There’s a line in Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca’s original run on Darth Vader that has stayed with me ever since I read it. It’s Aphra looking up at Vader as she agrees to work with him. “But you’re my next mission, aren’t you?” she says. “And the next. And the next. You’re what I’ve been looking for all my life.” It’s a line that also appears in the audio drama and one that rang through my mind as I heard Darth Freaking Vader say “Doctor Aphra” for the first time because apparently that’s what I’ve been waiting for all my life.

I won’t pretend to approach Doctor Aphra, a Star Wars audiobook original by Sarah Kuhn, from an unbiased point of view. If you’ve ever seen any of my tweets or any of the relevant reviews here at Tosche Station, you’re likely aware of how much I love Aphra. Not only do I adore her as a character but she also means a ton to me as a half-Asian queer woman. She was one of the first times I can recall feeling truly represented within the Star Wars universe. So while I was predisposed to appreciate this story because I love the main character, my expectations were also absurdly high. Sarah Kuhn not only met those expectations but soared over them with an audio drama that’s fun and engaging and does everyone’s favorite rogue archaeologist justice.

This is the second audiobook original that Del Rey has published in the Star Wars universe with the first being an adventure for Count Dooku last year. Aphra feels like an even better choice for this particular medium especially given that it is her unreliably narrating (and attempting to edit) her own adventures. Emily Woo Zeller is the cornerstone of the cast and draws listeners in with just the right amount of flippancy for Aphra mixed in with raw emotion where appropriate. Amongst of the rest of the full cast, both Sean Kenin and Nicole Lewis also deserve specific accolades for their performances as Triple-Zero and Sana Starros respectively. Audiobooks generally struggle to hold my attention after twenty minutes but I found myself happily inhaling this in about three two hour chunks because it was just that engaging.

For those already familiar with the care put into Star Wars audiobooks, the production values will come as no surprise. As said before, Doctor Aphra boasts a full cast whose voices are distinct enough to avoid confusing who’s speaking at any given time. They also expertly deploy John Williams’s iconic score. There is a particularly perfect, gut wrenching use of the music from Attack of the Clones when Anakin finds his mother. Both music and sound effects are used where appropriate and don’t overwhelm the story or the actors.

Story-wise, the bulk of the plot comes from Darth Vader volume one, an arc from the main Star Wars comic, and the crossover event Vader Down. It is specifically Aphra’s point of view throughout the story and you don’t need to have read the comics to follow along. (If you haven’t read the comics, I highly suggest picking up the two Darth Vader hardcovers afterwards so you can see what else the Dark Lord of the Sith is up to when Aphra’s not around.) However, Kuhn doesn’t keep strictly to the source material. There’s plenty of new fodder in here that’ll excite fans already familiar with the comic. Of particular note are the flashbacks to Aphra’s time at university when she met the one and only Sana Starros.

Speaking of Sana, it’s wonderful to finally see more of her and to get glimpses of her relationship with Aphra, which was very much in the past tense by the time we met them. During the early days of her existence, Aphra’s sexuality was handled… shall we say… delicately? In other words, the evidence was there if you were willing to see it and to properly interpret lines of dialogue but it wasn’t blatantly stated and there certainly weren’t full page panels of Aphra kissing another woman. (This is not a criticism. I understand why things happened the way they did.) In this audiobook, there is no room for any other interpretation but that Aphra has romantic feelings for Sana. This story features one of the most delightful moments of pure panic as Aphra looks at Sana and basically thinks “oh no she’s hot.” And then proceeds to be a complete disaster lesbian around her multiple times. It is precisely what my queer heart has been waiting for since we got the first inkling that Aphra was attracted to women. This is the sort of representation that I would love to see more of in the Star Wars galaxy.

Doctor Aphra had a high bar clear when it came to expectations and soared over it easily with room to spare. Kuhn has the rogue archaeologist’s voice down pat and this is the perfect story to introduce Aphra to a wider audience. Hopefully, we’ll get more audio dramas by Sarah Kuhn about Aphra. It’s what the world deserves.

Thank you to Random House / Del Rey for providing an advance copy for review purposes.