Books: Moving Target by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry (2015)

Star Wars: Moving Target by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry is the last volume that made up the first part of Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And like the previous two books in this series, the story is framed as flashback. We open prior to the events of the new movie, with General Leia Organa wrestling with her duties to the Resistance and how she must balance those responsibilities with her own personal wishes. Which reminds her of a story from St Olaf…wait, that’s not right.

Well a little bit. This loose trilogy of books has all been about the same thing, how Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie are thrown into leadership roles against their better wishes (except for the princess of course, she’s been fighting the Empire in one way or another since she was a child) and how their desire to end the Imperial rule allows other people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. And it’s apparent, after fighting for thirty plus years, no one thought of recording Leia’s thoughts about what it all means. But now on the eve of her sending Dameron Poe to Jakku, she agrees to begin setting the record straight so to speak, and she unwinds a tale set just before the events of Return of the Jedi.

The mission of this story revolves around Leia taking a small group on a recruiting mission along some outer rim systems that is actually meant to draw imperial attention away from the actual fleet gathering at Sullust to attack the incomplete second Death Star. The group jumps around, setting an electronic bread crumb trail for the Empire to follow, all while Leia wrestles with truth that she is setting up outlier rebels to prevent the Imperial forces from discovering the rebel fleets true location.

The plot is your basic mismatched group heroes with certain abilities that must work together to achieve a goal (it’s Gun on Ice Planet Zero for the original Battlestar Galactica). And like Smuggler’s Run, the interaction between the characters makes this YA title work. We get some good speeches about what the rebels are really fighting for and why some would give up their own lives to achieve the goals of Resistance. 

One the things that really stopped me from reading the original Expanded Universe books after a few years in the 1990s was, as it happens here, that threats the Imperials make on heroes always rang hollow with me. You always knew that if a stormtrooper, or some other Imperial villain pointed a blaster at the head of Leia, Han, Luke, Chewie, or threatened the destruction of C3PO or R2D2 the reader knew they would not die, would not be destroyed. Leia getting captured was an easy trope to do in those books, and happens here again. It’s these things that made me sort of start not wanting to read them (and this includes the Star Trek books as well). I know that the hero always wins, but that’s TV and movies for you. Sometimes, in these series books, I wish a writer would be able to break out of the formula. But even as I write, I know it’s the formula that readers apparently want and are dictated by the publisher. 

There is a lot of good things about these books –mostly the loss of subplots- so even Leia getting captured is not that annoying. I enjoyed them. Now the question is do I go and start reading the handful of other titles in this new Expanded Universe that Disney has created?

Books: Star Wars: Smuggler's Run By Greg Rucka (2015)

It probably does not matter if I read Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run second, rather than first, and read Star Wars: Weapon of a Jedi first than second, as neither impact each other. But like the Luke Skywalker tale, this Han Solo and Chewbacca story opens with a prologue set just before The Force Awakens. We have a much older Han Solo sitting in a cantina listening to a bunch of smugglers talk about fast ships. Soon, of course, Han must talk to them about the fastest ship in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon, which then leads into a tale set just after the events of A New Hope. 

The destruction of the Death Star has put a dent in the Imperial war machine, but the Rebellion has no time to savor its victory. The evil Galactic Empire has recognized the threat the rebels pose, and is now searching the galaxy for any and all information that will lead to the final destruction of the freedom fighters. And Han wants to pay off his debt to Jabba. But before he and Chewie can leave Yavin IV, Leia comes to Han to ask him for another favor: a special-ops crew of Rebels, responsible for safeguarding the secret of the current and next Rebel base, has been discovered and five of six of them killed. She needs him to pick up that agent, Ematt before the Empire gets a hold him. Of course, the planet the rebel is on is in the Outer Rim, a lawless world by the name of Cyrkon. While Han still refuses, it’s Chewie who eventually convinces him that they need to save the young man (a good, well written part, by the way). Meanwhile, Ematt is trying to evade the clutches of Alecia Beck, a Commander in the Imperial Security Bureau. She is ruthless and very competent warrior with a scar and a cybernetic eye to show just how coldblooded she really is. She is also the personification of the brutality of what the Empire truly is: she sees everyone, including those under her, as mere fodder for the advancement of the Imperial fist. After their arrival on Cyrkon, Han and Chewie need to find Ematt, elude Imperial forces and four bounty hunters who’ve come to the planet in search of what will eventually be Jabba’s prize statue.

