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.
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