Aftermath: Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Okay, so while seeing what everyone else has said about this, and I was able to get a copy of the audiobook, I still went ahead and listened to this. I wanted to know how the Empire finally died and the First Order rose, so I listened. I loved this. Mind you, for a good chunk of the book, I was wondering if/when all those separate people would be meeting or their stories would intertwine - because it meant for a lot of remembering what was going on. But once they did combine, it was great. There isn't a lot of the usual major characters from the movies like Leia and Han, but that turned out to be alright. Loved Sinjir, lordy that Mr. Bones, but everyone in this rebel group - talk about misfits, but misfits doing good. So yep, I liked this - and definitely couldn't wait to keep listening the rest of the series.

The book has its problems, but it was okay. It has a lot to live up to, with the "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens" tagline emblazoned across the top, and I think realizing that it's the first book of a trilogy helps to explain – if not wholly satisfy – some of the underwhelmingness of the story. Yes, the characters could be better developed, but we know we're going to get more of them.

Also, I'm not sure how much my own ignorance of New Canon Star Wars hurts my reading of this novel. To date, I've only read [b:A New Dawn|411448|A New Dawn|Jack Weyland|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1257977099s/411448.jpg|400710], and I'm entirely unfamiliar with the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons. I was glad to see Rae Sloane return, this time as an admiral, but her character seems to me still to be too hesitant and questioning of her own abilities – closer to Capt. Pallaeon than Grand Admiral Thrawn, if you will admit the comparison.

And of course, such comparisons are begging to be made. Although apparently closer in time to the Battle of Endor than Zahn's post-RotJ trilogy, the situation of Aftermath is very similar to the situation of [b:Heir to the Empire|216443|Heir to the Empire (Star Wars The Thrawn Trilogy, #1)|Timothy Zahn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398253847s/216443.jpg|1133995]: the Rebel Alliance has (or is trying to) become the New Republic, while Admiral Ackbar is still leading the military struggle against the remnants of the Empire, which itself is beset by internal bickering about who will be the new leader, even while a mysterious person of quality has risen to power and is pulling strings to solidify that power. The broad situational strokes are, necessarily, the same, and my thoughts inevitably kept turning toward the difference between how the two stories were handled.

In tone, the biggest difference is that the Thrawn stories gave us a wide-angle view of the galaxy throughout its story, not merely showing us what was going on in different places, but also how our favorite characters were faring in the wake (I almost wrote "aftermath") of their having killed the Emperor and his probable successor, Vader. Aftermath takes a different approach, with the majority of the action taking place on a single planet or immediately above it. While there's certainly a value into looking at local conflicts like this and the effects it has on people, I think the thing that Aftermath loses in this approach is the very space operatic feel that make the original Star Wars movies so grand.

At heart, I think Wendig (and the PTBs at Disney controlling story continuity) had to be conscious of this loss – and hence, the interludes. Ah, the interludes, the literary equivalent of Lucas' tacky post-exploding-Death-Star celebration montage in the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi. They give us glimpses with no context of Things Happening Elsewhere, none of which appear to have any bearing whatsoever on the story at hand. Given that they don't move the story along even a bit, one has to wonder why they exist. The congenial response is that they are explicative vignettes to show how various people and planets are faring in a confusing and tumultuous galaxy after its government has collapsed; the cynic in me thinks that they're merely advertisements for future books. Tell me we're not going to get a book about Han Solo and Chewie liberating Kashyyyk... I mean, hell, I'd love to read that book – I want to read that book much more than I wanted to read Aftermath. But I don't want a commercial about it in this story. All of the interludes work basically as prologues to future potential stories, and as such they are interruptive to this story. Frankly, I'd recommend skipping them altogether.

There are plot points that could be picked apart, but all in all, getting past the stuff above, it's a workhorse story that gets us from point A to B, and sets us up for the next book in the series. Admittedly, I am curious to see how Norra and team (I suppose I think of her as the leader, now?) will fare in in the future, so I can't say with good conscience that the story was wholly uninteresting, even if there were a few too many "Oh my god, she/he is dead! Oh, wait, no she/he's not..." moments. (It's a surprise vs. surprisingness thing, for you CSL fans....) So even though I didn't particularly like Wendig's writing style — ZOMG STOP WITH THE PRESENT TENSE — or his willy-nilly use of punctuation, I suspect I'll read the follow-up stories.

Which puts me into a weird place, because until now I wasn't really sure about the New Canon stuff. I'm certainly not as excited about it as I was as a high schooler reading Zahn's trilogy for the first time, but it's growing on me. I'm just not sure whether that growth is symbiotic or parasitic, yet....