Books Aftermath: Empire's End (book 3) by Chuck Wendig

But why would Palpatine trust the future of the Empire to some desert mite from a backwater planet like Jakku? In my opinion, Rax is just a little man with ideas above his station. Don't forget that prior to Endor, very little of the Imperial military knew who he was and I doubt even Palpatine would care much for an officer like him.

 

There's a lot to unpack in that sentence for assumptions about Palpatine.

* Palpatine doesn't care about the Empire. It's not his legacy. The Empire is a facillitation for his power and quest for immortality like all Sith.
* Palpatine's heir was a desert mite from a backwater planet called Tatooine.
* Palpatine doesn't actually care about the Core Worlds and generally would probably consider them inferior as Core World culture was shaped by the Republic and Jedi, a democracy as well as selflessness based Force cult. The Sith are, in-canon, a primarily Outer Rim based organization.
* Palpatine trusted Gallius Rax with the mission of destroying the Empire and the Contingency. He's the uber-Nazi who will have the mission of destroying Germany while Hitler is committing suicide. He's not there to rebuild the Empire but murder as many people as possible in it.
* Palpatine isn't a bigot on class but Force Use and morality.
* Palpatine prefers servants who are either fanatically loyal evil zealots or corrupt venal old men like himself. Rax is certainly the former.

 

Rax was some kinda boy monk Anchorite. He was apparently gifted enough in Sidious' view to be entrusted with a most precious position and plan. Palpatine surrounded himself with Sith cultists(and some of them in return had Dark Side fanatics & lackeys in their service) that were fanatically loyal to him, even after death and perhaps beyond. He also had his crimson robbed Sentinel droids with his image that acted as a kinda immortal visage and will to make sure his plans were carried out in case of betrayal or if he died in any way. While neither the droids nor most if any of the cultists were Force sensitive in a conventional sense apparently, they were still all of the Force, they had access to knowledge and artifacts that the Dark Side of the Force was very much alive and can manifest in such things perhaps even the specters of ( long) dead Sith Lords. Yupe Tashu wanted to resurrect the Emperor on Jakku, Rax betrayed him to make himself Emperor. So its pretty clear regardless of the sanity of either Tashu or Rax, that Sidious and Sidious alone(in his own view) was to return and be immortal. Vader does not really fit into his after death scheme and his own desire for absolute power and immortality. Remember Sidious also sensed a shatterpoint onboard the DS II and had summoned Rax and not Vader. The contingency had begun. Sidious, like other powerful masterful Dark Siders and Light Siders had abilities to see in the various possible futures and sense great incoming danger.

"If an Empire cannot protect its Emperor then that Empire must be deemed a failure. It collapses not only because its central figure is gone, but because it must not be allowed to remain!" - Emperor Palpatine

Sidious also set up project Blackwing and was intrigued with Cylo's program. And he also set up observatories around the galaxy for various purposes, including draining the lifeforce from victims to extend the life of the harvester.

 

Honestly, I felt the Star Wars galaxy keeping the Empire for so long was a mistake. Are they a hated dictatorship or not?

 

The Empire is also much less entrenched than it was when ANH was written. Originally Palpatine was the latest in a line of Emperors, and the Empire had been around for 40-50 years (they just hadn't yet turned on the Jedi until 20 years earlier... or the Jedi just persisted longer and were a successful underground organization until Darth Vader betrayed them). And the Empire wasn't originally thought to be ruled by the Sith, just people like Nute Gunray and Tarkin and Valorum.

 

I just finished reading the book yesterday, and I immediately thought the "proto!First Order 'tall girl'" was possibly Phasma, too. I'm always leery of the Star Wars universe being "hyper connected" but that seemed like such a specific mention to include casually.

 

I confess, Phasma's armor being the Emperor's yacht's plating is such a BIZARRE connection.

Is it quantum armor?

She just like the look?

