Reviews Books JC Lit Reviews Special: BATTLEFRONT: TWILIGHT COMPANY (spoilers)

Funnily enough, I was just about to start re-reading Battlefront given how much I enjoyed it the first time around, so this thread comes at an opportune time. For me, Battlefront recaptured something that I've always loved reading in a Star Wars setting but found somewhat lacking or poorly executed in recent series: a large-scale campaign that feels both significant and grand in scope. The whole book really just nailed everything from characters to settings to stories to obscure EU references that satisfied the nerd in me without feeling forced in for the sake of it. My absolute favourite thing about Battlefront was the settings, which managed to do something that I haven't really experienced since the Thrawn Trilogy: make a bunch of random planets that only appear for a couple of pages truly memorable and exotic. Personally, I find in "planet-hopping" stories there's a tendency to make these brief locales rather generic: agriworld #34,678, mining colony #42,136, low-level shadowport #19,225, etc. Twilight Company had some truly memorable locales, and it managed to do that with only a paragraph or two in some instances: a hothouse jungle world rich in life where the Empire tests its chemical weapons, creating a juxtaposition of rotting, composted swampland and vibrant rainforests; a gas giant orbited by a shipyard that caters exclusively to the private yachts of the Imperial Ruling Council and its emissaries; a moon covered in a sea of icy liquid metal, where the local Imperial garrison has honed their skills by constantly defending themselves against sea monsters; an entire planet turned into a mostly automated warehouse for the vast Imperial war machine. Even the typical boring agriworld was made interesting with a little creativity: it could feed trillions, but its crops were instead selfishly devoted to making synthetic resins and polymers for Stormtrooper armour, with the Empire defending these facilities with chemical weapons. This is what sci-fi (or space fantasy, in the case of Star Wars) is supposed to be about: visiting and exploring truly exotic, unimaginable new worlds that are vastly different from our own, and Battlefront captured that in perhaps the most artful way I've seen yet.

My second favourite thing was the characters and how they fit into the grand scheme of things in the Rebellion. In a universe where every new unit that gets introduced tends to be some elite force that exists just to kick butt and be awesome, a cast of ordinary people was as refreshingly original as it was fascinating. We got to actually see what things were like for ordinary Army troopers - not SpecForces - and a small, close-knit company at that, which is something rarely done in general, let alone so well. The real gift of the story is making the reader feel that these characters are important (at least on a personal level), while simultaneously showing how unimportant they are in the grand scheme of things. I genuinely came to care about each and every member of the company, but casual namedrops, references, and their relationship with High Command showed that they're all just one tiny little part of a much broader campaign, consisting of entire fleets and armies that we never get to see firsthand. They were just ordinary soldiers doing their duty like everyone else, but also a family, and that made it feel real, raw, human, and relatable. Even Everi Chalis, the most distinguished member of the main cast, had a convincing and human evolution from arrogant to despondent to spiteful. She was someone who came from nothing in the very middle of nowhere, only to make something of herself in a galaxy-spanning Empire through her merit and sheer force of will. The cruel irony is that while she's the only one who truly appreciates the size and scope of the Empire, she fails to see that in a system so large, even someone like her is still nothing: a much bigger piece of the system than most, but one just as easily replaced. That must have been a soul-crushing realisation for someone whose entire sense of self is based on being an underappreciated genius who became something from nothing, and seeing her entire universe - and her understanding of her place in it - turned on its head was a very satisfying, emotional, and believable journey.

Despite my admittedly effusive praise, I do have some complaints that limited my enjoyment of the story in regards to the sideplots: both the one involving the Imperials dispatched to hunt down Chalis and the Stormtrooper stationed on Sullust. The latter was especially disappointing, since it was clearly going to intersect with the main plot at some point, but didn't manage to do so in any meaningful way. It was essentially a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the daily life of a random Stormtrooper who has an encounter with the main characters: an acknowledgement that the troopers on the "other side" of this war are people too, just like the Rebels we've been rooting for throughout the book, but little else. While I like stories that explore the moral complexities of war rather than simple black and white portrayals of good and evil, I felt it could have been executed in a way that was less space-consuming and seemed to promise so much in the build-up, only to deliver so little. This issue of too much wasted space was the opposite of what I experienced with Prelate Verge and Captain Seitaron, the main antagonists who never got enough room to really grow into that major role. The truly frustrating thing was that there was so much potential there, since it not only explored the relationship between an old school Generational and a New Order zealot, but did it in a way that was entirely original: rather than their relationship being antagonistic, as is so often the case between those two archetypes, they tried to explore each other's viewpoints and learn from one another. It was a genuinely interesting dynamic, and I would have prefered if the Sullustan garrison scenes were cut to make room for exploring it more and giving the characters more "screen presence" to emerge as the antagonists.

