Tag Archives: Reviews

Review: Pirate’s Price

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Pirate’s Price, written by Lou Anders and with illustrations by Annie Wu, can best be described as the ultimate Hondo Ohnaka book and honestly, I could not think of anything more perfect for a middle grade Star Wars novel.

A part of the expansive, cross-medium Flight of the Falcon project, Pirate’s Price follows Bazine Netal on her hunt for the Millennium Falcon which has conveniently taken her to Batuu and the one and only Hondo. He insists on telling her about his history with the Falcon: a misadventure involving Novian rubies in the Undervaults of Gwongdeen, a ship stealing escapade on Takodana, and a far more recent encounter involving porgs. So many porgs.  Continue reading →

Review: The Afterward

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The big Quest always gets all of the attention in storytelling but there are tales still left to be told about what happens after everyone returns home. The Afterward by E.K. Johnston gleefully delves into this mostly untapped time frame, just as the title indicates, delivering humor, friendship, adventure, and (most importantly) a love story and the world would be a better place if we had more books like this in it.

It’s been a year since Apprentice Knight Kalanthe Ironheart and thief Olsa Rhetsdaughter and the rest of their companions returned from their Quest to find the Godsgem to save the king. While the others are all full knights with a bit more freedom to adapt to being heroes of the kingdom in their own ways, it’s a bit harder for these two to go back to how life once was. Thieving isn’t as simple for Olsa anymore now that everyone knows her and the king’s reward only made a small dent in Kalanthe’s training debt. Will they remain separated by their own pride and honor or will they find their way back to each other again? Continue reading →

Resistance Review: The Core Problem

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The First Order is jamming all communication off the Colossus, so Kaz  — aka Lone Wolf — is trying to built a transmitter to break through the jamming and contact Poe Dameron with updates about the First Order presence on the station. Kaz isn’t great at building things, but that’s okay, because Poe Dameron just so happens to show up in Yeager’s hangar at the same time. He needs to take BB-8 on a mission to Jakku. JAKKU. You know, the place where The Force Awakens starts off. He’ll leave CB-23, that cutie, with Kaz to help complete his mission on the Colossus. However, Poe can’t just leave and be done with it. Kaz has intelligence that the First Order is up to something in a sector of the Unknown Regions. Theoretically, the First Order wants the Colossus as a refueling station or base, as it’s the last stop before the Unknown Regions. Poe decides they need to check it out before he heads off to Jakku, because he’s an overachiever. Continue reading →

Resistance Review: The New Trooper

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This first season of Star Wars Resistance has been a real slow burn–and in my opinion, that’s been the perfect way to introduce audiences to this show. As we watch the First Order begin to creep across the galaxy, the show responds by increasing the tension and getting darker, more ominous. This week’s episode, “The New Trooper,” is a perfect example of Resistance cranking up the atmospheric dread as we get closer and closer to the destruction of the Hosnian system. Continue reading →

Resistance Review: The First Order Occupation

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What I really appreciate about Star Wars Resistance right now is that Lucasfilm is resisting the urge to make Kaz a super-spy by the end of season one. Sure, he’s gotten (marginally) better at… existing by now, but he is still the worst spy in the galaxy far, far away this side of Jar Jar Binks in The Clone Wars. It’s endearing, and it leaves a ton of room for character development. Continue reading →

Resistance Review: The Doza Dilemma

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Three episodes into the second half of the season and Star Wars Resistance is reminding us that it is not messing around. The mid-season trailer showed us that dark times are ahead and this episode certainly helped drive the point home.

In “The Doza Dilemma”, Synara finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place as her pirate boss Kragin orders her to assist two of his pirates with getting into the tower so they can kidnap Torra and use her as collateral against her father. It’d be less of an issue for her if it didn’t also mean Synara had to betray her new friendship with Torra. Kaz and the Aces give chase only for the First Order to intervene in a most unexpected manner. Continue reading →

Review: Smoke & Summons

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What happens when you throw together a human vessel for a dangerous fire spirit and a thief with a talisman that allows him to be immortal for a minute a day? They attract trouble. A lot of trouble.

