A bit confusing in places for those who haven't read volumes 1-3 (or issues 1-18 of the original comic series), but there are plenty of hints so you can generally work out what the backstory is. Otherwise it is quite engrossing with plenty of interesting new Star Wars characters and storylines.

As could be guessed from the title, there are actually two different stories here, although they are both part of the larger story arc.

In the first story a group of enemies must band together to prevent the use of remote control space slugs being used as the ultimate weapon in the galaxy - they can eat entire planets.

In the second story which continues on immediately after the conclusion of the first one, a fallen Jedi padawan returns to the planet where he has been falsely accused of murdering all the other Jedi padawan to aid in the fight against the Mandalorian conquerers, only to find that he must join forces with his main Jedi accuser to do so. ( )

After narrowly escaping from Arkoh Adasca's ship with his allies (Jarael, Gryph and rest) Zayne decides to investigate Jedi Chambers on Taris in order to find out more about mysterious Covenant and find whatever can help him to clear his name.

Soon he will come face to face to the person that holds him responsible for family loss joined by a very crazy and psychotic Jedi.

Recommended. ( )

Daze Of Hate is an engaging story with dreadful artwork. The list of quality supporting characters is added to in this installment and the whole premise of Adasca as some sort of ultimate arms dealer selling his 'weapons' to the highest bidder (be they Republic or Mandalorians) is fascinating as the balance of power in the Star Wars universe hangs in the balance. The artwork really gets inthe way of the subtely of the story though. Thick black ink lines everywhere and garish colours really don't help and many of the scenes are just cluttered up with too much action and little perspective. Shame but it doesn't fully destroy the book and it is sill worth reading.
Knights of Suffering is almost the exact opposite - a weak story about an underground resistance cell on Taris with much impoved artwork that is both suitably subtle when it needs to be and show the scope of the planet when it needs to. To be honest, I struggle a bit with jedi in romantic storylines (probably because of the strict rules regarding jedi and love as preseted in the movies) so the scenes with Zayne and Shel don't realy work for me. The story also suffers from the resistance being filled up with some dull characters (the fantasic Doomo brothers aside) and from the almost complete absence of established characters like Jarael, Camper, Rohlan and Elbee. Without wishing to spoil things for any readers there is a also a scene where a character gets run straight through the torso and not only survives but also seems to recover from it far too quickly.
Overall, not the best installment but KOTOR is sill a fantastic series and I've already ordered Vector volume 1 (which includes KOTOR volume 5). This series isn't just a prequel but a wonderfully self-contained Star Wars universe in its own right. It has a level of continuity that you just don't find in most other Star Wars novels and comics. ( )

This is essentially two separate stories. The first, Daze of Hate, wraps up the exogorth and Adascorp storylines from Volume Three. Camper gets a nice end, but other than that, this is pretty perfunctory. It almost suffers from character/faction overload, the story feels somewhat muddled, and the exogorth threat was always more goofy and abstract than anything else. Bong Dazo's dreadful pencils and inks don't help much, either. Fortunately, things pick up in Knights of Suffering, which sees the return of the fabulous Dustin Weaver to the art chores of the series at long last (even if the trade does credit Dazo for his work!). This is a return to the KotOR of previous volumes, in no small part thanks to Gryph, whose presence had been sorely lacking. Zayne gets some good romancing, and there's thrilling hijinks aplenty as he faces a member of the Jedi Covenant down back where the series started so long ago, on Taris. A bit of a mixed installment overall, but KotOR is still one of the best Star Wars comics ever published.