In anticipation for a review of a new Star Wars book I have coming next month, I thought I would take a look this week at the best of the best from one of my absolute favorite subgenres of books. Be very warned, that I have definitely not read every Star Wars book out there. Not even close. In fact, I have a feeling that I will be redoing this list again and again over the course of my life, since there honestly has not been a single book I have come across in this universe that I haven’t liked. But no, I haven’t read all of the Legends novels, all of the newer YA novels, or even all of the movie novelizations. Still, I had an urge to talk about this. So, with my limited experience, these are my top 10 favorite Star Wars books I have read up until now. And this one was difficult. 10) Dark DiscipleStar Wars with enemies-to-lovers/forbidden romance? Count me in. Asajj Ventress was always one of my favorites to see pop up in episodes of The Clone Wars and I was dying to know what her story was after the show, and Quinlan Vos was a character I always just wanted to know more about. This novel gave me all of that and more, and made both of these characters among my favorites in the universe. Although I guess that isn’t saying much, because I feel that way about almost every character. I love the set up of this story, Vos going undercover thinking he is outsmarting Ventress, who of course can’t be outsmarted, and then we get an amazing and romantic journey between the two of them that is equal parts funny, heartwarming, and tragic. The romance was built perfectly and believably, adding so much to Ventress’ redemption which was beautiful. I hadn’t realized how much Quinlan Vos went through in his character arc in regards to walking the line between Light and Dark. But once you start reading all of these books and really getting into the headspace of these characters, you realize that even the most devout Jedi have had moments where they have battled the Dark and nearly lost. It also led to a quote from Yoda in this book which has honestly become one of my favorite quotes of all time: “Sometimes it is a dark path we must tread so that long more for the light, we shall.” Part of the reason why I love Star Wars so much is because, though it may appear very black and white on the outside with heroes being good and villains being bad, there is so much more depth once you really get into this world and into the minds of these characters. They are all like us. They are all the heroes of their own stories, fighting for what they believe is right. There are equal parts good and bad in everyone, to the point where even Yoda admits that there are times when everyone has to engage in darkness at some point. What differentiates people is what they choose to strive for. And that is the basis of this story, about someone who used to be filled with hate, and someone who is teetering between the morals of his entire life’s work and the beliefs and truths he is finding for himself. I really loved this, and was so satisfied to get an ending to Ventress’ story, and to learn so much about the character of Vos to the point where he has one of my favorite story arcs of any Star Wars character. 9) The Force AwakensOf the film novelizations, I have actually only ever read the Sequel Trilogy. Mostly because I was waiting for Episode IX to come out and I was frantically inhaling any and all source material I could to try to predict how it was all going to end. And I just love these characters. This novel in particular really stood out to me with the writing style. Something about it felt a lot more mature than what I was expecting, and I was pleasantly surprised with how different it felt from the movie. It has the same spirit, but with so much more added, to the point where it felt much more dark and adult than the film ended up being. Everything from how Rey’s life on Jakku is described, to the words used to paint the picture of the crackling red blade of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber were done in a way that set just a different mood than I was expecting going in. I loved the word choice and the overall tone it added to the entire story. I wonder if this was what the early drafts of the script were closer to being. Kylo Ren in particular felt extremely different than he was in the movie. He had a lot of monologues where he spoke more like a seasoned villain rather than leaning towards the more childish and naive version of him in the film (I say that with the utmost respect). I really enjoyed it for this version of the story, since he felt even more terrifying and unpredictable. Overall, I just loved how this gave a very different vibe from the same story. And I of course love all of the added scenes that fill in the gaps missing in the film, particularly with Poe finding his way off Jakku after the crash. A fun, very much contextually darker version of the movie. 8) The Rise of Kylo RenNot technically a novel, but I wanted to throw this on the list. I am definitely not a comic book person, but I can always appreciate the art form. And yes, the artwork in this is very cool and fun to look at, pulling you right into the world and the story in a way I am not used to when it comes to reading. But why I have this on the list is because this story was everything I could have hoped for in a Kylo Ren origin story, and even more than that. It perfectly captures everything about the transition from light to dark in the most gut-wrenching way possible. I loved how much we focus on Ben’s friends from the Jedi temple, particularly his strong connection with Tai, which is meant to mirror the connection he will have with Rey years later. It is foreshadowing in the most beautiful way, showing that there was someone else who never gave up on Ben either, even when things are at their seemingly darkest point. It hints that Ben may have been reminded of this person and this time in his life when with Rey, and that just makes my little Reylo heart nearly explode. Beyond that, we also get Knights of Ren content, which is always welcomed. After their presence was so severely lacking in the films, it is great to see them here in their full, evil glory. It does make me yearn for better scenes with them in Rise of Skywalker though, but I suppose we can’t have everything. I could go on forever, but basically, Ben’s connection with Luke, with Snoke, Tai, the Knights, everything is perfect. What hinges on Ben’s turn is his relationships with these characters, and it is all developed fantastically. And I am still waiting on a movie trilogy or at least a series based on this, and I will keep waiting. 