While I'm very easily pleased and can let a lot of things that seem to raise people's hackles on here slide, the problems I had with Battlefront related to some pretty major elements of the story. That said, it's still an absolute standout and one of my all-time favourites among both Canon and Legends novels. I'll rate it 8.5 out of 10.

 

There's no way to start this review other than to say: Battlefront: Twilight Company was disappointing.

When I was looking for the first neo-EU novel to read, I asked for recommendations here. I had already figured that I'd read Twilight Company because of my long-standing desire for a true ground combat novel in the Star Wars universe. Many people here recommended this book very highly, so perhaps for that reason I expected something great. I actually had not previously read the review thread, so I didn't see that it really did get across-the-board excellent reviews.

Let's go with the "good" first.

The Good

Namir actually isn't a bad character. I really liked the idea of him being from some backwater planet that is basically stuck in some prehistoric time. I know places like this existed in the old EU, but it's still very interesting to see. His drifting from faction to faction over his young life, just staying alive, was a compelling story. He was, in a lot of ways, the most believable character in the book. Especially taking into consideration his background, I love how he was portrayed. Take away the fantasy nature of Star Wars, and his characterization could easily pass for a real life NCO. Perhaps what I liked most about him was that he was good at reading people and understanding what value they could bring in a fight. I wish that trait would've had more "screen time."

That all being said, if Namir was with the Rebels for 3 years or so by the time of this book, I would've expected him to have been a bit more up to speed on things in the galaxy. Even if he spent his life on a most backwater of planets, 3 years fighting a world-hopping war says to me that he should be a bit more "worldly." To me, Freed confused "jaded" with "oblivious."

Brand, especially when you factor in the short story from Insider that introduced her character, was particularly interesting. I liked her being a loner, yet also caring for other personnel in her own way. Gadren was also very interesting. Both Gadren and Brand really got lost in the last 1/3 of the book, which mostly had Namir in his own world. I can see how maybe with Namir taking over for Howl, in a manner of speaking, the writing shifted to show the loneliness of command. If that's really what Freed was going for, I can actually respect that and see it as a good idea. However, I think Freed isn't sophisticated enough as a writer of combat for that to be the case (on which I'll elaborate later). I would've liked to have seen more of Brand and Gadren during the last 1/3 (more Gadren than Brand since Brand did get a couple 1-on-1 moments with Namir), certainly more than, "Oh, by the way, Gadren was in a trench singing. And now back to other things."

Finally, for the good, is Seitaron. He was a true call-back to some good old EU Imperial officers. I would've loved to have seen more development for him. He really added something to the Imperial side of the story for me.


The Bad

My God. Alexander Freed is atrocious at writing about combat. A previous review in this thread spoke positively about the encounter on Coyerti with the AT-ST, specifically how Freed wrote it in a sort of mundane fashion rather than in great detail. That, the poster said, made such a tough encounter more mundane for these battle-weary ground pounders. I looked at this more as, "Freed realizes he doesn't know how to write an interesting, compelling combat scene.

To me, Freed struggled mightily to write compelling action, so he focused much more on Namir, Chalis, Seitaron, etc . That's not in and of itself wrong, as the personal stories in war can be far more interesting and important than stories of pure combat, but if you're billing this as a tie in to a game about first-person combat, then you might want to write some interesting combat scenes. The scenes can usually be boiled down to, "A lot of people were fighting. Blaster bolts were flying. Things exploded. Some people died. Some people lived. The fight ended. Twilight Company survived." There wasn't that much more detail in any given scene. Extremely few moments of combat in the book were memorable. Perhaps only the opening action, infiltrating Chalis' mansion, was "good" in my eyes.

What really drove me insane was how he wrote about combat losses... or didn't, rather. In any given encounter, I feel like there should've been scores of combat deaths. Freed wrote so many times that Twilight took bad losses, yet immediately thereafter Twilight is perfectly able to commit to any combat operation of any size with basically no loss of combat effectiveness. It wasn't until the last battle that he even really wrote something believable in terms of losses. Hell, I'd expect the company to have been wiped up by the end of the siege (especially when you remove their video game-esque near-infinite ammo reserves).

That also brings up the entire drive toward Kuat. It took me many weeks to finish the last 1/3 of the book because I struggled through each page. I had such a difficult time with the operational tempo that Twlight was keeping and even moreso with the ludicrous success rate that they achieved. Imperials are rarely portrayed as particularly competent, but the ones Twilight faced were, across the board, the least effective Imps in the EU, old or new. These engagements where were I felt like it truly was a video game tie-in, because everything was as easy as a single player campaign played through in a few hours and set to Easy mode. For a "company," they sure seemed to have the power and resources of an army.

