Ryan K. (poolaka) reviewed on 8/15/2017 + 6 more book reviews

FYI - There are some story arc spoilers at the very bottom of the review.

This is one of the worst formats for a book I've ever experienced. This tries to be two completely types of books: both a novel, and an annoyingly short anthology. Throughout the actual main story, there are random "Interlude" chapters, in which we are told a very short story about something that is happening elsewhere in the universe after the Death Star is destroyed. These side stories are not related in ANY WAY to our main story, or have any impact on it. Worse, they are so short, that very little context is given, and by the time you might start to gain an interest in learning more, the scene ends...never to be mentioned again.

The Expanded/Legends universe did this much better. They had the 'Tales from...' novels which where true anthologies in which the characters were actually fleshed out enough for us to care about them. And the stories were interesting! Actually, maybe those stories are still canon? I don't know, and I don't care enough to check. This novel format is broken and should go away permanently.

At the heart of it though, I found the story itself wanting. I really didn't care about the main story plot. Maybe it's partly because I've read pretty much all of the Expanded/Legends universe and I don't really care to start all over again. Or maybe it's because the story itself is really actually mediocre, at best, with a number of annoying writing elements included. Likely it's some slurry of all of the above, but heavy weight given to the latter.

Clearly, I wasn't a fan of this novel and I can't recommend it. My past experience/comparisons with the Expanded/Legends universe aside, my critique of the writing style still stands. Read it if you have a burning desire to know everything about the Star Wars universe, though I'd recommend reading a wikipedia article instead. It'll likely be more compelling and save you a lot of time.

I will say that I actually liked most of the main characters, but most of their motivations were not compelling. The worst thing about the main story arc is...


**** spoilers below ****
that every protagonist "dies" at least once during the story, some more than once. Then we find out they didn't die. I actually ended up wanting them to die, because the author clearly has a child's grasp of drama and suspense with his repetitive "cliffhanger" chapters. The story would've been better if the characters had died instead of being saved miraculously over and over again.

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