7) Shadow of the SithI specifically remember saying whenever I heard Lando Calrissian mention his adventure with Luke Skywalker to try to find the Wayfinder in Episode IX that it was a story I had to hear way more about. And I was granted my wish. A Lando and Luke team-up is basically a perfect idea in my eyes. It’s a team-up we’ve never really seen before, and if you told ten-year-old me that this was going to be a thing, I would have basically lost my mind. I love filling in these gaps between the OG Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy as well, just to get even more context and background knowledge when I am watching the films. Being that Luke Skywalker is my favorite character of all time, and I wasn’t completely pleased with how he was handled in the sequel films, I was a little nervous about how this story would go. But I loved it. He’s Luke, at least at this point in the story. And in my absolute favorite scene from this book, we actually get a chance to see him interact with Anakin’s ghost. Again, my mind was lost. But Lando gets some great moments as well, mostly with him being his charming, badass self when outsmarting the bad guys. We get a bit more story about his lost daughter who was taken by the First Order (whom I believe was supposed to be who Jannah was in the film). This ties in beautifully to the third perspective we get in this, which is Rey’s parents. I absolutely loved getting some of their story in this novel and finding out just how closely tied Rey, Luke, and Lando actually are without any of them even knowing it. But Lando’s heartache about his daughter pushing him to do everything he can to save this unknown child makes me really wish we actually got a bit more with Rey and Lando in Rise of Skywalker, at least so that he knows the child he tried so hard to protect made it out alive and well. Apart from that, you also get the good old, deranged villain POV, which is always fun. Ochi of Bestoon is really one of the more purely evil characters I’ve read about, so that makes the knowledge of his future fate even more satisfying. I really loved this story and just how much it added to so many characters, connecting them in a way you would have never expected. 6) LeiaI was so excited about how good this was. Not only do we get to see Leia’s teenage years and the beginnings of how she begins to understand her parents’ subtle rebellion against the Empire, but we also get to spend so much time getting to know and love Alderaan, a planet that doesn’t get to be explored much in this universe, but that is probably one of the most important planets story wise. This book illustrates just how similar Leia is to both Padmé and Anakin in her beliefs and personality. We get to see the strength and resilience she begins to build that will help carry her along as a leader in the war, mostly through this right of passage journey she must make on her home planet, but also through her relationships with those around her. I love the mystery-type plot line of Leia discovering and basically inserting herself in her parents’ fight in the Rebellion. It gives so much more power to why she fights so hard, because her parents of course want to shield her from all of it. After their deaths and the destruction of her home, it makes sense that she would want to put all her heart into making sure she achieves what her parents died protecting and what they wanted so badly to protect her from. But the most tragic part of this book is Leia’s romance with a young man, Kier, who believes in pacifism when it comes to the Rebellion, mostly out of love for Alderaan, his home as well. We see Leia and Kier both essentially fighting for the same thing, in vastly different ways. Kier believes that Alderaan should stay out of the fight in order to protect itself from the horrors of war, while Leia of course believes they should fight to protect themselves from the horrors of the Empire. And, as we all know, Kier ends up being correct in predicting the destruction Alderaan ends up facing, in a way no one could have imagined. It is a fantastic story, again, giving us a deeper inside look to Leia’s character and why she is the way she is in the films later on. We see the true strength of her character and how loss has been a constant part of her life that she fights every day to diminish. 5) Master and ApprenticeThere was recently an unofficial Obi-Wan Kenobi trilogy that included the books Padawan, Master and Apprentice, and Brotherhood. I really loved all three, but this one in particular stood out to me because we got so much insight into not only Obi-Wan, but Qui-Gon, a character I have been dying to get to know more about. Since it takes place a few years before The Phantom Menace, we get a nice little insight into the apprenticeship between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, which I thought was done very well here. I love how we really get to see how different but how similar they are: Qui-Gon is terrified of failing his apprentice, and Obi-Wan is terrified his master thinks little of him. It is such a great dynamic, and then you add Qui-Gon’s openness to more philosophical sides of the Force, where Obi-Wan is more practical-minded, creating even more strain between them. We get the sense that Qui-Gon almost wants to try to let go of his belief in prophecies, maybe just for Obi-Wan’s sake. But he can’t, especially when he fears that one of his darker visions may come to pass. This pulls both him and his Padawan in opposite directions, when they really need to be united in the face of the political mission they are on (I love a good SW political