I'm following the discussion on stardestroyer.net. It sounds like an attempt to weave together disparate and sometimes contradictory versions of the same story, i.e. the mostly-coherent EU version of the Death Star history that has been developing for the past couple of decades and the giant monkey wrench that the prequels threw into the works. Since I'm not interested in retrofitting the EU with the prequels, I don't think I'll read the book.

On the plus side, they're correcting some of the mistakes that were made earlier regarding the Death Star's size and the gun complement of an ImpStar. These aren't revelations (see, for instance, Curtis Saxton's site which has been up forever) but it's still nice to see them getting wider circulation.

Also, it sounds like the novel doesn't really have a plot, like it's just a pop history of the Death Star with some cutout characters. Does that sound right? I would love to read a Jedi-free military sci-fi book set in the Star Wars universe, I'm just not sure Death Star is it.