Aftermath
Ratings92
Average rating3.1
Shockingly good. Wendig does such a good job of establishing the first post-Endor moments of the Galaxy that you're glad the old Expanded Universe is toast.
Oh, and huge spoiler: LOBOT LIVES!!!!!
It was a fun story, with fun characters, but I expected way, way more of Chuck Wendig's writing. The guy wrote several books on the subject, but Aftermath's writing is... meh, at best. I don't know... I'm probably going to read the sequels, though, as I'm still waiting for any sign of direct references to the events of The Force Awakens.
Also, there are some situations about which I couldn't care less. It's really hard to feel involved when you simply don't care whether a character's going to die or not (especially if all the characters are constantly dying or have their lives on a cliffhanger, just to show up alive in the next chapter or so).
I really loved Mister Bones, though, and now I wish I could read an entire novel about Rae Sloane.
None of the stuff you want in a Star Wars story. First person narrative was off putting as were fake curse words. I do not suggest this book to any Star Wars fans.
It's been awhile since I read a Star Wars novel. I picked this one up because Chuck Wendig. He delivers a good adrenaline rush with a new cast of characters that I think will hold up well over the course of a trilogy. Count me in. But I expected more cursing!
I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could. This is a solid entry in the Star Wars universe. My own knowledge of same comes entirely from movies, television, and games (with some comics back in the day), so I can't compare it to other novels. It's an entertaining story and I enjoyed the approach to what actually happens after the third movie (sixth episode, whatever). The cast of characters are interesting and believable. I can't say I'm hooked enough to bump a bunch of other things I want to read off my list for the rest of the series, but someday, maybe?
Imagine a group of friends sitting down to play a table top RPG. If you recorded the audio and typed it out, you would get this book.
Some parts are good, some boring, some silly, some preach-y, and some bad. You know that the main characters will do amazingly “cool” things, maybe get hurt, but be fine at the end.
I finished it, but I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.
This novel is so convoluted, so inconsistent, and somehow capable of burying every interesting part of it in a heep of needless drivel. It hand holds you through every part offering up almost no moments for you to extrapolate or think on your own about it. The novel cant even decide if its commiting to the otherworldly ness of star wars or if it's going to really commit to referencing our normal world. Filled with wink wink nidge nudge references to everything else star wars it feels about as subtle as the merchandising scene from Spaceballs.
Executive Summary: It's an OK story. Not great, but far from all the negative reviews I've seen. I'm not really sure how it's going to tie into the Force Awakens though. I guess I'll have to wait and see.Audio book: I don't think Marc Thompson does all the Star Wars books, but I think he does most of them. He's narrated all of the ones I've listened to though. He's fantastic. I'll never read a Star Wars book when I can listen to one. He does all the voices, and you get music and special effects. Normally I don't like music in audio books, but it really works for the Star Wars books.If you do audio and are interested in this book, definitely do it that way.Full ReviewThis is only my 5th Star Wars book, and my first Chuck Wendig book. I can't really compare it to the quality of the Star Wars books at large, or to Mr. Wendig's other work. As a Star Wars book, I would have liked a little more of the main cast, while introducing new characters, much like the Thrawn trilogy books did.Instead we mostly got cameos and mostly brand new characters who don't really feel that important to me in the grand scheme of things. Maybe this will change in later books, or the movie itself.I found the new characters largely forgettable. I also was largely uninterested in their stories. I probably liked Jazz the bounty hunter the best of the bunch. None of them were bad, but they just don't feel as big as Han, Luke or Leia.The writing was good, but the story felt “small”. Much of this story felt very unrelated to the larger struggle of the New Republic and the Empire. It was much more of personal stories of people living in the “Aftermath” of the destruction of the Death Star. It does set the stage a bit, but much of that seemed to happen at the end.It's hard to really speak to how well this book is really the “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” until I see the movie. Maybe it will take the whole trilogy of books to make it relevant.Overall I didn't find this as good as Thrawn Trilogy, or even the [a:James S.A. Corey 4192148 James S.A. Corey https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] side story: [b:Honor Among Thieves 18050080 Honor Among Thieves (Star Wars Empire and Rebellion, #2) James S.A. Corey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385232527s/18050080.jpg 24581828]. It's easily a skippable book in my opinion, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as some of the reviews seem to indicate however.
It's a decent enough book, but the tropes run deep. (The wacky original characters really weren't ) And, honestly, this period was imagined better in the books that were “disavowed”. Still, it kept me turning pages and reads like a Star Wars novel.
I thought I had lost interest in reading in general while I was reading this book, but actually after I powered my way through it, I realised I had just lost interest in the book. It's not that great, and doesn't really add anything to the mythology. You aren't missing anything by not reading it.
My God, what a crappy book. I mean it's a Star Wars novel so it's not like I was expecting Of Mice and Men, but jeez. The characters were ridiculously flat, every single one of them. There's not a character in the book i cared about at the end. There's so little action it's immensely boring in places. The characters we all know barely (and only 3-4 of them) make an appearance in this. It read like “we need to tell a star wars story, but don't have the rights to the names, so you know have fun with that” except they totally do have the rights and totally could have come up with a story that was even kinda good, but they didn't and this book sold like crazy because we're suckers and “STAR WARS!!!” : If it hadn't taken me so long to get to reading it, I would have tried to return it.I started reading and put the book down, it was that bad. i came back to finish it for two reasons;1. so I could honesty review it2. in the hopes it got magically better, it didn'tThere's some foreshadowing for future books (I assume that's the intent), but even that isn't that interesting and when I finally finished, i wasn't at all anxious to read the next part of the story. I honestly couldn't care less about even one of the characters in this story and certainly have no interest in what happens to them next.
I listened to the Audiobook version of this, and overall I did enjoy it, but most of the characters were so dull and shallow that by the end of it, I didn't care about anything that happened to them. I might still check out the sequel next year since this series could be good if it improved on certain areas (mostly characters) and could end up being very interesting. I guess my decision on whether or not to recommend this book, depends entirely on the following books in this trilogy. In its current state though, I wouldn't recommend this one.