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vanessakm 's review for:
A New Dawn
by John Jackson Miller
I've fallen down a Star Wars k-hole lately, and I'm not fighting it. That includes finally-FINALLY-tackling the Expanded Universe (or, Star Wars Legends if it's pre-April, 2014.) The only Star Wars novels I had read previously were novelizations of the original trilogy that I read around the time they came out.
This is a story in the Star Wars Rebels timeline, which means it's automatically in canon (at least, for now it is), and tells the story of how Kanan met Hera. This is before Sabine, Zeb and Chopper joined the Ghost crew, which is good news to all of the people who hate Chopper. Kanan hasn't come to terms with his Jedi trainee past and the trauma of Order 66, and is living under the radar in various roughneck jobs far from Coruscant. Then an Imperial efficiency expert comes to the mining colony he's made his latest of temporary homes, and workers there start dying because the Empire sucks. That's not just a blithe putdown. Miller really puts some detail into what life would be like in an evil Galactic dictatorship that the movies only scratch the surface on: constant surveillance, disregard of life, unrealistic and unrelenting quotas, environmental destruction.
The surveillance expert's visit also brings Hera, whom Kanan finds just mysterious and hot enough to get dragged into her plot to foil the Empire's plan, whatever it is. The novels can really delve deeply into a world that is made for deep dives better than even a TV show can. As Star Wars typically functions at such an archetypal level, it was nice to explore the motivations of ordinary citizens and the ordinary motivations of extraordinary citizens. It's also nice to see lusty, drunken Kanan, as Jedis can sometimes be dry, lugubrious characters otherwise.
The plot is intricate and thoughtful enough to be entertaining, and Miller can write action sequences very well. I really enjoyed this book. Alas, my reserve for one of Miller's other books ([b:Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories|13023324|Lost Tribe of the Sith The Collected Stories (Star Wars Lost Tribe of the Sith)|John Jackson Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1326407357s/13023324.jpg|18186079]) still hasn't come in because some butthole seems to have lost or stolen the one copy my local library had. I could make some joke about it having fallen into a nest of gondarks, but I'm not THAT big of a nerd.
It's hard to know where to begin in the Star Wars-verse, and some of the novels are probably terrible. Here is an article with some good starting recommendations that I used as my guide.
ETA: As I look back on this, it's still one of my favorite Star Wars novels I've read to date. I really like Rebels, but it's not like it's my all-time favorite property in the canon. This book was just kind of a perfect story though. I'm bumping this up a star.
This is a story in the Star Wars Rebels timeline, which means it's automatically in canon (at least, for now it is), and tells the story of how Kanan met Hera. This is before Sabine, Zeb and Chopper joined the Ghost crew, which is good news to all of the people who hate Chopper. Kanan hasn't come to terms with his Jedi trainee past and the trauma of Order 66, and is living under the radar in various roughneck jobs far from Coruscant. Then an Imperial efficiency expert comes to the mining colony he's made his latest of temporary homes, and workers there start dying because the Empire sucks. That's not just a blithe putdown. Miller really puts some detail into what life would be like in an evil Galactic dictatorship that the movies only scratch the surface on: constant surveillance, disregard of life, unrealistic and unrelenting quotas, environmental destruction.
The surveillance expert's visit also brings Hera, whom Kanan finds just mysterious and hot enough to get dragged into her plot to foil the Empire's plan, whatever it is. The novels can really delve deeply into a world that is made for deep dives better than even a TV show can. As Star Wars typically functions at such an archetypal level, it was nice to explore the motivations of ordinary citizens and the ordinary motivations of extraordinary citizens. It's also nice to see lusty, drunken Kanan, as Jedis can sometimes be dry, lugubrious characters otherwise.
The plot is intricate and thoughtful enough to be entertaining, and Miller can write action sequences very well. I really enjoyed this book. Alas, my reserve for one of Miller's other books ([b:Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories|13023324|Lost Tribe of the Sith The Collected Stories (Star Wars Lost Tribe of the Sith)|John Jackson Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1326407357s/13023324.jpg|18186079]) still hasn't come in because some butthole seems to have lost or stolen the one copy my local library had. I could make some joke about it having fallen into a nest of gondarks, but I'm not THAT big of a nerd.
It's hard to know where to begin in the Star Wars-verse, and some of the novels are probably terrible. Here is an article with some good starting recommendations that I used as my guide.
ETA: As I look back on this, it's still one of my favorite Star Wars novels I've read to date. I really like Rebels, but it's not like it's my all-time favorite property in the canon. This book was just kind of a perfect story though. I'm bumping this up a star.