Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsLike everything in 2016....it's just ok.
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2016
It's a perfectly fine Star Wars novel, and I think that's the problem...it's JUST "fine". There's nothing outstanding about it, kind of a letdown from James Luceno who's other books like Darth Plagueis and Tarkin are really great. I'm assuming that Luceno had to work within a very tight area for this story, but while reading this I wondered if this was really a story that was necessary.
***Spoilers ahead***
I think the main story of the book could be summed up with:
Lyra: "Orson is bad"
Galen: "No he's not"
Lyra: "Yes, Orson is bad"
Galen: "No he's not"
Lyra: "Seriously, Orson is bad"
Galen: "Yeah....I guess maybe you're right, we should leave"
The story crawls in many places and just rehashes essentially the above for a couple hundred pages. I was wondering if I was missing something about the Has Obitt character because a lot of time is spent with him, and he's essentially just a one-off character used as a taxi service and as a method to get Saw Gerrera involved. We do get to see learn a lot about Galen Erso, but I never really felt like he was someone I could root for. He's such a one-dimensional character, the anti-social scientist so devoted to his work he can't see anything else going on until it's way too late. I felt like I was reading about a less interesting version of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
However, there definitely are bright spots to the book: Tarkin's motivations, Krennic's background, canonical confirmation on the Dark Side usage of the kyber crystals in the Death Star laser and Saw Gerrera. I also did like the brief peeks at the newly-formed Empire and how the people were just willing to go along with it because most were rich and peaceful after the end of the Clone Wars and were willing to forget the Jedi and the Republic if it meant safety for them now. It was also nice to see elements of the Prequels woven in like Mas Amedda, the Geonosians, etc. I particularly liked the explanation of how the Geonosians were involved with the Death Star creation as we saw in Episode II.
One thing I do wish the book had further delved into is WHY exactly the Death Star takes 18 years to build. They started planning this thing during the Clone Wars and started building it as well. The book ends about 3-4 years after the end of the Clone Wars and the Death Star seems fairly well along though a kink in Krennic's plan to build the laser delays things on that part, but it would seem from the trailers from Rogue One that he gets things back in hand within a few years. I've just never quite understood the timeline of this thing and wish they had left that scene out of Episode III, and was really hoping for something more concrete here, but no.
This book is definitely middle of the road for the new canon. It's WAY above the Aftermath books in terms of quality, yet far below such great entries as Bloodlines and most especially Lost Stars. Good intro for the Rogue One characters and motivations, but not something I'll ever go back and read again.