While the plot is a pretty standard find-the-hunted-man-before-the-villains-do narrative, what makes the book (despite being a Young Adult tale) good is author Greg Rucka’s wonderful, often hilarious relationship between Han and Chewie, as you sort of end up laughing out loud with the back-and-forth dialogue between them. You also kind of end up sort of respecting the villain somewhat as well. She’s very three dimensional here, which is something I like in this new unified canon –everyone seems to be drawn very carefully.

While these books are slim, they are well paced. The elimination of many sub-plots that would’ve filled out a much longer book, helped the keep the story focused, fun and exciting.

Like Weapon of a Jedi, another book in Disney’s Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there is a slim connection to the film, which are the bounty hunters themselves. Han mentions several of them, including the ones who board his freighter in the film. After years of annoying them, is it any reason those dudes took such drastic action against the famous smuggler?

Books: Star Wars: The Weapon of a Jedi By Jason Fry (2015)

My exploration of the new Expanded Star Wars Universe continues...

Timeline ways, we’re not given the exact date as to when this prologue opens, though Threepio has his red arm we all saw I the movie. So speculation on my part, this begins just before the events of The Force Awakens.

Anyways, Star Wars: The Weapon of a Jedi by Jason Fry opens with a Resistance X-Wing pilot named Jessika Pava who meets C-3PO in a hangar and realizes who he is and what kinds of stories he can tell. 3PO’s mention of Luke prompts her to inquire about a Luke story not as well known as his other heroic exploits. So, in his own unique way, the protocol droid begins telling her a story set shortly after events of A New Hope, when Luke, 3PO and R2D2 go on a data retrieval mission. But the simple journey goes a bit awry, when they encounter some Imperial entanglements. This leads Luke to land on Devaron for repairs, which also coincides with recent visions he’s been having. It seems the Force is directing him there. In the town of Tikaroo, Luke requests a guide to take him to what is called the Eedit ruins; the place the Force wants him to go. But the remains, he is told, are off limits, mostly by Imperial edict (whom also has perimeter alarms around the temples), but also because the place is thought to be haunted. Eventually, Luke he ends up hiring a scavenger named Sarco Plank to take him into the forest. Plank is an eyeless insectoid member of the Melitto species, who is also a amoral scavenger, bounty hunter and arms dealer. After Luke’s visions help him locate a hidden cave entrance that gets him past the Imperial perimeter, he uncovers 3 training remotes and trains for a few days at the temple before the Imperials catch up with him and the time comes to put his training to use. 

There are some distant ties to The Force Awakens here, especially the notion of the Jedi Order temples we hear Han Solo talk about briefly in the film. While this is new to the movies, if memory serves me right, the Jedi temples were first mentioned in The Clone Wars animated series (unified canon, baby). And Sarco Plank appears on Jakku, but is given no real mention there. 

Also, it’s an easy read (well, it is for the 9-14 range), but for fans, this gives a wider look into the new timeline created, especially since these books are now considered canon. 

Not sure if it matters, but this YA title, Star Wars: Weapon of a Jedi is the second book in this Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens series. I was unsure if there was a certain order to them, so I started with the Luke Skywalker one first.

Books: Star Wars: Lost Stars By Claudia Gray (2015)

When Bantam books began releasing Star Wars novels set after Return of the Jedi, I realized that George Lucas was never going to go beyond that last film –though in 1992 no one thought he would do the prequel films as well. Only one book, beyond the novelizations of the A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, had been released, which was Alan Dean Foster’s 1978 novel Splinter in the Mind’s Eye. 

At the time, I honestly thought this novel was going to the premise of episode five. Years later, I would learn I was partially right. Foster, who had ghost written the original novelization, was handed the script for a Star Wars follow-up, one that was designed as a cheap-to-make sequel had not the original proved such a success. It seems back then, Lucas and 20^th Century Fox were hedging their bets and so Lucas had created a treatment that became Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.

Anyways, like many a Star Wars fan, I began to collect and read these novels that would eventually be known as the Expanded Universe. But they started to come out so fast, I began to buy them and not read them (something that still happens to this day). But I was also interested in other genres, other books, TV and movies. If I had devoted myself to just reading Star War novels, I may’ve been able to read all them between 1992 and 2012 when Disney acquired the franchise and announced a new series of movies, plus saying the current EU was going to put aside in favor of a new timeline. 

I know some fans were hoping that certain characters and storylines in the EU would make it into what is now known as The Force Awakens. Much like my other beloved franchise, Star Trek, I kind of understand why they’re doing this. Mostly, though, it’s so Disney does not have to pay any novelist rights to popular characters and situations that have molded the EU for 20 years. 

