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.