In the run up to The Rise of Skywalker, I’m a lot like you and I’m looking for information anywhere I can get it. Sometimes that’s spoilers, although I honestly try to avoid those, since I’m a big fan and want to be surprised, but most of the time I’m looking through the new canon material written to prepare us for the film. So I was pretty excited when Del Rey sent me an advance copy of the canon novel Resistance Reborn and a huge thanks to them. The story picks up the Star Wars story about 12 hours after the events on Crait in the Last Jedi. I’ve actually read it twice in the last week and this is my review.
First off, I’ll warn you that there will be some spoilers for the book but nothing that will be ruin your experience when you read it. Overall, it’s a fun story and quick read about how the Resistance rebuilds after its utter decimation on Crait. The Resistance scours the galaxy for more people to join them by frantically searching for Rebel sympathizers, enemies of the First Order, prisoners of the First Order, and even former members of the Empire, who according to the book are mostly not fans of the “start-up First Order”.
The Resistance also goes on the search for ships in the decommissioned shipyards of Corellia, which is Han Solo’s home planet and famous for making Empierial and now First Orders ships. Corellia doesn’t do this willingly, but more so they don’t get destroyed by the First Order, which Resistance Reborn quickly points out is the situation for most planets. The First Order has adopted a zero-tolerance policy which basically means that if you even speak to the Resistance or disobey the First Order in any way, the First Order straight up takes your planet over. So they are actually becoming more ditatorial than the Empire ever was, which was interesting to see.
One of the best parts of the book was seeing old faces that we may see in Episode 9. The Resistance enlists the help of former allies like Wedge Antilles and General Reiken, who you may remember was the leader of the Rebels base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Wedge as been confirmed for Episode 9, and I hope we see Reiken too.
Now that’s the book in a nutshell story-wise, so what did I think about it? While the book is fun and certainly worth a read, there’s also not much in it that I feel you have to know to see The Rise of Skywalker. The key point of the book is that the Resistance starts to grow again, so I imagine that by Episode 9 it will be a decent size.
The book mostly follows Poe, Finn, Snap Wexley, and Leia but Rey is only in a handful of scenes and honestly just kind of stands there. She doesn’t have a lightsaber since Anakin’s was damaged in Episode 8, so when there are fights she uses a blaster and doesn’t use the Force. She spends most of the book being really unconfident and unsure about herself which I feel was a big departure of where her character ended up on the end of Episode 8 so she has no character development in the book. That makes me question how she’ll start off in Episode 9. The one tidbit we do get from her in the book is when Leia tells Rey that she can’t train her, even though Leia is probably the closest thing to the Jedi left in the galaxy and clearly knows a lot about the Force if she was able to Superman back into the Raddus in Episode 8. So that begs the question of who will train Rey in Episode 9? Will she be instructed by a Luke Force ghost? An Anakin ghost, maybe? Okay, so that’s probably just wishful thinking. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. But all in all, I would have liked to see more Rey in the book.
Another tiny part of the book that has huge implications for Episode 9 is what’s going on with Finn and Rose? When they kissed in Episode 8, a lot of people wondered if that relationship would stick. Well in the book Poe asks Finn about it and Finn says that he and Rose talked about it and decided that the kiss was an “in the moment” thing and that they’re just friends. Wow! I don’t know about you, but I think JJ Abrams basically decided he didn’t want them to end up together so he’s basically undoing it. Also in the book, it’s a little apparent that Poe has some sort of attraction towards Rey, so maybe we’ll get a Hobbit-like love triangle between the three characters in Episode 9. No matter what though, the Finn/Rose romance doesn’t look like it’ll be a thing in The Rise of Skywalker. Let me know if that disappoints you or if you like that.
My last point about the book is more a general observation of current canon books. Unfortunately Resistance Reborn, along with most other canon books, is good but not good enough to where I’d want to see a movie made from it. That’s not because the stories themselves aren’t good, because the Resistance Reborn story is entertaining and funny, but rather because the stories themselves aren’t very consequential to the Star Wars universe as a whole. They are largely just detail fillers. In Legends, the books really added to the overall story and actively developed the characters while the new canon are like filler TV episodes with no character development. Now of course there are exceptions to that like when the galaxy finds out that Leia is Darth Vader’s daughter in the book Bloodline, the book Dooku: Jedi Lost which chronicles Dooku’s fall to the Dark Side, and the book Dark Disciple which tells the final story of Asaaj Ventress. I should probably also mention that one of the best parts of Resistance Reborn is seeing into Poe’s heart as he grapples with his immense guilt caused by his misactions in The Last Jedi. But overall I wish the new canon books gave us a little more. It’s almost like someone comes up with a great idea and then the higher-ups say, “Oh wait, that idea is too good. We have to save that for a movie. Water it down a bit.” I mean, I totally understand why Lucasfilm would want to do it that way, but maybe the books could take a page from the comics, which I feel are doing a pretty good job with presenting story and character development.
What did you think about Resistance Reborn if you’ve read it? Check it out if you haven’t and let me know what you think in the comments below. And another big thanks to Del Rey for sending me an advance copy of the book. Thanks for joining me today.
