Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

As you might guess from the cover, Aftermath takes place soon after Return of the Jedi. The "quite operational" second Death Star has been destroyed with the Emperor and Lord Vader on board, but the fledgling New Republic still has Imperial loyalists to deal with. Being part of the new canon, this timeline will not continue with a Truce at Bakura.

I feel like part of the problem with this book is that hardly any of the characters from the movies are important players in this story. Wedge Antilles is held prisoner for most of it, and Han and Chewie only get a short cameo in an interlude. There are scenes that include Admiral Ackbar and Mon Mothma, but they barely affect anything. One would think that those primarily responsible for the end of the Empire would get more of the spotlight in events that directly follow. Instead, Aftermath takes place entirely on the planet of Akiva, not counting the scattered short-story-like interludes, and introduces an entirely new group of characters.

Young scavenger Temmin Wexley* and his mother Norra have been estranged ever since she joined the Rebellion and Temmin's father was arrested by the Empire. Norra happened to be the Y-Wing pilot who flew into the second Death Star, and now she wants to rescue Wedge Antilles from the Star Destroyer Vigilance when she hears his distress call. The Wexleys are joined by defected Imperial loyalty officer Sinjir Velus, and bounty hunter Jas Emari. The group learns that there is to be a meeting of top Imperials in Myrra, the capital of Akiva, and they plan to gain intel from it.

As far as antagonists, we have a gangster named Surat,  plus the usual assortment of generic Imperial officers, the most memorable being Admiral Rae Sloane. Sloane was created for the earlier novel A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, so Wendig doesn't even get credit for making her well-rounded. Only Norra, Temmin, and Sinjir get adequate character development.

It put me off that the author chose to write in present tense, a technique which just doesn't fit a novel set "a long time ago." He also uses sentence fragments. Everywhere. For all descriptions. Creating many pauses. Got on my nerves. A lot.

This book is intended to be the start of a trilogy, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it might seem better in retrospect, but despite a few fun characters, it didn't add up to much of consequence. And as for it being on the "Journey to The Force Awakens", I did not detect any meaningful connections to the new movie. The time after the Empire's fall should have more impactful stories involving familiar characters, and this book didn't scratch that itch.

*It has since come to light that Temmin is the character Greg Grunberg plays in The Force Awakens. Hey, now we know he won't die in the books!

Star Wars: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray

The Star Wars movies usually have sharp divisions between the good and evil sides of the warfare, but in Lost Stars, Claudia Gray presents relatable characters who both start out fighting for the Galactic Empire.

Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell grew up together on the planet Jelucan, which is a recent addition to the Empire. They practice flying in tandem in Thane's ship and when they're old enough they enroll in the Imperial Academy. As the years pass, Thane becomes disillusioned with the Empire and joins the Rebel Alliance, while Ciena remains loyal to those who trained her.

Lost Stars spans a pretty long time period, from a few years after Revenge of the Sith to a year after Return of the Jedi. A short summary of the book might lead one to compare Ciena and Thane to Romeo and Juliet since they're lovers on opposite sides of a conflict, but a more accurate comparison might be to Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, since the pair are involved in major events just along the periphery of more well-known characters.

Ciena is aboard Darth Vader's flagship Devastator when Leia is captured above Tatooine, then she's on the Death Star when it destroys Alderaan. She is distraught about the massive loss of life but justifies it to herself as the Emperor's way of preventing further attacks. Back on the Devastator, she is assigned to pick up Darth Vader after he escaped the destruction of the Death Star. This rebel victory is seen by Ciena and other Imperials as an act of terrorism.

By now, Thane has deserted his post and returned to Jelucan. When Ciena finds him she decides to report that Thane committed suicide. The pair has realized they're in love, but their ideological differences make it impossible to pursue a relationship. During analysis of the Rebels tactics in the Battle of Hoth, Ciena recognizes a flight maneuver that could only be performed by her best friend, so she now knows he has joined the side of her enemies.

The author has an unenviable task when it comes to showing why someone like Ciena would continue to support the actions of the Empire after all she has witnessed. It seems to mostly be due to a long standing sense of loyalt, a feeling that she has come too far to abandon the other officers, and not knowing of a different way of life. I won't say she's a completely unsympathetic character, but it does become hard to root for someone who is ignorant when it comes to fundamentally questioning authority.

It does become a little contrived that these two keep barely surviving these massive battles in which either one could have shot down the other, and they happen to reunite multiple times after each assuming they would never see each other again. The coincidences can be chalked up to the machinations of the all-powerful Force, which Thane is pretty skeptical about, but of course in the Star Wars universe, the Force just as good an explanation as any. And their interactions are all told skillfully enough that you just want the couple to be on the same side and make it work, gosh darnit.

Now for a little bit of spoiler territory. As part of Del Rey's "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens" line, this book contains self-proclaimed "clues" about the upcoming movie. I don't think anything important is given away but in case you want to go in to the theater totally clear of knowledge, skip the next paragraph.