 

Guess that a bit of a difference between New and Old Empire. Old Empire is more akin to Rome...Lasting for a very long time (The Roman Empire lasted a few centuries right?) while New EU Empire is ore akin to Nazi Germany, which while powerful and dangerous only lasted for 15 plus years or so...I think even less.

 

I dunno, it seemed like the Empire was fairly recent in the final product.

"You fought in the Clone Wars?"
"I was once a Jedi Knight, same as your father. Before the Dark Times before the Empire."

Luke notably being only 20 years old.

"The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

It does feel like there's an extra 10 years missing with the Clone Wars meant to be TPM around but that's not that long

 

Jello will be horrified.

Oh yes, the delicious tears.

Now I'm oddly imagining Admiral Oxtoel being Rae Sloane.

But yes, Prequels aside, it seems like the Empire should be roughly 30 years old. It's enough time for there to be a generation gap between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tarkin, and Vader versus Admiral Motti over things like the Jedi Knights as well as Force. It's a bit strange to have him so dismissive but not unheard of, especially since Japanese officers would be considering samurai the same way with similar time periods. Han Solo being an infant when the Jedi were made extinct also makes his reaction more understandable.

There's a problem with Luke and Leia's birth but for "feel" this seems right.

The 1970s having a parallel to World War 2 also works.

 

I think it was meant to be like her own version of carrying around reliquary since that chromium had once belonged to the Emperor himself, and symbolized power overall and probably her birth and/or political status within the Neo-Empire aka First Order. But her armor was only plated with chromium - its also very rare and expensive mineral and allow in the SW galaxy, it has special properties like ability to more resist or reflect radiation and dampen or actually block communications(I guess more stealth-like?). It also is not clear yet if there is other "Chrometroopers" aside from Phasma within the First Order.

 

What's funny is that the original ANH novelization implied the Empire was around a lot longer than it really was, and that there were more Emperors than just Palpatine.

Of course, it was written when the thought would be that he was only a figurehead and that Imps like Tarkin were the real ones in charge.

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I rather like the idea that it's a very conscious attempt to play to the First Order's biases - that she's not actually a "true believer" like Hux and other senior leaders and is pulling stunts like the armor to fake it.

 

Ok - I'm a bit late to the party, but enjoyed this book in that it tied up some loose ends between ROTJ and TFA. One question though, did the Observatory survive the Battle of Jakku? If so, the New Republic would have had access to the routes into the Unknown Regions which were stored in the computers there. Did they not think to follow those up? Imperial ships disappearing into the Unknown Regions + a safe route into that area of the galaxy found in a computer in an Imperial outpost......

 

The Observatory is still there cuz the planet didn't crack in half. But depends who actually went back there / checked it out. Norra was picked up by Jas just outside as the battle of Jakku was still going on. I doubt they had much time to inspect the place as the battle went on for months. It was really near Nima's home so maybe she just took it over when she started coming out and scavenging all the parts.

Finished the book meself yesterday. I think it lives up to the title "Empire's End" as Rax has twisted it into a basically suicide machine. There's a lot of Rax in the book, which I like because he has a significant amount of crazy. I like the idea of "The Contingency" as Palpatine's grand plan, which we saw in Shattered Empire with Operation: Cider against Naboo but in the grand scheme he wanted to burn the galaxy to ashes, not just Naboo. So what seemed like bitterness towards his home planet was actually the entire galaxy. But STILL Palpy has plans to send people out to the Unknown Regions so basically First Order = Palpatine's last order (even though the book heavily implies that Sloane is the core founding member with her last words).

