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Just a heads-up, I'm writing and posting this here because the technically correct forum for this is full of idiots who don't even know what a book is, this forum is really interested in literature anyways and the people on PC don't know me (anymore) nor respect my opinion and yet you guys do, so I have a more interested audience. As such, please don't complain that this is the wrong forum, as it would be ignored on the correct one.
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There's a library in a bus that once a month stops by my school. It almost never has any good books; occasionally it has a one-hundred page Star Wars book made for and marketed towards twelve year olds (Jedi Apprentice, anyone?), but that's about it. Yesterday I found one book with an interesting title, and I only picked it up because it had Star Wars on the title. I had no idea what to expect going into the book; some Star Wars books were good, some were bad, but most were just mediocre.
That said, the book drew me in straight away. We're introduced to the two main characters, Thane Kyrell and Cienna Ree, both natives of the planet Jalucan. Jelucan is a planet divided in two due to some long history, and the characters are both from different civilizations on the planet. Thane, who is introduced first, is a "Second Waver" - that is, someone from the second wave of settlement on the otherwise barren rock. Cienna is from the Valley, and her family has been on the planet for five hundred or so years.
Despite their societal differences, the two come to be good friends and learn to fly alongside one another. The writer earns my applaud for showing how the friendship between the two progresses as they grow up, until they eventually enter the Imperial Academy to begin preparation to be TIE fighters. Once in the academy, there are four more characters of importance introduced; two of them are Thane's roommates and two are Cienna's.
Upon graduation from the Imperial Academy, they're both assigned to different stations, with Thane being assigned to the Death Star and Cienna being assigned to the Devastator. They really like their new jobs and are proud to serve the Empire... And then the Death Star destroys Alderaan, the home planet of Thane's former roommate Nash.
I won't spoil the rest of the plot aside from one more statement, but I will cover some key themes. The first theme that came to me was that the Empire may not have truly been evil; at least, the TIE fighters and stormtroopers weren't. It all depends on which side of the war you're on, and all the characters were shocked at the destruction of the Death Star.
Shortly after the destruction of the Death Star, Thane deserts the Empire. Thane and Cienna have been friends since childhood, and despite both believing in the same causes (mostly), a tiny difference in their outlook on the world altered which side of the war they fought on. They went on parallel journeys after that, with Kendy (one of Cienna's former roommates from the academy) later deserting as well while Nash remained loyal to the Empire. I kind of like to think of Nash as being like an anti-Thane and Kendy as being an anti-Cienna, but that's just me and i can't find anything to back that up immediately.
However, the thing that I like most of all is the way it handles adult themes, especially romance and sierra echo x-ray (filter's a bravo india tango charlie hotel). In fact, despite the characters only having sierra echo x-ray twice in the book, it felt engaging and interesting both times, and made sense for their characters. This is honestly the best romance novel I have ever read.
I'd also like to touch a tiny bit on the literary devices used by the author. The way that the author uses characters is very well done. Every character either has an important role to play in the story or was a character from the movies (and even then they often had an important role in the story). Some characters didn't perform actions that effected the outcome of the book, but they showed insight into the minds of people aside from main characters. Additionally, juggling two main characters is a difficult task, and I think that the author pulled it of fantastically.
This isn't a hagiography of the book, though, and there are faults. In particular, there is one thing that I found not to my satisfaction, and that is the ending. The story was amazing and the ending wasn't bad, but I felt that it didn't suit the theme of the novel very well. It ended in a way that's easy to use to make a sequel, but I don't think that it needs a sequel. The whole storyline is that the characters are lovers on opposite sides of a war; the book ended with the end of the galactic Empire and the war, and as such any sequel would be a shameless cashgrab instead of a true thematic sequel.
I recommend this book highly, both to Star Wars fans and fans of romance novels, though I would like to make a quick note that this is not a book that I'd find suitable for people under the age of fourteen. Not because of the sierra echo x-ray (that all happens between scenes described and a few flashbacks), but because it's a heavy book that requires concentration. It is my all-time favourite Star Wars novel and my all-time favourite romance novel (though admittedly that wasn't a very high bar previously) and I wish that I had gotten it at a bookstore instead of a library so that I could add it to my personal collection. |