I will also admit, part of the reason I stopped reading the EU was I felt the bad guys threatening our main charterers like Luke, Leia and Han with death was pointless. As a reader, I knew that no writer of any of those novels would be able kill off such beloved people, so when a situation rose where an evil creature pointed a blaster at the head of, say, Princess Leia, I was taken out of the book because I knew, knew, that she would not die. 

Now it’s 2015, and Disney is about to release The Force Awakens in a month, and Disney/Lucasfilm Books have started a whole new Expanded Universe 2.0. Much like the old EU, these books don’t have to read in any sort of order, as they are stand-alone novels. But some will have minor connections to the upcoming new trilogy. 

The new universe began last year with Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, which is a prequel novel to the new animated TV series Star Wars: Rebels (also note, the two previous animated series dealing with the Clone Wars are considered canon in this new timeline, even though they came before Disney bought the franchise). Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno, Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne, and Star Wars: Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp all followed. Again, these are standalone tales that are set before and during and consecutively with Episodes I-VI (and none of which I’ve read). 

Starting in September of this year Disney/Lucasfilm Books began releasing titles under the moniker of Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. These novels would begin adding pieces, some small, and some big to the greater whole of the newest trilogy.  Aftermath by Chuck Wendig, is set primarily after the events of episode VI, but The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry, Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure by Cecil Castellucci, and Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo Adventure by Greg Rucka are all set within Episode IV-VI (and much like Aftermath, I’ve yet to read them).

This brings me to Lost Stars by Claudia Gray. I admit at first I was not interested in reading this YA tale, even though it was supposed to contain clues that would be explored in The Force Awakens. But I kept seeing reviews that said the book was surprisingly well written, engaging, and fun. So, I thought what the hell. Why not?

Lost Stars gives us a macro view of some of the most important events in the Star Wars universe, from the rise of the Rebellion to the fall of the Empire, but it’s not totally Forrest Gump mashed with Romeo and Juliet and then mixed with Star Wars (yet it is). The novel opens 8 years after the fall of the Old Republic where on the planet Jelucan we meet Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell. Ree’s family history is she’s part of the original settlers of the planet, while Kyrell was part of the second-wave of settlers. Ree’s generation are generally known as farmers who shun technology (mostly because they’re poor), and live off the land, while Kyrell’s generation are rich and embrace the new technology the Empire is giving them. But both believe the Rebellion to be wrong and know the Empire is right. As they age, they become friends. They train together so by the time they enter the Imperial corps, they become competitive to see whom they can impress the most. But as the Empire tightens its grip on the galaxy, as historical events unfold, both begin to question their loyalty to the Empire. But only one will make a decision that will put them both in opposite ends of a conflict that is tearing the universe apart.

I simply enjoyed this book. I found all the characters to well written, especially our two star-crossed lovers. I liked that Gray gave us a closer, inmate look at the events of episode IV-VI through different eyes, I like the idea that she had characters asking questions like how weird it was a small rag-tag group of rebels were able to destroy the first Death Star (and even question the oddness of its one weakness). Also, funny enough, why Darth Vader ordered the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive to be disabled at Bespin if the Empire was so sure they were going to defeat Luke Skywalker and the rest at Cloud City (a plot hole I never thought about). The novel does get a bit “fannish” when late in the novel, after the events of Return of the Jedi, a squadron of fighters travels to a planet where some remnants of the Empire is supposed to hanging out, and its only identification is 5251977. Why not just use THX1138 as a name for a planet?

There is, as advertised, a post skirmish with the Empire that has some bearing on The Force Awakens. It's a chapter set about a year after ROTJ that also features the final confrontation between Cree and Kyrell over the planet Jakku, the desert world where Rey lives and where Finn crashes onto (and one can assume the downed Star Destroyer seen in the trailer, the one stuck in the sand, the one where Rey appears to be investigating, is the same one mentioned in this book). There is not much more of a revelation here, just a bit of backstory. Oddly, though, after reading 500 pages of this book, I did not feel cheated that this is the only glimpse into the next film. It seemed a logical aspect within the novel, and not something designed merely to get you to read a YA book. 

Finally, I’m unsure if I’ll continue reading these new novels set in the new canon (that also includes the latest novel Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alexander Freed which serving as an introduction to the new video game, also serves as another peek into the new movie series). There is much I want to read, both old and new (I mean I have hundreds of unread books just waiting for me here at the house, and each time I add new ones, well, things don’t ever get caught up). But never say never, I guess.