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

It's all the Tatooine air.

 

Despite all the negatives of Chuck Wendig's Aftermath, Mister Bones is a most inspired character creation. Easily my favorite star wars character.

 

Finished Empire's End a few weeks ago. I wanted to make mention of how fitting it was for the Emperor to create a kill switch on the Empire so that if for whatever reason he was deposed, no one could rise up and rule in his place. Very fitting given how he ruled the Empire, always pitting his top people against each other. I also really enjoyed the Emperor's celestial stations and his push to explore the unknown regions. I thought this was handled well, as they didn't give much away or go into detail, but it is very fitting for the character.

The battle of Jakku provides a realistic explanation for how the Empire could collapse so quickly after Endor. I sure there were some warlord factions and I hope these get elaborated on, but having the majority of imperial forces essentially self destruct makes the New Republic's early success more believable.

 

I would be very surprised if it wasn't elaborated on in the future.

 

I would say the Emperor's focus on the Unknown Regions may well end up being Snoke-related. Or Snoke adjacent.

 

So I just finished this book. I had read the first 2 books back to back but I didn't really like Life Debt that much. It was ok but it took me longer than it should have done to read it because I kept losing interest.

This book was good overall though. I loved the political parts with Mon Mothma and I got a classic Bantam era vibe from the part when the crew teamed up with Han to find out why the 5 senators voted against sending the fleet to Jakku.

I liked most of the interludes this time too which is good as I found the ones in the previous books to be more miss than hit. The standout ones for me were the Lando one and the Jar Jar one. (I felt bad for Jar Jar after reading his). The one with Chewie and Lumpy reuniting was sweet too and brought a smile to my face reading it.

As for the main characters, Jas is awesome and I hope she shows up in other stuff further down the line, Sinjir is great with his snark and Bones was funny. Unfortunately though I still found Snap and Nora annoying but at least they didn't argue that much in this one fortunately.

I didn't like the scenes with Niima the Hutt and her creepy slaves though as they felt out of place in Star Wars to me.

The scene with Leia feeling a dark presence reaching out to her (which I think we can safely say was probably Snoke) and Ben moving inside her almost in response, made me wonder if perhaps Ben was always doomed to join the Dark Side even if Luke didn't do what he did. I think TLJ might have implied this too but it's been weeks now since I saw it so it's not as fresh in my mind now as it was.

Near the end it's said that Palpatine had the observatories built before the Empire but I'm trying to think exactly when they would have been built exactly. The Clone Wars maybe?

Anyway all in all this book turned out to be much better than I was expecting. Of the 3 books I would say this is the best one IMO.

 

@Grievousdude Pablo Hidalgo said when the book released that we should not interpret too much about Leia feeling the darkness and that Snoke wasn't there yet. I think Chuck didn't know too much about Kylo's backstory and prefered to be vague.

And this book said Leia get pregnant in Endor but Bloodline said about a travel some months after their wedding. If Aftermath was right, Leia was pregnant for 1 year so I believe more in Bloodline

 

Anyway, Chuck got some guidelines to stick to. So maybe he had to write something about darkness felt by Leia without knowing much about Snoke and Ben later.

 

Been flipping through this book again; does anyone else really appreciate Wendig's present tense prose? I know critics have pointed out some very clumsy excerpts, but I generally like it.

Also, Wendig's Sheev is excellent. He writes the Emperor very well. Anyone else like it?

 

I really enjoyed it, especially in the audiobook format. I realize that for many it was too unusual, but for me, it really succeeded in giving a more enganging feeling.

 

I think it was kind of clunky in the first Aftermath book, but I actually really enjoyed it as the books went along.

 

There's no reason to assume the darkness mentioned in that scene in EE is definitely Snoke.

As for the incongruity on when Ben was conceived. There are multiple moments that could have led to that little miracle. Neither Han/Leia is entirely sure.

 

I'm guessing that we can assume human pregnancies in the GFFA last the normal 9 months (approximately) though, and that 12 months is out of the question?

 

Speaking of Snoke and EE, I'm also increasingly convinced that Snoke won't be the dark side presence Sidious felt from the Unknown Regions.

Given how unceremoniously and anticlimactically Snoke was dispatched, I think we can scratch off "cosmic eldritch horror" off the list of his possible origins.

 

As Discworld readers may recall, sometimes cosmic eldritch horrors can be beaten up by a cowardly Wizzard wielding a half-brick in a sock.

 

I definitely don't think that Snoke is meant to be as powerful as we came to believe.

I mean, there is no doubt he is powerful compared to Kylo and he may match Luke as he is now, but I think the Sith would have definitely wiped the floor with him in a one on one battle.

