Star Wars: Twilight Company

I was leery about picking up a book based on a video game, but I needed to feed my Star Wars habit in prep for the film.

This book has a lot going on. There is an ensemble cast, some who interact, and some who do not, some whose storylines jump back and forth in time. That is a lot of motivations to keep track of, especially when there are about 30 battles that take place... Which comes to another structural problem with this book: some battles are covered in depth, but most ignore the "show don't tell rule"... Exposition should not be a stylistic choice.

The thing that put me over the edge to get this book was the narrator, Jonathan Davis, who is brilliant. He does a good job here too, though having sound effects and background sounds throughout the entire 14 hours of this book was a bit much... Though I was thankful for some of the musical queues, otherwise I would not understand what the characters were feeling.

There are some positives: I learned a lot about the day-to-day life of a rebel soldier, which was pretty nice.

This book is okay, and deserves 2 stars, but JD did a good job and it IS Star Wars, so I gave it 3.

Military sci-fi set in the Star Wars universe. Set between Episodes IV and VI the book follows the story of a line company in the Rebel Alliance as the Rebellion pulls back from the Mid Rim following the Battle of Yavin, through the Battle of Hoth and the chaos following.

It does a good job of showing just what role such a unit would play in the setting and tells a compelling story.

It seems that none of the new canon stories told during the period of the original trilogy can avoid retelling some of those events. In this case it's the Battle of Hoth (hardly a spoiler given the front cover art). Fortunately, the book handles it well, using the opportunity to compare and contrast Twilight Company with the headquarters troops of Echo Base. Also, the couple of encounters with iconic characters are pivotal to a couple character arcs and not just cameos for the sake of cameos.

A good addition to the new canon of the Star Wars universe.