Jedi Master Mace Windu leads a battle against Separatist forces on the planet Simocadia While the Confederacy of Independent Systems battles for the planet's rare fuel source, and the Republic tries to repel the invaders, the rulers of Simocadia to save their world awaken the Ardana Shadex, an indestructible giant robot.

Behind enemy lines, Jedi Knight Aayla Secura's mission is threatened by an encounter with Shon-Ju - ex-Padawan turned cult leader. Shon-Ju claims to be after the same Separatist warlord that Aayla was sent to capture, but he also has plenty of reasons to hate the Republic and the Jedi.

More than 70 works of Hogarth include musical references, and Jeremy Barlow's book is the first full-length work devoted to this aspect of his imagery. The first two chapters examine the evidence for Hogarth's interest in music and the problems of assessing accuracy, realism and symbolic meaning in his musical representations. Subsequent chapters show how musical details in his works may often be interpreted as part of his satirical weaponry; the starting point seems to have been his illustrations of the clamorous 'rough music' protest in Samuel Butler's immensely popular poem Hudibras....