My Star Wars Entertainment Update for February 2025

Thrawn: Alliances, by Timothey Zahn. I love Thrawn as a character, particularly in Rebels and the Ahsoka show, but I’ve never been a big fan of the books. I just don’t have the patience for his Sherlock Homes-style exposition that makes my eyes glaze over. I thought I’d try this one, though, because the premise seemed interesting: Thrawn and Darth Vader have a mission together, and it flashes back to when Thrawn met Anakin Skywalker and they did a mission together as well. Put Padme in there, too, and I’m intrigued enough to check it out. There was still plenty of tedious Thrawning, but was just interesting enough to get me through it.

The Emperor sends Thrawn and Vader on a mission to investigate a big disturbance in the Force he’s feeling. The flashbacks deal with Padme going to Batuu to meet up with one of her handmaidens who’s discovered something important. She turns up dead, though, and Padme investigates a Separatist factory on a planet called Mokijve. Anakin hasn’t heard from Padme and goes to investigate her whereabouts and encounters Thrawn, whose mission on behalf of the Chiss is a bit vague. They decide to work together, however, to find Padme.

Meanwhile, Thrawn and Vader inevitably clash, as their leadership styles are decidedly different. Vader is constantly questioning Thrawn’s loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire. It becomes quite clear that Thrawn–naturally–has figured out that Vader was once Anakin Skywalker, and he walks that tightrope for most of the book. They deal with a group of Grysk (enemies to the Chiss in the Unknown Regions) who are, it is revealed, kidnapping female Chiss children who are Force-sensitive. These children are what allow the Chiss to travel across space, as they have no hyperdrive navigational systems. Ironically, they are called “Skywalkers.”

Anakin, Padme, and Thrawn find that the Separatists are manufacturing droids and clone armor with cortosis, which are impervious to blasterfire, as well as lightsabers. They work together to destroy the factory, and Thrawn gets the intel on something or other he’s after for the Chiss (he takes some piece of equipment, idk, lol). Vader and Thrawn retrieve the Chiss girls and come to some sort of stalemate and truce, as well as mutual respect.

The book was fairly entertaining, but I doubt I’ll read any other Thrawn book. I’ll take my Thrawn in animation and live-action.

Comics: Legacy of Vader, and Ghost Agents. If you know me you know I’m not a huge comic book fan, but you also know I’m a huge Bad Batch fan. So when it was announced that there would be a comic run with the Batch, I knew I’d check them out. So I walked down to my local comic book shop and found the first issue. Kylo Ren is another special interest, so I thought I’d pick up the new one with him, too.

Ghost Agents takes place during the Clone Wars, so no Omega or Echo, just the original Batch. They’re sent on a mission by Mace Windu to find someone who stole a list of Republic secret agents. They descend into the lower levels of Coruscant and almost find the culprit but run into the bounty hunter Embo, who is also after the list. As a result, the suspect gets away. Stay tuned.

Legacy of Vader takes place between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. Snoke is dead, and Kylo force-throws his corpse off the ship into space and tells Hux to make him a throne, lol. But even after killing his father and Snoke, he still feels trapped by the past, which includes Vader. He decides to go to Mustafar to…I’m not really sure, but he runs into Vader’s old assistant, Vanee, who is a head in a fish bowl with a robotic spider-like body. Kylo was going to kill him, too, but Vanee tells him that Vader was strong because of his past. Kylo is intrigued, and we’re left waiting until the next issue to see what sorts of stories Vanee tells him.

I’d never been to my local comic store, and it was a great little place with lots of comics and other things, too. I picked up a book–Clone Wars: Siege, by Karen Miller–while I was there, too. I would have stayed longer, but it was stifling in there and had to get out, lol. But I plan on returning to get the subsequent issues of these stories.

Non-Star Wars entertainments:

Pride and Prejudice (1995). I was rooting around in my new Hulu subscription and came upon this gem. It had been years since I last watched it and decided to indulge in it once again. This is the golden standard of Jane Austen adaptations and it truly is a delight.

Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James. Since I was in an Austen kind of mood, I decided to read this one I had on my TBR pile, which I’d found in a free little library a few months ago. It takes place six years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. Preparations for Lady Anne’s ball at Pemberley is interrupted by tragedy: a murder has taken place on the Pemberley grounds. The victim is Captain Denny, a friend of Wickham’s. The prime suspect is Wickham himself, who, along with his wife Lydia, had been in the carriage with Denny on their way to dropping Lydia off–uninvited, of course–at Pemberley. When Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and a young lawyer named Alveston investigate, they find Wickham–quite drunk–bent over his friend proclaiming that he’d killed his best friend. What exactly happened that night is the central mystery as the book covers the inquest and trial of Wickham. If you like mysteries, as well as Austen and Regency England, this one’s for you.

As promised last month, here are my drawings for the rest of the Bad Batch:

I posted my drawings of Tech, Hunter, and Crosshair last month, so if you’d like to check those out, they’re here.

Here’s a bonus drawing of Ahsoka from the live-action show:

What’s been entertaining you lately? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!

Star Wars Book Update

Path of Vengeance, by Cavan Scott (Canon). This YA novel is the final book in Phase 2 of the High Republic, and at 500 pages, it was a whopper of a good book. It continues the story of Marda and Yana Ro, of the Wave 1 YA book Path of Deceit. It spans the events of the Battle of Jedha (as told in the Battle of Jedha audiobook) and the Battle of Dalna (as told in Cataclysm), and follows the doings of the two Evereni cousins, Marda and Yana, from the Path of the Open Hand. We hadn’t seen them since the Wave 1 YA novel, Path of Deceit. Marda is still naively following the Mother, the self-proclaimed prophet of the group, and Yana, disillusioned with the Mother after the death of her girlfriend on a mission from the Mother, is trying to distance herself; she keeps getting pulled back in with concern for her younger cousin. She also forms an uneasy alliance with her deceased girlfriend’s father, the Herald, who the Mother threw under the bus during the Battle of Jedha. They return to Dalna together, he to wrest power from the Mother, and Yana to try to convince her cousin to leave the Path. But Marda is already gone when she arrives: she’s on another mission from the Mother, this time to Planet X to retrieve more eggs of the Nameless, the Force-feeding monsters that kill Jedi. I find it interesting that both the Ro’s talk to and have visions of their dead loved ones: Marda sees Kevmo, a Jedi Padawan she loved and who was killed in Path of Deceit; and Yana sees her dead girfriend, Kor. They’re not really actual ghosts, but extensions of their conscience and their own inner dialogue. It’s also the story of Matty Cathely, a Jedi Padawan who is sent to Jedha, and Jedi Master Olivia Zeveron, who has a surprising connection to the Mother. This book is a very satisfying end to Phase 2, even though I still have some questions–I’m hoping Phase 3 will somehow answer them, perhaps through flashbacks.

Star Wars: Rebel Force Book 3–Renegade, by Alex Wheeler. (Legends).

Book three in the Rebel Force series, this one focuses on Han Solo (the first focused on Luke, the second on Leia). The Imperial assassin X-7 attempts to kill Luke (and fails) and frames Han for the crime. Leia, investigating the crime and trying to be objective, comes off as doubting Han’s innocence. This angers Han, naturally, so Chewie busts him out of jail and they flee Yavin 4. While Han tries to get back into his old life of smuggling, Leia and Luke go to Tatooine to hide Luke from any other attempts on his life, reuniting with his old friends, though they end up arguing. It’s clear Luke still has a lot to learn about being a Jedi, as he’s quick to anger, eager to impress his old friends, and acts reckless, to Leia’s disappointment. Jabba gets wind of Luke’s presence on the planet, and because Luke is Han’s friend (and Han owes him money), sends the bounty hunter Bossk after him to lure Han to him. Meanwhile, Han ends up on an Imperial station on a job to steal various supplies, gets betrayed by his partner, and while trying to escape the Imperials, finds out that Tobin Elad, the man who became a friend and part of their group, is actually X-7 and is the one trying to kill Luke. This whole scheme of Han going to the Imperial base is apparently orchestrated by the ghost of Ben Kenobi, which is a tad weird, to say the least. Anyway, Han and Chewie end up on Tatooine to save Luke just before X-7 attempts to kill Luke again. X-7 gets away, but you know he’ll be back at some point to finish the job. I do feel bad for X-7; he’s been tortured into who he is, forgetting his former life and living only to please the Commander. We get flashbacks of his “training,” and for a junior novel, it’s difficult to read. No gory details, but it’s clear what the guy went through. Sometimes it’s obvious these books are junior novels, taking us back to familiar faces and places, and elicits the occasional eye roll, but they’ve grown on me, and I’ll keep going on the series.