In the forthcoming Smoke & Summons by Charlie N. Holmberg, Sandis is a slave who has somewhat convinced herself that her current situation isn’t all that bad if you ignore all the times when her master Kazen uses her body to unleash a fire horse spirit named Ireth that shouldn’t even exist on the mortal plane. Or at least she’s able to until she witnesses him murder her friend by trying to summon an even stronger spirit and failing. She escapes and runs headlong into Rone, a thief who’s doing his best to survive and take care of his mother. With Kazen hell bent on hunting down Sandis and Rone in a boat-load of trouble of his own, their flight through the city takes them on a journey neither could have ever imagined. Continue reading →

Resistance Review: Bibo

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Hey, is this thing on? Oh, good–because Star Wars Resistance is back after its mid-season hiatus with a delightful little episode called “Bibo.”

Longtime Lucasfilm animation fans know that it’s just not a Star Wars cartoon without at least one creature-centered episode, and “Bibo” fits that bill with relish, while hinting at exciting things to come.

Continue reading →

Resistance Review: Station Theta Black

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Can we have a minute for Oscar Isaac?

Ok fine – every minute is for Oscar Isaac, this is true. But he is very sneakily putting on a performance as Poe Dameron in Star Wars Resistance – it’s not always easy to go from portraying a character on-screen to providing their voice, but Isaac is making it look easy.

In “Station Theta Black,” Kaz and Poe scout out an abandoned First Order mining outpost, and encounter more than they bargained for. Phasma encounters Poe for the first (?) time, and Major Vonreg once again fails to finish off Poe or Kaz (but I do love getting to see his shiny TIE Interceptor again). A fitting midseason finale, this felt like the episode we’ve been building toward for the past few weeks.

As I mentioned, Poe fit in seamlessly as the cocky, “I never engage… unless provoked” commander we know and love, but it’s fascinating to see how much Kaz has grown this season too… and how much he still has to learn. We see the improvement in his flying skills in outrunning an explosion, but still see his discomfort with actual spy and military work (which, I know he was a pilot, but shouldn’t the New Republic navy have given him a bit more training for on-the-ground combat? Thanks, Mon Mothma). Despite his growth over the past 10 episodes, Kaz is still the reckless, comedic, earnest flyboy that we first met in episode 1, but that’s not a bad thing. There’s enough else going on in Resistance that Kaz’s growth doesn’t need to carry the show, and he does learn from his experiences as time goes on (unlike a certain other Star Wars protagonist whose name rhymes with Pezra Fridger).

This was, from the outset, clearly going to be a plot-focused episode, which means we didn’t get any more development of the Aces, the Doza family, or the still-criminally-underused Tam. We did, though, learn a bit more about the galaxy pre-The Force Awakens, particularly the fact that no one has any idea what the First Order is doing, even the Resistance. Poe and Leia (now apparently voiced by Carolyn Hennesy, who has never, to our knowledge, publicly mocked an assault victim) seem shocked to learn the scale of the First Order’s operation and just how many blasters they’re producing, and they know that this information won’t move the Senate to action. It all adds up to a much richer picture, and the knowledge that people underestimated the First Order right up until Hosnian Prime went the way of Alderaan. It may not seem that significant now, but looking at The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, it helps us understand how the New Republic was so unprepared, and why no one was willing to come to the Resistance’s aid on Crait: the First Order planned everything perfectly, and executed their blitzkrieg before anyone even realized it was happening. That background is the sort of value-add that I am thrilled to see in Resistance: creating a story that stands on its own, while simultaneously making us look at older tales in a new light.

As I mentioned above, there’s plenty more that I want out of Resistance. More aces! Intrigue on the Colossus! TAM AND SYNARA DATING! But we’ve got time for that. The first half of season one has introduced us to a world of characters that I already love – but there’s a storm coming, and we’re about to see how they deal with the new reality they’re about to fall into.