Books Ahsoka novel

So I check as soon as I do my tablet notifies me it's been delivered. I open the email and it was delivered 2 hours ago! It's too late to collect it now (office holds parcels) so I have to wait till tomorrow. Why the heck didn't my email notify me?

Sigh.

 

I don't believe they send out emails upon actual delivery. When mine have been mis-delivered I've only found out through the tracking.

 

Taalcon
I forgot we should be still using spoiler tags.

Spoiler

You are only trying to come up with reasons that the book never bothered to come up with. I appreciate that, but I wish the author had done that instead.

And my initial point – which I maintain – is that all of these questions would have been avoided had the timeline been set a decade or so after Order 66 when Ahsoka was already Fulcrum. Or at least acting like one. It doesn’t matter if she had contacts before, when the book establishes she was not maintaining contact with anyone. On the contrary, she was avoiding anything that could link to her previous identity. She was not looking out for information on what the Empire was doing here and there or re-connecting with her previous contacts. She was hiding in one planet and trying to be invisible.

And no, not convinced that a runway girl with very limited knowledge of everything going in the Jedi Temple and the Republic could suddenly figure out “A Sith Lord?” when no one else could. Not even Kanan seems to know, and he also knew about the chips (and surely deducted that the Chancellor was behind it).
The Republic was corrupt? That was public knowledge, even the Jedi were aware of it. Her unfortunate trial? Lots of people saw it too. That and one year hiding in some isolated dust planet I forgot the name shouldn't automatically lead to the conclusion “Palps must be a Sith Lord!”, unless something else happened that the author forgot to mention.

It should also be mentioned that Sidious, even after Order 66, goes through great lengths in the new canon to hide his Sith Lord identity (in the early years at least). It doesn’t seem like an obvious thing to know for an outsider. Being a power-hungry psychopathic politician shouldn't make one a Sith Lord by default, or else a lot of side characters in Star Wars would have already been accused of such. Heck Snoke is like that and he is not a Sith.

 

Well the Ahsoka book sold outstandingly well for a YA novel. Debuted at #23 on the USA todays bestsellers list. Will likely make the NYTimes list as well. By comparison the highest Lost Stars reached was #120 on the USA today list.

Just out of curiosity is #23 the highest any Star Wars YA book has ever ranked?

 

It was #1 in the NYTimes list. That's pretty great for a YA novel about a TV character, I think. Could probably lead to more Ahsoka stories down the line if it continues.

 

I'm not sure of all the Star Wars YA books there have been. I did look at the Young Jedi Knight series and they had some decent debuts but nothing close to getting in the 20's. Think the highest I saw was one that debuted in the 50's. In anycase it probably shouldn't be surprising that a book about Ahsoka would debut that high considering how many people watched TCW.

 

As Jello said, there have only ever been two YA Star Wars books: Ahsoka and Lost Stars. Anything like Young Jedi Knights, Servants of the Empire, etc. is middle grade.

 

Oh ok. I thought things like those young jedi knight book series and things like that were considered YA books as well.

 

so she worked with the rebels for 13 years before she met Kanan? seems weird. as a poster said earlier, the timeline does not support very much of this.

 

it wasn't until Season 1 of Rebels that the Ghost crew caught the attention of the larger rebellion, and Kanan didn't become too showy about his Jedi abilities (he only used his lightsaber in emergencies, in contrast to Season 3 Ezra whipping it out every chance he gets) until around the same time period.


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I noticed in the Adventures In Wild Space series the same general theme.

I'm also curious as to when A-wings first entered service, given that Wookieepedia dates their first chronological appearance in the newcanon to here. Perhaps they were designed by Kuat to replace the Delta 7B Aethersprite Jedi Starfighters (having built-in hyperdrives rather than needing rings) but Kuat got caught by surprise with Order 66?

They look rather like Aethersprites with sawn off noses.

 

So true. This did bug me as well. How does she just know everything? Obviously there'll be canon-y retcon-y ways to explain it but it's stupid nonetheless

I was always under the impression that Palpatine being a Sith was a pretty closely-held secret

 

@Daneria

okay,. but how do you explain the language of the novel coming off as if the empire has been around for many years with their corruption? The tone felt like 6-10 years after ROTS,. not one year,. As a previous poster said, the timeline is not matching,. Disney is not caring enough about timing of all this,. It's sloppy

 

I agree with others that the timeline really felt off in this book. It would've been better suited to the midpoint between ROTS and ANH.

Ahsoka's characterization was good. Mentions of events were very intriguing. Only problem was, those snippets seemed like better story material than what we got.

I felt the story was bland and predictable. My least favourite of the new canon novels.

 

I really want to like this book, but I just can't. If I had to choose one word to describe it, I'd go with "underwhelming". I put a lot of my dislike down to the prose. Too many times I let my kindle slump in my lap as I yelled "oh my god, stop." Johnston has a bad habit of having the characters do or say something and then explaining what they feel or what they think--talking down to the reader, in a way, assuming they can't figure those things out on their own. Books are a really great medium for getting inside characters' heads, but there's no judiciousness here in deciding when to do that. It's constant.

