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quadrille 's review for:
Star Wars: Before the Awakening
by Greg Rucka
Free time in which to relax, simply to rest in the barracks or to read First Order–approved literature or watch First Order–approved vids, vanished. There was always something more to do, somewhere else to be, another session in the simulator or more dishes to wash. There was always someone watching their performance, no matter what it was, someone to tell them that they needed to work faster, work harder, that they had to be better. It didn’t leave a lot of time to think, and FN-2187 began to wonder if that wasn’t the point.
***
But it was a ship, it was in one piece, and Rey had found it—and that made it hers. Her face felt strange; she had an odd ache in her cheeks, and as she went closer, she caught her reflection in what was left of the cockpit’s windshield. She was filthy, but that was normal. What surprised her was that she was smiling, and when she tried to stop, the ache in her cheeks remained and she found that she was still doing it anyway.
***
He set a hand against the side of the X-wing’s nose, felt the metal of the hull cool and solid beneath his palm. The ship had made it through combat without a fleck of damage, as solid and ready and sure as ever. He’d seen his mother doing the same thing, he remembered. Long after she’d given up the flight stick, her A-wing parked between the storage units on the ranch, she’d still walk around that fighter, occasionally touching the ship here or there, as if to reassure it, or to reassure herself. Remembering what she had done to stop the Empire, maybe. Remembering what she had been willing to sacrifice.
I LOVE THIS BOOK, and am recommending it to every fan of The Force Awakens. Three separate stories for each character, it's pitched at a more early YA reading level, but the things that happen are touching and heart-punching (Rey's story, oh man oh man, REY'S STORY). I purposefully held off on this until after I'd seen the movie, and I like that as a choice: it meant backtracking afterwards to learn a bit more about the three main characters pre-movie, what their lives were like and where they came from.
And they -- and the insights you get to their characterisations -- are just so great. Finn's hope and idealism, the way he doesn't fit in with his stormtrooper conditioning, the fact that
Spoiler
Jakku was going to be his last chance to prove himself, and he obviously fails that test in the movieAnyway, if you loved the movie and these precious cinnamon rolls of a main cast, I heartily recommend this lil' book. The writing's great. 4.5 stars from me. I'm genuinely excited to keep reading more of the new canon, even if it does mean tossing so much of the EU/Legends out the airlock.
Also, for a little tangent about Rey's identity (the goddamn question that is going to plague me for the next 2 years):
Spoiler
I think this book reveals another little clue. Notably, the introduction describes the characters as the following: "FN-2187 is a STORMTROOPER, trained by the First Order. He is plagued by doubt. On Jakku, a young woman who calls herself REY [emphasis mine] struggles to live in an isolation necessary for her own survival. And among the stars, POE DAMERON strives to serve a Republic he has always believed in, as sinister powers threaten to break his resolve."Maybe I'm becoming a crazy paranoid conspiracy theorist in my old age, but I think this detail is telling, since it implies that Rey is not actually her name!! And I've heard some obsessive fans out there have pointed out that the alien lettering on her scavenged pilot helmet spells 'RHAE', so my current working theory is that she, or others, started calling her that based on the helmet, for lack of anything else to name her.)
(Will add more favourite quotes at some point.)