The biggest thing that jumped out to me in this book was the character development. It's hard in tie-in novels, particularly those set between a movie and its sequel because you can't change too much of significance without either the book or the movie being made incoherent by the next movie release. Resistance Reborn, in my opinion, handled it really well. I'd definitely call this a Poe Dameron novel. It covers a few different characters, but his development arc is the one that really draws you in, and it's the one that ties this book to both The Last Jedi and to Rise of Skywalker. Rey is a minor character in this novel, but I'm happy with that. The movies tell Rey's story, so it's nice to see the people of the Resistance that we miss in the movies.

The main plot of this book is simple enough, as I'd expect from a novel tying in two movies, and its simplicity is beautiful because it lets the characters really shine. The Resistance needs support, and is looking for leaders to help turn more and more people to their cause. But the allies Leia was expecting to find are silent or missing, so Poe is on a mission to find out what's happened to them. But Poe, brilliant Poe, is still reeling from The Last Jedi. He's learning to take responsibility for his actions, and the way his decision led to a lot of deaths during the attack on the Dreadnought. It's about Poe learning to process his grief, and how his found-family within the Resistance can help him with that.

Throughout the book we see lots of familiar names drawn from different parts of the Star Wars canon, but we see new characters too. Bless Rebecca Roanhorse for all of her additions, honestly. Teza especially, delights. She's a woc, an ex-Imperial warlord turned Black Squadron bad-ass, and I love her. Roanhorse also wrote the existing characters really, really well. Poe felt perfectly written (I could hear Oscar Isaac in my head, I swear) and the strength she gave Leia in her writing was beautiful. It was perfectly Leia.

There were a few fleeting FinnPoe moments that I thoroughly enjoyed, but, well. We knew we weren't going to get much from the franchise in this regard, so I'll take what I can get. There's a conversation about Finn's 'just friends' that makes me laugh every time I think about it.