The question as to if it's Rax or Sidious plan to send out pieces of the Empire to the Unknown Regions I think it's up in the air. I like to think that Sidious wanted to burn the Empire down and the hardest of the hardcore got the co-ordinates to the Eclipse. Like otherwise the final order in The Contingency would be "Now that Empire is ashes, fall on your sword immediately." which wouldn't inspire much confidence to go through with it. Also Rax literally said to Sloane "You are the Contingency now" so he's bestowing a title upon her, which implies that the Contingency wasn't finished yet when Sloane gunned him down. (she shot him quite a lot too)

Getting to know more about Nima the Hutt I thought was cool, she was also pretty twisted and I loved how she talked through a squawk box. I gots some gripes, it didn't fly as fleet as Life Debt did, the team is basically split up the entire book while Life Debt had them going out together. It's also kind of Norra heavy, which she was never my favourite member of the crew. Also Sinjir is almost totally sidelined and doesn't get to do much stuff (but he does get in an awesome bit where he takes out an entire group of thugs almost single handedly). Putting him in as an advisor to Mon Mothma is an interesting idea but it's really only for about 2 chapters, if he was going to be sidelined from the action it might have been cooler to have him do that for longer. But hopefully someone picks that thread up. I didn't mind how this book was more "political" than others, the newly formed New Republic seemed to be fraught with strife even in it's inception (Which pays off later in Bloodline). My only gripe about the writing style is, in this book, Wendig seemed to really overload on the flowery metaphors, a whole lot of "like a black sun boiling in a blood red sky" or whatever on almost every page. Got to be a bit much.

Also my continuity brain is going to bend to a breaking point that whenever we see the Battle of Jakku (mostly in Battlefront), the Imperials look pretty spiffy however Empire's End specifically says they've pitted, scorched, modified, painted and deformed their armour. Maybe just the ones Rax hung around with / Nora encountered.

Poor Bones! But it was amazing that he turned into the droid from KOTOR for about a sentence or two. And his first destruction / self repair bit was amazing. And we know in Poe Dameron that Snap keeps a template of Bones personality matrix around so maybe Snap remade him fully again. And I will say in Poe Dameron comic it was a tad odd that Snap kept Bones close to his heart, literally, considering how much Bones sacrifices for Temmin, I kinda buy it. He hasn't let go of his friend.

But I do like how the book shows the Empire just fraying at the edges under the leadership of a madman who is under orders from a madman to burn the whole thing to the ground. And I loved the TFA / First Order setups (still kind of disappointed that Rax wasn't Snoke but he's a big part of the whole Empire to First Order transitions). the fall of the Super Star Destroyer bit was very well done. One of my favourite bits in the book is when Rax tells lil'Hux that he has command of all these kids and lil'Hux immediately tells one of them to smack the other one in the head. A scene that will probably still in my head as the pinnacle of the book is Rax rallying the troops JUST AS the New Republic shows up, which is just all kinds of perfectly awesome evil mastermind-ing, even though he didn't plan it but he almost "wept at the theatricality" of it happening at the same time. Oh and Han talking to Baby Ben was just cuz we know what's going to happen.

Not as many interludes in this one but they were all great. Big points for the Lando one and, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the heartfelt Jar-Jar interlude. Really!

Cool series overall and it does paint a decent picture of how the Empire died in just a year after Endor. Even it's leader didn't think it deserved to survive. So it Ended. Badly.

 

I look over at Wookieepedia and we got a guy who can talk to long-dead Sith Lords. Ok, cool.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA They couldn't even go 4 years before bringing that concept back.

 

Not that Yupe Tashu is necessarily actually able to. He certainly thinks he can, but then he's not exactly... all there.

 

I guess it's possible those dreams are sent by Snoke all along.

 

Tashu is a blathering loon is the way I took it. At no point does anyone take his ramblings seriously (unless they're already a part of his crazy cult). I don't think the reader should either.

 

Snoke turns up in all of my dreams, I know that much.

 

I don't know whether to laugh or gag at this.

 

Thing is, though, his followers do receive dreams depicting past and recently deceased Sith Lords. One of them becomes possessed by the Dark Side through a mask and cuts down her own lover in the cult.

 

Well, if one takes it literally but I thought the cultists were all buggity boo as well. Unless we get a story where they actually are communing with death Sith to be confirmed.

 

In Zahn's books, they're not. Just a good, law-keeping organization with a few extreme leaders.