content warnings: violence, death, kidnapping, drugging, binge-drinking, mentions of slavery and torture
representation: gay main character, black side character, sapphic side character, fat black sapphic side character, f/f interracial side relationship


“War is not a state of being. It is meant to be a temporary chaos between periods of peace. Some want it to be a course of things: a default fact of existence. But I will not let that be so.”


I'm going to start this off by saying that this is my first Star Wars tie-in novel so I have no frame of reference for what a SW book 'normally is' or anything like that. Setting that aside, I really enjoyed this, especially as I generally have pretty low expectations for first books in trilogies.

First things first, I listened to the audiobook for this and I would highly recommend you do the same if you intend to read this. Marc Thompson is a fantastic narrator, right up there with the genius of January LaVoy. He has a distinctly different voice for each character but it never feels like he's acting, if that makes sense. Even when he's doing voices of established film characters, such as Han Solo or Gial Ackbar, he still does fantastic voices for them that are incredibly reminiscent of their film counterparts but never feel like impressions. The production of the audiobook overall is also just really, really good.

The plot was okay, as I would expect in the first book of a trilogy. It has some serious pacing issues at the start a la Rogue One as it's trying to introduce all the characters to you and set the plot in motion, but listening to the audiobook did make this issue not as bad for me, particularly as I had it on double speed. Honestly, I'm more excited for where the plot is going to go in the next two books.

If you came to this book hoping to see adventures from your favourite original trilogy characters then sorry but you're SOL. There is a brief appearance of a holo of Leia, Han & Chewy make a brief cameo, and Gial Ackbar and Wedge Antilles have minor roles, but otherwise the main cast is made up entirely of characters from the expanded book universe.

Guys, I loved the characters introduced. I'm all for a group of disasters coming together to sort of save the day and become found family, and this book gave me that in spades with (as I've affectionately titled them) Norra Wexley And Her Group Of Losers:

⇢ Norra Wexley is, in my opinion, the closest this book gets to a protagonist. She's a middle-aged woman who has been fighting in the rebellion for three years.
⇢ Sinjir Rath Velus is my son. He's a former Imperial officer who defected and is now just a Snobby Drunk Disaster Gay and, as we all know, these characters are my favourite.
⇢ Jas Emari is my wife and I love her. She's a Zabrak who's a bounty hunter and honestly I wish we had gotten to see her kill people more because that would've been cool.
⇢ Temmin Wexley is Norra's teen son who hasn't seen her for three years and in that absence has started dabbling in the black market and just overall being a little shit.
⇢ Mister Bones is the Token Droid of this story. He was created by Temmin, and loves singing/dancing and saying "Roger, Roger", something which was both cute and annoying.
⇢ Rae Sloane is not part of Norra Wexley And Her Group Of Losers but I wanted to mention her anyway. She's an Imperial Officer and one of the primary antagonists of this book. I want her to step on me. That's all.

Overall, I thought this was a good first book and I'm excited to continue onto the next two in the trilogy.