mission). It is a very tense story emotionally, and gets thrown into even more chaos with the character of Rael Averross, who is another former apprentice of Dooku, creating an entirely different source of apprehension for Qui-Gon on this mission. I also find the similarities between Rael and Qui-Gon to be interesting, since they both defy the Jedi Code but in different ways. It really showed what the two of them learned from Dooku’s dissent of the Council, and while the three of them are very different characters with very different morals, they all rebel from the rigidity and hypocrisy of the Council, which is pretty cool. Again, this makes the bond between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan so tense, but they both have a yearning to not only do what is right, but do right by each other. Because of that foundation of respect, they are able to trust each other and become a powerful master and apprentice duo, utilizing each other’s strengths and balancing their power. This was an entertaining and insightful look at two of my favorite characters, and I can’t wait to read more about them in the future. 4) Resistance RebornThis book is basically the link between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker, or as I like to refer to it: the reason I was the only one not confused at the plot of Rise of Skywalker. Yes yes, we can go on about disorganized story planning and all that, but in all honesty, this was a really great little story that perfectly sidles you into the plot of Episode IX, making it way less awkward than I am sure everyone else found it. The story focuses mostly on the character of Poe Dameron and Snap Wexley, and mostly shows how we go from pretty much zero people supporting the Resistance at the end of TLJ, to the massive group of people helping them out at the end of TROS. Or at least how they get on that pathway. What I love about this, again, is the characters. I loved getting to know Snap and Black Squadron more, making the stakes in TROS way higher. You also get a bit of story with Leia and Rey, and yes, they do converse briefly about Ben, and my heart enjoyed it very much. What was interesting was to see Rey act very awkward and unsure of herself around Leia, which made me realize how much I would have liked to see more of their interactions in the films. We get a tiny bit of interaction in TFA and TLJ, and then so much has passed between them by the time we get to TROS, that we sort of missed their entire journey of bonding as master and apprentice. I sense another story to be told… Something that makes this book really stand out to me is the villains. I absolutely loved following the insanely paranoid First Order officer as he tries to determine who amongst them is giving information to the Resistance (and no, it’s not Hux yet). Getting a POV from random Imperial or First Order villains in these books is honestly usually the best part. I love reading about people being psychos. It’s cool too that even the other First Order people think that this guy is a little off, which is saying a lot. It all honestly makes me want to see a sort of undercover/secret agent type Star Wars movie like this. And finally, as someone who was very much upset by the missed out love story between Finn and Poe in the films, this book attempts to make up for it. Oh yes, this novel all but outright confirms romantic feelings between the two through several scenes, and it is fantastic. Not only that, but we get the Finn and Poe undercover mission we were robbed of in TLJ. That alone earned this book the number 4 spot on this list. 3) Death TroopersOk guys… Star Wars and horror? All of my dreams have come true. I was truly blown away by just how off the wall violent, gory, and disturbing this went. I was thinking it would be more World War Z, but it was getting into full on Outlast territory. Having a zombie virus story mixed with this universe is basically perfect, and was explored in a few episodes of The Clone Wars, which was also awesome. But this really did go full blown horror, no holds barred, to the point where it would a thousand percent get an R rating if it were made into a movie. This is such a golden idea, a deadly virus being unleashed in a prisoner transport, where we already have some maniacal beings, but things get even more demented when people just start devouring each other. I really enjoyed our main characters that we follow, these two brothers trying to get each other out of this mess alive, as well as a doctor from the prisoner medical wing obviously wanting to find a way to save the patients from this virus. The Imperial officers are super fun as well, seeing how deviously they react to the spread of the disease. Evil in Star Wars is just always top tier. And the two surprise characters who pop up in this actually had me screaming and crying with joy. I never could have expected it and am so glad I wasn’t spoiled for it and that they don’t advertise them being in the book at all. I’m not even going to say who they are just in case, even though I know I’m pretty much the last one to the party on this one. We’ll just say, I was almost too overjoyed to even continue the book. This novel has the perfect setting on top of everything else it does brilliantly. We are deep in the middle of nowhere space, first on the prisoner transport that gets demolished, and then on this atmospheric abandoned vessel that is somehow just as terrifying as the virus itself. It gave off such a feeling of dread and claustrophobia, like Alien, Event Horizon, or even The Shining at times. An insanely creepy setting that throws you right into the mood with the dreary, empty, echoey hallways of the abandoned ship. It’s survival/zombie/deadly virus horror at its best, and thrown into the greatest universe created in the world of fiction. This novel is literally perfection for me, and to be honest, it started off a bit lower on this list before I realized I really had to bump it up to the third spot after I got to talking and thinking about it more. We need so much more of this in the Star Wars world, because there is so much opportunity. 