The next Star Wars book in my queue is Shatterpoint, by Matthew Stover. It’s a Legends book that focuses on Mace Windu. I’ve never really liked Mace (I thought he was mean, lol) but I’ve been softening my stance a little bit lately, mostly because of his character in the Clone Wars animated series. I thought I’d give him another chance in this book; I’m curious to see how I feel about him, and this book written by Stover, who wrote the brilliant novelization of Revenge of the Sith. Eager to dive in.

Have you read these books? What did you think? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!

Book Review: Bloodline

This is the first Star Wars canon novel I’ve read (besides the film novelizations), and I have to say, I’m impressed. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this book sucked me in like the sinking sands of Pasaana.

If you’ve ever wondered how the First Order came to power, how the New Republic failed and Leia came to lead the Resistance, this is the book for you.

It begins a few years before the events of The Force Awakens. Leia is a Senator in the New Republic at the capitol of Hosnian Prime. Han is running a ship-racing event in another system, and Ben is a teenager training with Luke at his Jedi Academy.

Mon Mothma is the Chancellor of the New Republic, but she’s absent due to illness and may never return. Without her clear guidance, the Senate has divided into two factions: the Populists, of which Leia is a member, and who believe individual worlds should mostly govern themselves; and the Centrists, who believe in a stronger galactic goverment and military.

These two factions bicker and blame each other in a way that is easily familiar to us, and just as frustrating. Leia stresses compromise to both factions, but no one wants to listen. The heroes of the Rebellion are still honored, but most have forgotten the pain and bloodshed of war; a great many weren’t even alive at the time, and tend to romanticize it. Leia senses trouble for the New Republic if they can’t bridge their differences.

After a statue dedication to Bail Organa, a Ryloth ambassador addresses the Senate and tells them that, after the fall of the Hutts, his people are now threatened by a new crime cartel led by the Niktos, led by Rinnrivin Di. Leia is concerned and volunteers to investigate the situation on Bastatha, but the Centrists decide to send one of their own with her, a young Senator named Ransolm Casterfo.

When she meets with him, Leia is horrified to find that Casterfo actually admires the Empire, and has a personal collection of artifacts in his office. Casterfo claims that he only admires the structure of the Empire, and not the Emperor who led it. As a Centrist, he believes in a strong central government, and that the “chaos” of a Populist government can help no one. They get into a testy debate, and she angrily leaves his office, convinced that their mission will be acutely uncomfortable.

She isn’t wrong, at first. But as they investigate the cartel and Rinnrivin Di, their mutual animosity turns to grudging respect, and as the book goes on, understanding and even friendship. That friendship, however, is tested, not only by politics, but by Leia’s very personal secret she’s kept from everyone for decades: that Vader is her father.

I love that this book explores Leia’s thoughts and feelings about her parentage, which we don’t hear too much about anywhere else. Not only about Anakin/Vader and Padme, but her adoptive parents, Bail and Breha Organa.

I love that, even though we don’t see Han Solo too much in the book, they share sweet intergalactic phone calls, with no hint of the bickering they’re famous for, or the eventual split caused by Ben’s turn. By this point, they have a mutual understanding of how their marriage works best, and the love between them is clear.

I love the references to past events, like Leia’s killing of Jabba (which turns out to be an important plot point here), or when Vader held her prisoner on the first Death Star and tortured her.

I love that, no matter which galaxy you’re in, politics and government are proven to be pretty much the same: a predictable shit-show.

Basically, I loved everything about this book. I would have loved to see and hear more of Ben, but I suppose that wasn’t the purpose of the book. Both Ben and Han are out of her reach most of the time, and it’s Leia’s story all the way.

Claudia Gray is a wonderful writer, and I highly recommend this book to any Star Wars fan who wants a little more insight into Leia and pre-TFA events.