A tie-in with The Force Awakens , this book is split into three parts: Finn, Rey and Poe, to give us more background on their circumstances than we received in the film. We're gifted with infrequent illustrations from the talented Phil Noto throughout the book - every single one is lovely, but his Poe is truly exceptional. Or maybe that's just Oscar Isaac's face.



Before The Awakening opens with Finn, or FN-2187. We are immediately told that he is an exceptional soldier, with high scores in everything from combat to leadership skills - none of this is apparent in the film, where he is panicked while faced with his first deployment. FN-2187 performs well in simulations and doubts himself afterward. He is concerned for Slip, the lagging member of his fire-team and unable to truly find the fervor for the First Order during mandatory morale meetings. What I want to know, and what isn't adequately explained, is how he shrugged off years and years of very pervasive brainwashing. Said braindwashing pretty standard military psychology, but FN-2187 has never known anything but the First Order. So what was the catalyst? Natural inclination toward compassion? The Force? Am I asking too much from a middle-grade book? I remain unconvinced, but still interested.

Rey's chapter opens with talking about the native people of Jakku, the Teedos, and their religious beliefs. Their god R'iia is uncaring and angry, bringing storms and famine and "great shards of metal filled with many, many soft beings". Rey is one of the softer beings, though she's become more like the scavengers of her adopted planet as she grows. She's a tinkerer, a mechanic, something she has needed to learn to survive. This just creates more of a contrast between her and Kylo and the ghost of Anakin Skywalker - Rey is the before The Fall and Kylo is after.

We still learn nothing of her past - she makes oblique references to not having anything to compare the town of Niima to, she prefers to be alone, plays with a flight simulator in her spare time. There's plenty in the sparse prose that exemplifies how difficult survival is for her, dependent as she is on selling scrap for food portions and water: "What little wildlife there was on that part of Jakku emerged in the darkness, as well, and most of it was predatory, as desperate to survive as every other living thing."

Slow to trust, but also slow to anger as well. She finds an almost intact ship and immediately works to repair it, not to leave Jakku but to up its value to Unkar, so that she can get the best possible price for it. "But it was a ship, it was in one piece, and Rey had found it - and that made it hers." Rules of the desert, man.

Two other scavengers find it as well and she, however reluctantly, agrees to partner with them as they guard it during her repairs. In the end, Rey has something that could almost be considered a friendship, only for that to be betrayed at the very last as they abscond with the ship and do the one thing Rey could never bring herself to do: leave Jakku.

Last, but never least, Poe's story starts with his mother and her ship. She is a hero of the war and never, ever discusses it. He finds out about her heroics and history once he joins the New Republic after her death. A good chunk of his story is taken up by various space battles with the squadron under his command; the first is begins when they receive a distress signal from a free trader during a routine flight. They engage with the First Order and Muran, one of his pilots, dies in the fray. We find at the debriefing that the New Republic does not seem to believe the First Order to be a threat to the galaxy - they are "a remnant born of a war thirty years gone."

Poe, of course, does not believe this for a minute and it is his CO's refusal to take his information seriously, to passively wait until another attack, that makes him take the telemetry data and follow the First Order's jump path. He is determined to find proof to bring back to Command; Poe desperately wants somebody to do something.

After engaging with the First Order, escaping by the skin of his teeth, he returns to base to be formally reprimanded. To his great surprise, he is brought to meet Leia, where his fanboyism comes out in full force:

"The problem with a reputation is that it can become a legend." General Organa tugged at the shoulder of her uniform, adjusting it. She shrugged. "Don't be deceived, Poe. I'm not a legend."

Poe grinned and shook his head. "You're not sitting where I'm sitting, General."

She gives him a choice: she can make his indiscretion go away and allow him stay with the New Republic, or Poe can join the fledgling Resistance to find irrefutable evidence of the First Order's violation of peace agreements.

He makes the obvious decision. In this we see the recklessness and determination that was hinted at in The Force Awakens and expanded upon in The Last Jedi, where it was a pivotal part of his character development. He is wildly observant of Leia too, which gives me one of the best descriptions of her older self I have seen in the new canon:

That air of sadness had descended on her once more. His father had carried a similar melancholy after his mother had passed; Poe would see it descend on him like a shadow, settle over his shoulders like a blanket made of warmth and memory and longing and loss. Leia wore something made of the same material, and not for the first time Poe wondered how she had come by it and, perhaps more importantly, who had given it to her.