I have a long and storied history with reading Star Wars novels. For the longest time, the Expanded Universe was the only place to get new stories featuring Han, Luke, and Leia, because we knew there were no new movies on the horizon. All of that changed with Disney buying the franchise. They promised a new film trilogy; they promised film stand-alones; they took the Expanded Universe and shoved it into an alternate timeline called “Legends” so that fresh stories could be told about our heroes, old and new.
There was a time when I read every. single. Star Wars. book. ever. written. Now, I cherry-pick the titles that speak to me the most, and even then, there’s no guarantee I’ll finish, let alone start. But Resistance Reborn stood out for several reasons: 1) It bridges The Last Jedi with The Rise of Skywalker. 2) It features Rey, Finn, and Poe. 3) The cover is gorgeous. 4) Barnes and Noble announced an exclusive edition featuring character bookmarks inside.
While I got my hands on this puppy before The Rise of Skywalker, I waited until after I’d seen the final move before reading this bridge. I’m contrary like that, so let’s see how Resistance Reborn fares, shall we?
Star Wars: Resistance Reborn (2019)
Written by: Rebecca Roanhorse
Genre: Space Opera/Media Tie-In
Pages: 298 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Del Rey
The Premise:
In this pivotal prequel to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the heroes of the Resistance — Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, Rey, and Finn — must fight back from the edge of oblivion.
The Resistance is in ruins. In the wake of their harrowing escape from Crait, what was once an army has been reduced to a handful of wounded heroes. Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, Chewbacca, Leia Organa — their names are famous among the oppressed worlds they fight to liberate. But names can only get you so far, and Leia’s last desperate call for aid has gone unanswered.
From the jungles of Ryloth to the shipyards of Corellia, the shadow of the First Order looms large, and those with the bravery to face the darkness are scattered and isolated. If hope is to survive, the Resistance must journey throughout the galaxy, seeking out more leaders — including those who, in days gone by, helped a nascent rebellion topple an empire. Battles will be fought, alliances will be forged, and the Resistance will be reborn.
Spoilers for The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker ahead and very minor spoilers for the book.
Discussion: The problem with cherry-picking Star Wars books to read is that I found myself immediately at a disadvantage. There’s a sense that I should have some familiarity with characters that I don’t even know from the movies, yet I suspect have been featured players in previous books and comics. One such character is Norra, whom I vaguely remember from reading Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath. Because I’ve read Aftermath, though not the full trilogy, I could roll with that, but there are other characters that I didn’t recognize and didn’t feel properly introduced to. I can only assume it’s because there’s now a lot of Star Wars books and comics out there that I haven’t read.
It’s a minor hurdle, but it’s still a hurdle. Another was knowing that Roanhorse was writing within certain limitations. I doubt that Roanhorse knew the events of The Rise of Skywalker, and while I’m sure that Del Rey and Disney had people in place to make sure the story that unfolded didn’t contradict anything in the upcoming movie, but I still had a moment, reading one of Leia’s sections, where she is observing Rey. She notes that Rey needs a teacher, and that teacher cannot be her. So that’s either a mistake on Disney’s part, or Leia’s going to have a change of heart between this book and The Rise of Skywalker. I hope we get that particular book, because I would absolutely love a story focused on Rey’s training with Leia. Intercut it with flashbacks to Leia training with Luke? Even better!
At any rate, what I liked about Resistance Reborn was that the story moved at a pretty good pace. Featured points of view include Leia and Poe, but also Wedge Antilles (welcome back, Wedge!), a pilot named Shriv (he’s one of the ones I felt like I should already know), and our First Order villain, the appropriately named Winshur Bratt and his minion Monti Calay. It’s a few too many POVs for my taste, especially since the book itself barely hits the 300 page mark, but once the focus of the book is revealed and we get into the meat of the action, it helps keep the pages turning, if only because I preferred some points of view over others.
I adored the sections where Poe and Finn got to interact. Roanhorse really nails that dynamic, and I want to see more of this dynamic in future books. Rey doesn’t get a POV chapter. She’s mostly observed through Leia and Poe, and neither of them know quite what to make of her. She’s quiet, reserved, and distant, and I personally look forward to getting some books from her POV now that the movie trilogy has ended and all has been revealed.
Leia was handled interestingly. She’s still recovering from her trauma in The Last Jedi, and she’s also obviously still grieving the loss of Han and now Luke. She’s tired, trying to keep the Resistance together, and can’t help but notice how everyone is treating her with kid gloves. It’s somewhat entertaining to see Finn and Rose, for example, through her eyes: they respect her, obviously, but they also see her as old and frail. Leia, as we all know, is anything but that.
The story itself of the Resistance needing more ships, more leaders, and more people to their cause works perfectly fine. We learn why no one answered Leia’s call in The Last Jedi, which is an interesting point to pin the plot on, because despite seeing that movie at least three times, I never once asked myself why no one answered. I just assumed that people who’d formerly been Rebels felt like one fight was enough, and that they simply didn’t have another fight in them. To that end, I still feel like that sense pervades this new Star Wars universe, given the ease in which the First Order is able to take over. People are simply tired of fighting, because they’ve fought so much already. Resistance Reborn shows us why that has to change.
I do have one request of Disney/Del Rey: despite the tradition of spelling the droid’s names phonetically (C-3PO becoming Threepio and R2-D2 becoming Artoo), can we please never, ever do this to BB-8 again? It would work if he had a nickname like Artoo and Threepio, but he doesn’t, and seeing Beebee-Ate over and over makes me want to spork my eye out. At least Roanhorse didn’t double-down on that spelling, and resorted to BB-8 more often than not. Thank goodness.
In Conclusion: Resistance Reborn is a pretty fun yarn, and a fast read that answers a question posed at the end of The Last Jedi. I will give one warning if you’ve only seen the movies: there are a decent amount of characters you won’t know from the movies, but have appeared in earlier books (my having read Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath and Claudia Gray’s Bloodline helps a wee bit in this regard), so there might be a certain frustration or disconnect if you come to Resistance Reborn expecting a tighter focus on Finn, Poe, and Rey. That said, some of the coolest Star Wars characters in the Expanded Universe are ones we meet in the books for the first time, and while I don’t feel that happened here, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong in the future.
Oh, and did you want to see the pretty bookmarks that I can’t bring myself to rip out of my hardcover copy? Behold!
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