Goody’s Publication Audit: A review of Star Wars: A New Dawn!
I feel really foolish for not posting this review much much earlier! I had this book, the problem was that I bought ten books all at once from B&N and when I got home it got lost in the shuffle. Which is totally NOT me! I’m so freaking weird about my books. I have stacks of books to read in my office/studio at home and they’re stacking in the order of which to read first on top and i’m constantly reorganizing it, such a tard!
Anywho! Lets pull the chocks on this baby and get going! Ya, let’s see who gets that reference.
So for those of you who follow the cartoon series “Star Wars Rebels” on Disney this is a great prequel to that. And for those who don’t watch the series, you need to, and for those of you who are silently mocking me right now in your head for watching cartoons, think of it as a regular TV series, and stop mocking my love for cartoons!
The approximate time line in the Star Wars canon is 10 years after Revenge of the Sith and about 5 years before the TV series Star Wars Rebels.
The story follows a handful of main characters throughout their adventures, but it focuses on two sides. The ever so evil Empire and the newly emerging rebels. Now, it should be said that the so-called Rebel Alliance isn’t a well known group like you might imagine from the Star Wars movies, these early books give indications that there is a movement starting, but has yet to culminate into a large faction.
We’ll start with our hero’s first. Now for those of you who do watch the TV series I mentioned above then you’ll already know about Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla. For those of you meatbags who don’t watch the TV series i’ll begin with Kanan. We learn more about Kanans past in this book which is really good. I think the best part about how Kanan recalls his past is his memory of when he spoke with Obi-Wan Kenobi. He was a youngling at the time and Kenobi was already a full fledged Jedi. Now, it should also be mentioned that Kanan isn’t his real name, it’s a name he made up when he went on the run after surviving Order 66 (The Jedi Purge). You wanna know more about him? Well, you know the rules, read the book!
The other main hero I mentioned is Hera. You may recall that I’ve mentioned her before in another review I wrote (Look Here!). Unfortunately, the author doesn’t go into too much detail here about her past, this was already discussed in the TV series and it seems that either the author of the publisher didn’t want to rehash the topic. I can’t get over this little detail, she is such a complex character and I feel that she was slightly robbed here. My reasoning for saying she was robbed is that if you’re a new Star Wars reader and you haven’t seen the TV series then you’d be missing some really nice details. Now, with that said, there is a short story that does focus on her that’s called “Mercy Mission”. If you were smart enough to pick up the book named “The Rise of the Empire” then you have the story. The book included “Tarkin”, “A New Dawn”, and three short stories titled “Mercy Mission, Bottleneck, and The Levers of Power”. The short stories are indeed short, but all three give great support to the new official canon and in my opinion are must reads.
A couple other characters that provide great support for Kanan and Hera is a clone war veteran named Skelly who was a demolitions expert and a surveillance agent by the name of Zaluna. Both were thrown into the fight for various reasons and both of course were heroic in there own specific ways.
Ok, lets talk about our star villain! The main protagonist is a Count by the name of Denetrius Vidian. The entire time I spent reading this book I kept getting this mental image of General Grievous from Revenge of the Sith. Yes, Vidian is another Cyborg! Can we get away from all these dang cyborgs?! Probably not, it is after all, a more highly advanced civilization. It’s not the future people! Remember, “A Long Time Ago…….”. Sorry, got a little side tracked. So the reason I kept getting this mental image of Grievous was because Vidian had contracted this horrible disease that just destroyed his body, and to make a long story short he had this cyborg body built which held his organs. Is anybody else getting a mental picture of Grievous yet too? The big difference between the two was that Vidian still appeared to look like a human and he wore clothing. As a matter of fact, he only wore a tunic and a kilt. So it kinda gives you this impression of a cyborg highlander. Vidian was a power hungry being. He’d stop at nothing to increase production of any operation he was overseeing, even at the expense of others which would include murdering people. Seems like one heck of a boss right?
My Audit’s Results….
The book starts out a little on the slow side, but as it progresses throughout it increases substantially. The action scenes are well written, the dialogue between characters is excellent, and the descriptive writing was very well done. It could be graphic in terms of how some deaths were portrayed, but it also showed deep love and compassion for the stories characters. The author brings you close to all of the characters making it ever so easy to get involved emotionally with them, I like an author who has these skills. At some points I even felt some sympathy for our main villain.
This is a great intro into the Rebels TV series. I highly recommend this one, it’s good to see that the Star Wars Universe is still getting good writers involved.
Check this one out folks. As always, let me know what you think, if we have a difference of opinion, lets talk. Cheers and blessings to you all!
1 Comment