Cloak of Deception, published in 2001 and written by James Luceno, is a Star Wars novel set before the events of The Phantom Menace. It is one of the novels that is relegated to Legends status since the Lucasfilm buyout by Disney. It is set just before the events of The Phantom Menace and details the political battles in the Republic that lead into the movie. The end of the book sets up the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo, where the film begins. For those who hated all the political maneuvering and subplots of The Phantom Menace, this book has quite a bit of that. Intertwined with those events is a plot to assassinate Chancellor Valorum, with Palpatine pulling the strings. Despite being just a "lowly" Senator from Naboo, Palpatine is preparing for and setting in motion the power grab that will enable him to become Emperor.
The paperback version of the book is just under 350 pages. The version I have also includes the first chapter of Rebel Dream from the New Jedi Order series. Even though the novel is no longer canon, it ties into other storylines that are, including The Phantom Menace movie and the book Tarkin by the same author, which is considered canon. This book also established Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's relationship and fleshed it out a bit. That aspect of the story has been largely replaced by the canon novel Master and Apprentice, which is also set before The Phantom Menace.
Overall, the book tells a good story. While some of the political subtexts that bog down The Phantom Menace movie are in the book, they do not slow down the book's plot as much as they did the movie's because the book manages to weave the action sequences between the slower parts, which makes it work. One advantage of a book over a film is that the book can include more detail to flesh out the story that movies often cannot, due to time constraints, and it worked well here. Even though the story is no longer canon, parts of the book are kind of grandfathered into the canon based on the novels Darth Plagueis (which is also a Legends novel) and Tarkin (which is canon, and has several tie-ins to the Darth Plagueis novel) by the same author who wrote several books about the events that led up to and occurred shortly after the formation of the Empire. Ultimately, it is a good read for fans of Star Wars novels.
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