2) Han Solo TrilogyOk, so this one is kind of cheating, since it’s three books. But technically, they all make up one epic story, so I’m counting it. This was a fantastic set of books telling the origin story of our favorite bad-boy smuggler. While I really did have fun with the Solo film, I felt this story was so much closer to mirroring what Han Solo is like in the OG movies, while still making him feel different enough so that he does have a complete arc throughout this trilogy. In this story, we get to see the beginnings of his relationships with Chewie, Lando, Boba fett, and Jabba the Hutt, all of which were incredibly satisfying and fill in the gaps in his backstory perfectly, to the point where you can watch the original movies after reading these and understand so much more about all of the inside jokes between Han and these characters. More so, you get a lot of insight into Han’s lack of family and any sort of stable love or kindness in his life, and how much he yearns for it, and continues to yearn for it all throughout his life. His story is incredibly tragic, despite the highpoints, which is why him finding family with Leia, Luke, and the Rebellion is even more triumphant in the end. A great new character introduced is Bria, who acts as Han’s love interest throughout the series. As we see Han grow and change throughout the story, we see her change as well, though in a completely different way. While she is very different from Leia, being perhaps a bit more morally gray, the similarities are there to the point where you can definitely see that Han must have been reminded of many of her qualities when he did meet Leia. This is similar to what they did with Qi’ra in the film, but here of course, there is a lot more space for Bria’s character to have so much more depth, and enough time to develop a relationship between her and Han that stings all the more bitterly when it goes sideways. It perfectly captures why Han would be the way he is about romantic connections when we see him in A New Hope. Something else I really loved about these books was the sense of camaraderie Han forms within this group of outlaws who all have to end up banding together to fight against the Empire, showcasing his abilities to lead such a large battle early on before his days as a leader in the Rebellion. I thought that was a great touch, and again, shows how much Han really just cares about people, despite pretending so hard that he doesn’t. Though he has been hurt over and over again, he never truly wishes it on anyone else, which is what makes him such an intriguing character. And these books utilized all of that to perfection. 1) KenobiThis has been my number one pretty much since I read the first chapter.
I could not have asked for more with this novel. This is a story I have dreamed about knowing for years, and it was done perfectly here. What I love about this character, and what put him into my top three favorites after reading this, is that he is probably the most pure-hearted character in the Star Wars universe.Obi-Wan has been through some of the most devastating trauma of all characters that we spend time with, and yet he never once lets it twist him towards leaning away from the Light. Not once. It is one of the many reasons he and Anakin had so much trouble connecting in a lot of areas, because Obi-Wan does seem to be that rare Jedi who never struggled with any kind of true pull to the Dark. Unless I missed something. And despite all of this, as this book proves, he is one of the characters who beats himself up the most internally out of anyone else. He blames himself for so much, some of which may indeed be a result of his faults, but being the kind of person he is, he takes the entire weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. It’s gut-wrenching to read about, but thankfully in this book, we also get a healthy dose of that natural Obi-Wan charm which just fills you with an amazing serotonin blast. Even though he is so horrified at himself for what happened with Anakin, he of course can’t stop himself from helping anyone in need, and that manifests when he has to basically help this awesome little Tatooine community from attacks from the Sand People, as well as a straight-up psychotic businessman trying to capitalize off of the attacks. It’s a western type story at heart, which is amazing to see with Obi-Wan as the main character. There is no greater galaxy-defying battle he has to face in this, just using his natural desire to help and do good for this community, which is a fantastic way to prove to himself that he is a good person and can bring goodness to people’s lives. There’s also an adorable romance in this, because we all know that Obi-Wan can never help but be a ladies’ man. I really liked the love interest a lot, as well as her kids, which was almost a bit of foreshadowing with Luke and Leia, driven more home by the fact that the woman’s nickname is Annie. Yeah, Obi-Wan’s reaction to that and his constant use of the woman’s full name instead kind of destroyed me. There is so much in this book even aside from the stunning character development. This little Tatooine community is so rich and immersive, and the way the use of water from the ground drives these people and makes their community operate was so interesting, more so than any history book I’ve ever read. And all of these side characters are super fun to follow along with, to the point where the first part of the book sort of feels like a sitcom. And then, you know, the second half goes in a bit of a darker turn. Great story, fantastic writing, awesome setting, and fun characters. The moment I finished this I wanted to just start over again. It is truly a book made for Star Wars fans, and makes an already amazing character even better. This is one of my favorite books of all time, and if there are Star Wars books that get better than this, I couldn’t be more excited.
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AuthorCertified non-professional who just enjoys giving her random thoughts on movies and books. Archives
June 2024
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