Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read this book in two different formats, audio and kindle. The Audio Format is 12 hours in length and the book is 400 pages long. The Audio format is narrated by Marc Thompson who has done many previous Star Wars Narrations and he does a good job here. However, even he can only do so much with what he is given. Why did I award the rating that I did, well I wish Amazon would allow us to split out the overall score a bit. Since they don’t I am breaking the scoring into a format that makes sense to me Execution: 1 star Style: There are a lot of complaints on here about the choice of using third person present tense and say it is jarring and distracting. For me it was different, but not distracting. Rather, I was more distracted by the writing content. This book felt like someone took a draft of a novel and forced it into the Star Wars universe. There is entirely too much jargon in this novel, so much that it distracted me to the point that I had to replay lines or pause in reading to make sure I got the reference being made. It comes across that either the author was trying to hard or the editor told the author that his initial draft was not Star War enough and a bunch of bad similes, poor metaphors and overused movie quotes were inserted. The Book format: I didn’t like or appreciate how this book was formatted. At 400 pages (12 hours audio) there are in this book four parts, 38 chapters of main story, and 15 Interludes. I usually don’t pay attention much to chapter structure. However, this is chaotic. I understand separating a book into Parts when you are taking a leap in time or to break up a long narrative. This is just too excessive. Part 4 includes 1 chapter and 1 Interlude. Excluding the Interludes there is no major change in narrative to justify this and every event I the major story happens in a few day. While the Interludes give us a perspective on the Star Wars galaxy, there are so many of them that they are a distraction from the main story. The number allowed in the final draft should have been cut in half. The Story: 2 stars *possible Spoilers* Plot: The main story line is about how Wedge Antilles stumbles upon a Secret Imperial meeting and is captured. He tries to escape and is captured again. A group of random hero’s then assembles and manages to defeat the Empire and save Wedge. In a nutshell that is it. At its core I don’t have a problem with the overall story arc. Its execution is poor though. There is too much use of Deus Ex Machina in the main story arc. I understand that it is a plot device, however, there are way too many secret passages, escapes from death, and other too convenient events. In fact All of the Main Characters in this book have something happen to them were they should have died but they did not at least once and sometimes multiple times. Which makes the main story feel campy, which is completely out of line from the narratives that are set in the interludes and prologue. To be honest, I don’t really see any content here for a trilogy. Which is sad. Most first entries in a series leave you with some unanswered questions, but this one ends, and the only question is brought up at the end and it has nothing to do with our main cast of heroes. This story ends, and probably should stay that way. Tone: This book couldn’t decide if it was going to be dark and real, or light and campy. Typically, a Prologue is used to set the tone for the book and foreshadow what is to come. In it we see mobs, riots and rioters being killed. It sets a dark tone, which we only see in the Interludes. Were a young man plans to set off a bomb under an imperial base, a brother betraying a brother, a man who lost his family in the war, refugees, orphans, etc. The interludes are darker and much more real. This makes the use of the Deus Ex Machina in the main story unbelievable, campy, and very much inconsistent with the tone of the Interludes. Characters: the characters are hard to identify with. Good characters pull us in, make us love or hate them. They establish a connection with the audience. Sadly, the author’s attempts at this were lost on me. Wedge’s contribution to the story was so little that there was no time to develop his character. I am actually pretty confident that he has more dialogue in the films than this book. So he is just a trophy and a plot device here. All other characters from the movies are almost all relegated to movie quotes for much of the book. As far as the main cast goes, we have a bounty hunter that has very little character development, so little that I actually expected her to be a throw away character. Then we have Nora a rebel pilot who has PTSD (of which we only get glimpses of) and has a classic absent parent/rebellious child relationship with her son. It is so typical that you can actually predict the conversation and the turns that it takes. Rae Sloan the primary antagonist looks interesting but did not get enough time. The other imperials are throwaway characters and poorly constructed. Senjin is actually the most interesting of the new main cast, an imperial officer that has gone rogue and spends his time drinking his past away. As a result he is the most memorable of the good guys. His development is such that one actually wonders if this character was created by someone else. Then there is Mr Bones, a B1 battle droid. For those that don’t know these are the droids in the prequels that say “Roger, Roger” and are usually dispatched with a single shot. Overall, the characters leave you wanting something else. World Building and Technology 1 Star: World Building: With a new cannon there is not much world building that is going on here. All we get are glimpses into the state of the New Republic and the galaxy. With the EU removed the galaxy is a larger place, and we don’t know how big the New Republic is, or how bad the empire is falling apart. I would expect that some Admirals would go warlord ( If I were one I would be tempted) but we don’t see that here, even though there are 15 chances to set that up. There is an issue I have with some of the tech used in this story. So let me first start with turbolasers and how they appear in the movies. From what we understand from the films turbolasers (the big guns) are designed to target and destroy larger ships. And as pointed out in A new hope Targeting computers are not accurate. In A New Hope and Imperial Officer informs Vader that the rebel ships are “so small that they are evading our turbolasers.” Later those same turbolasers are firing straight down the trench (a line of sight line of approach shot) and the fighters can’t evade much ( A pilot in the trench says there is no room to maneuver) and the turbolasers still miss and per Gold 5 there are “about twenty guns, some on the surface some on the tower.” In this book however, one turbolaser are so accurate that they can snipe a person freefalling from the upper atmosphere as well as shoot down a maneuvering TIE fighter. Then there is the battle droid vs TIE scene. How does a battle droid that is killed with a single bolt survive so well? And how does it launch itself through a TIE view port and survive? Especially when said view port is on a star fighter that is built to transverse the hazards of space? I doubt that it is just glass. Otherwise they wouldn’t survive space combat as much as they do. Also said battle droid is one-shotted later one? WTH? Marketing, Hype and Contribution to the Cannon: 1 star Its often said don’t judge a book by its cover, this is a misnomer. How something is presented to you and your expectations for a product determine how well you receive said product. Don’t believe me? Go look up horrible movies that have awesome trailers, and then look at the sales of said movies. The same applies to books, especially much anticipated ones. This book was marketed and advertised as the next big thing in the cannon. It was to be the first of a trilogy of books detailing the fallout after the Battle of Endor. The Title is misleading “Aftermath: A Journey to the Force Awakens” implies two things. First, that it describes in detail how the galaxy reacts to the battle. This book was held up as the one that would set the tone for all of the post RTOTJ books. So expectations were high and it set up to market and hype up the film even further; otherwise it would not include “A Journey to the Force Awakens” in its title. If I were to base whether or not I would view the movie based on this book, I wouldn’t go see it. The description of the book focuses half on Wedge and half on Nora, but Wedge is barely in the book. So the Marketing team that drew that up did a poor job. To put it bluntly, this book should have been worked differently, a different title maybe, or a different release date. If this were the very first novel in the new cannon it might warrant a better score in this area. However, books such as Tarkin, Lords of the Sith, and A New Dawn hit the mark so well that expectations were high for this one. As far as the author is concerned, well everyone misfires occasionally, and this one was a misfire. As far as cannon contributions go, I don’t think that there is much here other than easter eggs for the film or cannon in general. Summary So to wrap things up I give this book an average score of 1.25 stars. I think the author and Del Rey need to take a good long look at these reviews and make corrections. If I were the publisher and I read this book before release what would I have done? Well I would have had Chuck turn the interludes into short stories and flesh them out. Condense the main story down to a 1 -2 part short story and released it as a collection of short stories instead.