Because those interjections are so frequent, they take up a lot of page-space. Space that really could have been used to flesh out some parts of the story. I don't mind the small, personal scale, and I liked a lot of Ahsoka's inner journey, but events on the page often fell flat. There's no sense of urgency in battle scenes, in particular. There's no impact. The words used up telling me Ahsoka and Kaeden's thoughts/feelings would have been better spent making the world come alive.

I think Ahsoka's experience at the Siege of Mandalore would have been a better choice for a setting. At least then there would have been some good lore and having Maul and Rex involved would be a plus. The supporting characters here just aren't engaging and as folks have mentioned, the story isn't fresh or exciting.

The one part of the book I really liked was Ahsoka's construction of her new lightsabers, particularly her search for and liberation of her new crystals. That's a fun bit of Kyber crystal lore and one I really appreciate. I also loved every Bail and Leia moment.

 

Spoiler

As noted in the book when she ran into the Black Sun, I think she was doing a lot of missions on her own and helping Bail out. That was the extent of the Rebellion at that point.

This book had good chunks of material that made sense to the timeline but outside of that it was just the Onderon arc all over again. With a "ship" throw at us, I still just see it as one sided because I truly believe Ahsoka just views her as a friend, it felt that the relationship was the main point of the story. We didn't get interactions with Rex, which is weird because she knew exactly where to send Ezra and Kanan to find him. We didn't see how she got into the Temple which was rumored to have happened right? Oh well, I'm sure there will be more books.

 

Here's something I noticed a number of days ago, but I held off on bringing it up just to see if anyone else caught it. Seeing as no one else has, I'm going to go there. But it could potentially say something spoilerific about the way things unfolded in the Siege of Mandalore arc, so I'm going to treat it accordingly...

Spoiler

Okay, so in the second flashback, Ahsoka is shown burying her lightsabers with the body of a dead clone trooper, dressed in Rex's armor to make it look like it was Rex in the grave, and that Rex had killed Ahsoka before he had died. But when she's about to leave the grave behind and go off into hiding in the Rim, the book states, "She placed a hand on the grave marker and allowed herself one more moment to think about the man who was buried there and about the man who wasn't."

Easy enough to guess who the man who WASN'T buried there refers to: Rex, who is supposed to be the one people will assume was buried there. But the fact that she is allowing herself, at this crucial time, another moment to think not just about the man who isn't buried there - her friend who has just parted from her for a fate uncertain - but also about the man who IS buried there, hints to me that the man who is buried there has some significance. In other words, I suspect that the clone buried there was someone the audience knows.

Which of course begs the next two questions: who is buried there, and how did he wind up dead to begin with? Honestly, I can't tell you because I don't know. Given the conditions on the ground, I can make some basic guesses, but I can't guarantee anything: first, if they want the idea to have any story punch, it would have to be a clone we would find significant; second, it would have to be one that would have a logical reason to be seconded to Ahsoka's command from the ranks of clones that answered to Anakin. It can't be Cody, because he's on Utapau with Obi-Wan when the sheev goes down. It can't be Wolffe or Gregor, because they're spoken for. It can't be Kix, because he's in stasis then. That leaves a number of possible options, but I'll have to leave it to you all to discuss them.

As to how the clone died, there's there's only so many possibilities that would provide dramatic tension in an episode of TCW. If he died BEFORE Order 66, either he was killed in the fighting on Mandalore, or he was killed by Darth Maul in the attempt to capture him; if he died DURING Order 66, one of three things likely happened: Rex killed him to save her, Ahsoka killed him to save herself, or Maul killed him during his escape.

Of course, there's always the possibility that this guy is just some no-name chump who was killed in the fighting that Ahsoka and Rex pick at random to bury; these clones all have pretty much identical measurements, so really, anyone they can find to put Rex's armor on will do the trick. But the way the sentence is worded just makes me inclined to think otherwise. I think he's someone we'd care about.

But what do YOU think?

 

Lux

 

Spoiler

It can't be Lux. The book specifies that the body is that of a clone trooper.

 

The timeline in the book is all over the place. Anyone know a one year old who can talk to their parents via video net without the parent present? Anyone?

 

That’s a good catch. I don’t know, I don’t remember how many of the 501st with names and story relevance that would still be alive and active around that period. I can only think of

Spoiler

Dogma and Jesse. But both had had facial tattoos I think. Not a good body cover for Rex. I honestly have no idea how they managed to fake Rex’ body by just replacing the armor; wouldn't the fellow troopers still know that it was not him? Also according to that droids episode, they perform identity scans on the skin of the clone’s right arm, so it doesn't seem to be that easy to fool the Republic army. I also don’t quite recall how Ahsoka managed to fake her death too.

But your post just reminded me of something and I had almost forgotten.

In Rebels, when the Ghost crew finds Rex asks for his help, he says:
“I’m not sure I am much help to anyone these days. Didn’t you hear? The Emperor said the clone army has outserved its purpose and retired us. Now we spend our days telling stories and slinging for joopas.”

And then when Ezra asked him to help them find a base:
“There are a few spots I never bothered to report to the Empire.”

Which kinda indicates he still worked for them for a while until he was forced to retire.

But how was a dead man employed by the Empire? And why would a man who faked his death to escape would even return to work for the Empire?

 

continuity error.


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Or there are some stories not yet told. Remember how people said Wedge being recruited by Fulcrum meant Ahsoka, and when she died it was assumed to be a mistake to have that reference? Yeah.