Thrawn and Zahn are back! Again! Out today, Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good by Timothy Zahn continues to delve into both the Chiss society and Thrawn himself prior to his eventual Imperial service. We’re firmly in uncharted territory now which means there are surprises a plenty between these two covers for both old school Thrawn fans and new ones. But just what sort of trouble has Thrawn and his complete and utter lack of political awareness gotten into this time?
Now a Senior Captain in the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet, Thrawn is doing relatively well for himself especially since he’s fresh off a collaborative victory. The Springhawk heads to the Rapacc system only to find themselves drawn into a refugee situation that’s far more complicated than it seems at first glance. Meanwhile, an Agbui named Haplif has convinced a naïve young Chiss on his gap year to help his group get use of a small stretch of land… and his reasons for doing so don’t seem entirely above board. Continue reading
For just the second time since the Star Wars universe books relaunched, we’re arrived at a momentous occasion: the conclusion of a book trilogy. (Let’s not split hairs right now regarding the new Thrawn books.) Out today, Alphabet Squadron: Victory’s Price by Alexander Freed brings the story of five New Republic pilots doing their best to survive to its conclusion even as the war against the Empire does the same above the sands of Jakku. After the previous book, Shadow Fall, none of the Alphabet pilots were doing well by any stretch of the imagination but will they all live to see a time of peace? Or will some of them pay the ultimate price in the name of victory? 
The High Republic continues and this time, it’s Claudia Gray at the wheel—err… keyboard. With Into the Dark, out today, Gray introduces us to a new Good Soft Boy to love in the form of one Reath Silas and all was well in the galaxy and this was a very good book, thank you and good night! …oh wait. Did you need to know more about this book other than it has a Good Soft Boy in it? Well if you insist…
Something luminous arrives on January 5th as The High Republic finally kicks off. Not only do we finally get Light of the Jedi but we also get the first middle grade book of the project, A Test of Courage by Justina Ireland. We’re in a brand new timeframe in the Star Wars galaxy but then again, what could possibly be more Star Wars than four teenagers getting themselves into trouble? 
It feels like a century has passed since The High Republic was first teased at Star Wars Celebration Chicago (thanks, 2020!) but at last, it has arrived! A new era of Star Wars publishing kicks off on January 5th, 2021 with the publication of Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (and A Test of Courage by Justine Ireland) with comics and books by their fellow co-conspirators soon to follow. But is this era of publishing going to be as luminous as we’ve been promised? So far… seems like that answer just might be a resounding yes. 
Three years ago, Del Rey put together a collection of forty short stories to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of A New Hope, offering viewers many different points of view of the story we know so well. And now, in 2020… brace yourselves because this may be shocking: they’ve done it again for the fortieth anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back with Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back. Even more shocking… it’s good, folks! It’s really good. (Can we do these for every Star Wars movie? Please?) 
When a character like Thrawn has been around for almost thirty year and been a well-loved part of both the Legends and new canon universes, you’d think you might know just about everything there is to know about him. Timothy Zahn hears your speculation, smiles, and then kindly tells you that you are wrong in the form of a novel. The first in a brand new Thrawn-centric trilogy, Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising reminds us that while we know Thrawn fairly well in his capacity as an officer in the Galactic Empire, we really know nothing about the person he was back in the Chiss Ascendancy. And oh boy are we going to learn.
Who would have thought that 2020 would be the Year of The Clone Wars especially back when the series was cancelled after the Disney acquisition? And yet the Year of The Clone Wars it continues to be as Disney-Lucasfilm Press bring us the middle grade anthology Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark featuring stores by Lou Anders, Preeti Chhibber, Zoraida Córdova, Jason Fry, Rebecca Roanhorse, Greg Van Eekhout, Tom Angleberger, E. Anne Convery, Sarah Beth Durst, Yoon Ha Lee, and Anne Ursu. Each story also features a gorgeous illustration by Ksenia Zelentsova with whose fan art you might already be familiar. Is this a book that fans of the show are going to love? Definitely! And if you’re not already a fan? Well, let’s dive into that. 
Neither Yoda nor Luke Skywalker make an appearance in Poe Dameron: Free Fall by Alex Segura yet those are the words that kept echoing through my head the entire time I was reading the book. With the exception of the novelizations, Free Fall is the first book published after The Rise of Skywalker to intimately deal with one of the Sequel Trilogy’s major characters. I bring this up mostly because I suspect that many readers won’t just bring their personal feelings about Poe Dameron to the book but more specifically, their feelings about how The Rise of Skywalker handled the x-wing flyboy.
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.