What made Snoke so powerful was his cleverness and inaccessibility moreso than his raw ability.

 

Playing Battlefront II right now and it's full of references to Aftermath trilogy, Shattered Empire and even Uprising. Basically if you have Aftermath, Shattered Empire, Lost Stars and Battlefront II you get a good picture of the Endor to Jakku state with Aftermath being the broad strokes and grand schemes of those in power and Rax being a nutter.

 

YES. Wendig gives Sheev the sort of dialogue you could easily hear him saying in ROTJ. His parts are highlights for sure.

 

I mean, in even in Lovecraft, cosmic horrors can sometimes be dispatched by a group of middle-aged professors with a spray can (The Dunwich Horror).

I really hope when we inevitably get some kind of Snoke story, the author remembers Han's line in TFA about how Snoke is only interested in Ben for his power. I feel like that's something that's been almost forgotten but has always stuck with me - Snoke needing Ben because he's some kind of leech needing a vital young soul to sustain his own old, crippled body.

In other words, Snoke chose Ben specifically because Ben was more powerful than Snoke, and like a good predator just spun a web of head games to make Ben doubt himself and therefore not achieve his true potential (not unlike what Ben would then try to pull on Rey in TLJ).

 

I've been re-reading the Aftermath Trilogy lately. It holds up very well, it remains one of my favorite post-Endor stories (tied with Shattered Empire). The Interludes truly make the book at times. I loved the main storyline, but the Interludes were a brilliant way to capture what was going on in the Galaxy without making the overall story bloated. So many nuggets for future stories buried in there too!

--Adm. Nick

 

Hm, the idea of Snoke as a "Force parasite" is interesting and does build on a Force ability the Sith used to extend their own lives according to Tashu. I took it as just a description of Snoke's and his First Order's general MO: exploit something for as long as it's useful and then destroy/descard. This has been the case with Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren, Project Resurrection. This has been one of the points of difference between Snoke and Palpatine: Palpatine would have never tolerated someone like Hux in a position of power, but Snoke finds an easily controlled and replacable person more profitable than an overly competent one. In this way Snoke also disagrees with the Banian Sith

 

He wrote Sheev decently, but that was the only thing about his writing I actually liked. I found the present tense prose to be too clumsy and poorly done. Such a writing style can be amazing, if done correctly, but I got the impression that Wendig didn't spend enough time on it. Quite disappointing, all in all.

 

I'm surprised, honestly. Could you give me some examples of passages you didn't like? I'm always interested in people who see something I don't.

 

This is an issue I've had trouble with for the past few years, especially in relation to the Aftermath series. I have been taking the plot events or hints from books too "seriously," if that's the right word, in terms of their effect or relation to the films. Where in truth these are all just different authors writing works that are mostly separate. There's a shared canon, but it's clearly too new for things to move between works easily, and so it can be confusing to navigate.

Kylo Ren's backstory and his relationship with Snoke is a prime example of this. TFA left me wondering how Ben had been corrupted, when he had met Snoke, how Snoke could have seduced him to the dark side without being killed by Luke, Leia, or Han, and generally it created a big mystery for me regarding how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. But after watching TLJ, and after some time of thinking more on it, I realized that the answers were simple and were provided by both films.

TFA gave us the basic version of Ren's backstory, which mirror's the original backstory for Vader in ANH, before GL decided to make him Anakin Skywalker. Han says of Luke, in TFA: "He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible. He just walked away from everything."

That level of detail was enough of a backstory for Vader in 1977. He had been a Jedi who trained under Obi-Wan and was seduced by the dark side of the Force. Then he had joined the Empire. Of course, Ren did require more backstory because he was the son of Han and Leia, and so TLJ delved more into that more personal story, with Luke sensing and fearing the darkness and power within Ben, and his paranoia leading toward the confrontation that caused Ben to feel like he was betrayed by those he loved.

As for how Snoke came in the picture, the man himself provided enough of a backstory: "When I found you, I saw raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special." So the simplest explanation here is that Snoke found Ben after he had left Luke, possibly with his gang of seven, who may have already styled themselves Knights of Ren.

So essentially, it took making a conscious efforts to not think too much about the Unknown Regions presence and Rae Sloane and Leia's visions to make me see the simpler and logical backstory that the films presented. Maybe there is more to that story, and likely Snoke was aware of Ben beforehand in some way. But it's a regular enough tale as it was told, and it still hits all the right notes. So yes, it has been easy for me to read too much into the non-film media in terms of its impact on the wider series. But the best answer is sometimes the simplest.