A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller

A New Dawn was the first novel written to be part of the new Star Wars canon, with input from the Lucasfilm Story Group. Its title serves as a nod to the new beginning that the franchise is embarking on, as well as a twist to the familiar title A New Hope. Primarily it is the story of Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla from the TV series Star Wars: Rebels, taking place six years before that show and showing how they met.

This book takes place on and around the Inner Rim planet of Gorse and its habitable moon, Cynda. As a tidal-locked planet, Gorse has one half continually facing the sun and inhospitably hot, the other side covered in cities that experience perpetual humid night. Kanan, a former Jedi who was born with the name Caleb Dume, is now working as a freight pilot in a mining company called Moonglow. Kanan catches a Clone Wars veteran named Skelly in the act of setting a sabotage explosion, with the goal of sending a message to the Empire about the dangers of the operation. The Empire has been gathering an important mineral called thorillide and tasks the cyborg Count Vidian with increasing the speed of production.

Hera, discontented with the Empire's ruthless actions, has come to the Gorse system to find a friend of hers, a Sullustan named Kaluna who assists the Empire with surveillance. Until saving people from Skelly's sabotage, Kanan had been very careful to conceal his Force-assisted abilities ever since the Emperor issued Order 66. Hera, Kanan, Kaluna, and Skelly cross paths, and once they figure out Vidian's nefarious, self-serving plan for the mining planet and moon, they make every attempt to thwart him. Captain Rae Sloane is also introduced in this story, an Imperial officer given temporary control of the Star Destroyer Ultimatum who doesn't exactly help the rebels, but has the common goal of stopping Vidian.

I enjoyed this book for its strong characters, snappy dialogue, and exciting action. That is to say, everything a Star Wars story ideally should have. I really appreciated how streamlined the book was; Miller doesn't try to shoehorn in extraneous characters or needless subplots. Fans of "Rebels" will get a look at Kanan's backstory, but precious little is revealed about Hera besides what her actions in the book say about her. It is hinted that the two share a mutual attraction, but there's not much time for love when the fate of a whole moon is at stake. What we do see is how well they work together and we come to understand why they mutually decided that Kanan should stay aboard Hera's ship the Ghost. I would like to see another story of how they first encountered Sabine and Zeb before the crew finds themselves on Lothal, but maybe this is being saved for future episodes of the show to explore.

For much more about this book and information about how it was written, directly from the author, check out this page. Caution, spoilers aplenty.

Never Go Back by Lee Child

Back in 2012, a movie called Jack Reacher came to theaters without a lot of hoopla. A few years later, star Tom Cruise teamed up again with its director Christopher McQuarrie for the fifth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and it was based on my enjoyment of Rogue Nation that I went back and watched Reacher. I didn't have high expectations because on the surface it looked like a rote thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised by the main character, the tight plotting, and the action set pieces that had been praised by critics. Jack Reacher was based on Lee Child's book One Shot. This month, the movie's sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is coming out so I decided to read the book that it's based on.

According to Wikipedia, this novel concludes a storyline that Child began with 2010's 61 Hours and continued in Worth Dying For and A Wanted Man, however Never Go Back stands alone and doesn't require knowledge of the preceding books. Former Military detective Jack Reacher has traveled to Northeastern Virginia to the base of the 110th MP, where he used to be the Commanding Officer. His goal is to meet the current CO Susan Turner because he liked the sound of her voice on the phone. Yes, that's his sole motivation at the start of the story, but somehow it makes sense character-wise. He finds that Turner has been imprisoned and replaced, and in two affidavits, Reacher himself is accused of a 16-year-old homicide and of having fathered a 14-year-old girl. In essence, the past is coming back to haunt a man who has always tried to move forward.

Reacher finds a way to break out of the jail cells with Turner, and the two cleverly escape the base and the District of Columbia together. They make their way from Virginia to West Virginia to Pittsburgh, stopping at diners and hotels on the way. Something that struck me as odd about Lee Child's writing is that he specifically describes the roads that his characters travel turn-by-turn, clearly showing he did research about the cities depicted, but we shouldn't need to visualize a map to understand the plot. Also, when Reacher and Turner enter West Virginia, that state's residents are personifications of stereotypes. And the method by which they acquire money and a vehicle for their travels is a convenience that borders on ridiculous. They just happen to come across a burning meth lab with its "cook" already dead and his cash and keys easy to find.

That being said, I found this book a compulsive read. Every chapter ends with a plot twist and both main characters remain likable and intelligent in their handling of difficult decision-making. Turner is never a damsel in distress and displays just as much competence and gusto as Reacher. To get back to the plot, they choose to fly from Pittsburgh Airport to Long Beach, California. (In that chapter, there's a comment speculating that perhaps there are so many flights between the two cities because of films increasingly being shot in Pittsburgh; I think this is a reference to the location shooting for the first Jack Reacher movie.) LA is their goal location because Reacher's alleged daughter is said to be living on the streets there. Along the journey they piece together who has framed them for the respective crimes, and fight off some relentless pursuers  I can't help wondering how effectively the movie sequel will depict the nation-trotting aspect of the story since apparently it was entirely filmed in New Orleans.

This isn't the kind of book that I would usually seek out, but I enjoyed it enough that I look forward
to seeing the movie adaptation and perhaps read a few more in the series. Since Lee Child has written more than 20 Jack Reacher novels as well as several short stories, the film series could potentially go on for decades. And since some of those stories are prequels, the studio could easily cast a younger actor when Tom Cruise is done. Maybe even someone who is tall and burly like Reacher is described in the books, who knows.

To find out more about Lee Child and the Jack Reacher books, check out leechild.com.