Catalyst (Star Wars): A Rogue One Novel

So, there's sort of two very closely related but completely different threads to this book.

There's the stuff with the Erso family - Galen, Lyra, and Jyn - and... it's okay. They don't really seem to exhibit a ton of agency outside of a few key moments, and even those moments are largely the obvious thing to do. Most of their action is really offscreened, with Lyra's trip to Alpinn (pretty much the only thing she does the whole novel) glossed over in a couple of pages and Galen's research happening between his scenes of worrying about why Lyra isn't talking to him. It's not all that bad, but it's not that interesting.

But then there's the Imperial side of things, with Krennic and Tarkin and unfortunately useful idiot Has Obitt. These scenes move thing along. They have people vying for their goals. They have consequences, and action, and character development, even. With Obitt we have better moral quandaries and resolution than we get out of any of the Erso clan, even when he doesn't know the extent of what he's getting into. Krennic develops as a proper villain, clearly taking evil actions but only as a consequence of his push for more and more recognition in spite of setback after setback.

This was a pretty decent prequel to Rogue One. Not so much for the background on the Erso family, but because it establishes Krennic and his dynamic with Tarkin and Galen perfectly and really shows why the whole movie happened the way it did.

From a strictly commercial standpoint, the book has done it's job: As the prequel book to the prequel movie Star Wars: Rogue One, I'm even more excited about seeing the movie than I was before. (Yes, I have my opening-night ticket...) The bonus is that it's a pretty good story in its own right.

It is essentially the story of the building of the Death Star, told from the perspective of several major players, including Tarkin; Orson Krennic, the Imperial engineer/administrator behind the project; Has Obitt, a smuggler with an awkward name for an English-language book ("Has had had..."); and Galen and Lyra Erso, scientists and parents to Jyn (the primary protagonist of Rogue One). Others are pulled in from various new canon sources for support, such as Saw Gerrera – a character introduced in The Clone Wars and portrayed by Forrest Whittaker in Rogue One.

Without spoiling specifics of the plot, the story turns out to be something of a Manhattan Project-esque tale. For better or worse, the broad strokes of the plot are clear fairly early on: Galen Erso is a scientist working on synthesizing kyber crystals (the gems that power lightsabers) and harnessing them to produce energy, and his work is manipulated/commandeered by the Empire in order to weaponize it, thus becoming the power source for the Death Star laser. But as with any story worth it's salt, how the story plays out on an individual character level is more interesting than the overall arc. For example, because we have all seen A New Hope, we already know who Tarkin is; we've never heard of Krennic before, however, and this story elucidates why.

While I did like the story overall, there are a couple problems with it. The first has to do with the timeline. As with [b:Lost Stars|25773165|Lost Stars|Lisa Selin Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1454554572s/25773165.jpg|45621803] by Claudia Gray, the story takes place over a number of years, and significant jumps in time – months or years – occur frequently. In a few cases, it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on elsewhere in the galaxy, especially in the early portions of the book which crosses through the timelines of Episodes II and III, as well as The Clone Wars. For example, it's hard to reconcile the timeline of Catalyst with the fleeting scene of Palpatine, Vader and Tarkin overseeing the early construction of the first Death Star at the end of Episode III. (Tarkin and the others seem not to be directly involved until much later in the process in Catalyst.) It may be that I simply need to refresh myself on those other stories, in particular The Clone Wars, which I tended to watch while doing dishes and other chores. In my opinion, Lost Stars did a better job of providing markers by which to anchor you to the canonical timeline of events, but as it mainly crossed the time period of the original trilogy (with which I am much better acquainted), that may be more a function of my own familiarity.

Secondly, Galen as the hyperintelligent-but-naïve scientist felt a little cookie-cutter to me, and it is hard for me to understand why Lyra waited around for him as long as she did. Yeah, yeah, love, kid, yadda-yadda-yadda. It would have been more interesting to me had either Galen been a bit more self-aware and deliberate in helping the Empire or had Lyra decided to leave without him...maybe both. (Not saying she would need to be callous about it – it could've been a difficult, but necessary, decision for her to make.)

Despite these issues, the story is worth reading. On a character level, the introduction of Jyn and hints about her character as a child – which will undoubtedly manifest in her character as an adult in Rogue One – are provocative, and there's little doubt that her parents' role in the development of the Death Star is a significant motivator for her in the movie. From a broader scope of the new Star Wars canon, the story does well in spanning the brief references we have to the Death Star in Episodes II and III with the actual construction (and implications) of it.