The last few chapters deal with the Battle of Jakku, which takes place a year after the Battle of Endor. Ciena has become the commander of her own Star Destroyer called the Inflictor and Thane is in charge of taking the massive ship for the Alliance. When Thane's team disables the Inflictor's self-destruct, Ciena chooses to crash it into the surface of Jakku, hoping to simultaneously end her life and her time with the Empire. After a fight, Thane manages to get both of them to an escape pod, and the Star Destroyer is the very one that we have seen on the planet's surface in the trailers for The Force Awakens.
 
This book does a good job of presenting a new point of view on events that all Star Wars fans are familiar with, with the backbone being a tragic love story. It may be labeled as a young adult book but it is actually a pretty sophisticated story and even at over 500 pages it was a quick read. Focusing on two major characters with moral choices gives it some emotional weight, though a little more humor would have been welcome.

Star Wars: Darth Vader, Volume 1: Vader, by Kieron Gillen

The redundantly titled Star Wars: Darth Vader: Vader contains issues 1-6 of the first ongoing comic book starring everyone's favorite Sith Lord. It takes place right alongside the main Star Wars comics series so some of the events overlap with Skywalker Strikes.

In this volume we get a fresh look at the iconic villain, such as how he acts when nobody's looking, but that never dilutes how menacing he comes across. Since this is right after the destruction of the Death Star and the Cymoon 1 weapons factory, Vader gets scolded by Emperor Palpatine and later finds out that his master had been ready to replace him. We get to see more of his meeting with Jabba the Hutt from Skywalker Strikes and his hiring of bounty hunters Boba Fett and Black Krrsantan. In a plot point that is barely worth mentioning, Vader is assigned an adjutant who quickly betrays him and whom Vader kills for the trouble.

In the meat of the story, Lord Vader enlists a rogue archaeologist named Doctor Aphra (there is a sly wink to an Indiana Jones quote when Aphra is introduced) who has a ship called the Ark Angel. Aphra has just recovered the personality matrix of a protocol droid called 000 or "Triple Zero" who in turn activates an assassin droid disguised as an astromech, known as BT-1. He wants their help in order to steal a droid hive (?) from Geonosis to create his own private army of battle droids. In other words, in a development that a teenage boy would delight in, Vader now has his own murder-happy droid pair and Wookiee (Krrsantan) working for him, like the dark side versions of C-3P0, R2-D2, and Chewie.

The agent Cylo-IV is brought to Vader by Black Krrsantan and then tortured to death by Triple Zero, who learns the location of Cylo's base. This turns out to be where the Emperor has been secretly training and enhancing other apprentices, including a pair of lightsaber-weilding twins, apparently for the purpose of having Vader fight them all and prove his worth. Later, Boba Fett reports that he found the destroyer of the Death Star, but all he got was the boy's name: Skywalker. This gives Darth Vader a flashback to Revenge of the Sith (oh the humanity) and the memory of Padme being pregnant when he killed her, and he realizes he has a son.

I wasn't as impressed with this series as with Jason Aaron's writing in Skywalker Strikes. The problem with centering a series on Vader is he has to be provided more dialogue than we're used to, and sometimes these lines don't seem easy to imagine in James Earl Jones' voice. And some of the plotting seems kind of "ooh wouldn't this look cool" instead of "let's tell a thoughtful story". However it remains pleasing eye candy and the attempt at humanizing Vader is not entirely without merit.

Star Wars, Volume 1: Skywalker Strikes by Jason Aaron

This is the first volume of Star Wars comics published by Marvel in decades; when the franchise was rebooted last year, several ongoing series from Dark Horse were cancelled. Skywalker Strikes contains issues 1-6 of the flagship title and takes place soon after Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star. Everyone's favorite farm boy is on a mission with Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and droids R2-D2 and C3PO. Right away this makes things feel less isolated than the events of Heir to the Jedi. They have a plan to destroy an Imperial weapons factory. Little do they know that Darth Vader happens to be there to thwart them. Later, Han and Leia seek refuge on a planet protected by an electric storm, and Luke feels himself called back to his home planet of Tatooine.

The danger of telling a story in between established movies is that we know that any characters who appear later are never in any mortal danger. None of those named above have any chance of dying, but Jason Aaron still toys with that expectation, effectively changing the question to "how did he survive that?" The writer is able to create situations that feel essential to the larger story, and yet it seems a little contrived when certain characters who rarely or never interacted on screen together come face to face on the page. Darth Vader has a meeting with Jabba the Hutt, and enlists Boba Fett to find the rebel who destroyed his prized superweapon. When Luke arrives at Obi-Wan Kenobi's house he confronts and battles with Fett. Meanwhile, there is also the introduction of Han Solo's heretofore unknown wife, Sana, who tortures a few of Greedo's Rodian pals to find her way to her husband. It remains to be seen whether this new character will serve the story well or feel out of place.

I must say the art in these panels is pretty great. The characters all resemble the actors and costumes that we're used to, and the opening text crawl and scenes set in space are given their cinematic space. It will be interesting to see what kind of stories this creative team comes up with that fit between the movies, and whether they can maintain this level of quality on a monthly basis.