As bad as Freed was with ground combat, he was even worse with space combat. A lot of people have pointed out how invincible Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron seemed in the X-Wing books, destroying TIEs left and right with few losses of their own. Clearly, the Promise's X-Wing pilots were Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles because both were ludicrously good. And the gunners are the Promise and the Thunderstrike were the best shots in the entire galaxy, able to hit TIEs with turbolasers with amazingly good frequency. These scenes seemed thrown in there to make it seem like Twilight couldn't freely jump around the galaxy, but even though they faced hostile space forces, they came out of basically every engagement no worse the wear, no matter how big and numerous the Imperial opponent. I'm sorry, both the Promise and the Thunderstrike should've been atomized numerous times if the descriptions of the Imperial naval forces were at all accurate (as opposed to mistakenly left in there from earlier drafts when, perhaps, the duo of Rebel vessels were much larger, more powerful vessels).

Then there's Thara Nyende. I am still not sure if she served any purpose in this book. It seemed like she was shoe-horned into this book to give a regular Imperial point of view (compared to the Imperial elite like Seitaron). She added nothing to the story for me. Her story seemed extremely rushed in the end, like parts were edited out to bring the book down to get under 500 pages.

Finally, Prelate Verge felt immensely out of place. His story was not really fleshed out that well, but he strikes me as the kind of character that Palpatine wouldn't want careening around with an ImpStar at his command. In these days of the Empire, I'd have thought that Palps would trust only true military personnel with these. Sure, some Imperial personnel are awful at their jobs, but at least they're still military. Verge is... definitely not. He's a petulant child. And a civilian one, at that. Maybe my memory is failing badly right now (EXTREMELY likely with me), but I cannot recall, during the time of the Empire, where a non-military person commanded a Star Destroyer. Maybe there were, but Verge's character was really out of place, to me. Maybe I am misreading him, and not treating him as some high imperial (civilian) officials we've seen before who do have personal fleets, but how directly he controls things is most odd to me.

Conclusion

Again, I was thoroughly disappointed by this book. I think maybe the recommendations from others set my expectations high, but it was probably much more that I was looking forward so much to, finally, a Star Wars book about regular ground pounders. I think this novel could've been much better in the hands of a more competent writer of combat. This is certainly not another X-Wing novel for me. It's not even Hard Contact, the only Traviss novel about which I have positive thoughts. It was a compete disappointment. Given that the early news about Inferno Squad has nearly completely turned me off to that book already, I am guessing it'll be a long time before what I am looking for is written in the Star Wars universe.

Overall Rating: 5/10. Very unlikely to give this a second chance.

 

Twilight Company, oddly enough, has some similarities to Rogue One. Both are a bit grittier stories that really emphasize the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of the "war" part of Star Wars, and focus on everyday life "in the trenches" (sometimes literally in the novel's case). Both even have a scene of Vader being terrifying, unstoppable juggernaut towards the Rebels.

The book has two main themes:

Theme 1: Scale

As someone from a backwater world, Namir often times has trouble understanding just how big the galaxy is. So a major theme is just how unmatched the Rebels are (and it ties a bit into Theme 2 as well). I've always thought in Star Wars that the Rebels are a bit too under-powered and that the Empire is a bit too overpowered, especially since now the Empire falls a mere year after Endor.
( I know, it's an underdog story, but I think they overdo it sometimes). And I think Alexander Freed agrees with me: The Rebels have an army large enough to occupy territory (albeit briefly before they're over stretched), it's emphasized that Hoth is not the only Rebel Base, but merely host to the High Command and Special Forces, some optimistic soldiers on Hoth theorize that if several Core worlds join the Rebellion the war could be over soon (which despite Namir's skepticism we know will happen), and Star Destroyers are given the rather plausible weakness of being hogs for resources and manpower. I know some people disagree with the scale, specifically the size of the Rebel army and the Empire's dependence on Kuat. But personally I think this story goes for the right amount: The Rebels may be large enough to hold planets, but they're still underdogs outmatched by the scope of the massive Imperial army, and still struggling for every advantage they can get.

Theme 2: "Hearts and Minds" (aka lessons from a board game)

Initially, I found the book a bit hard to get into, partially because I was unsure of what exact point the book was trying to make. Namir is quite the cynical bastard (understandable given his background), and for a while I was unsure if we were setting up for Namir to learn a lesson, or if we were supposed to agree with him. (Stranger author attitudes have happened before, *cough* Traviss *cough*).

But something strange happened: While I was reading the book I was also learning to play the Star Wars: Rebellion board game. And the tips for playing as the rebels were always: You can't win if you try to fight the Imperials directly one on one. You have to focus on gaining enough support for the people of the galaxy to rise up with you. So while I can see how Namir choosing to go to Sullust instead of Kuat can be disapointing to some, I feel like Namir was learning the exact same lessons I was. He could go to Kuat, and he might win, at terrible cost. But his main objective shouldn't be fighting the Empire directly, but rather winning the hearts and minds of the populace.

While this book does explore these themes well, it does have a few problems. As I said I did have some trouble getting into the story. The two X-wings accompanying Twilight Company were remarkably durable. The interludes from the stormtrooper were nice looks inside the head-space of the average ground pounder on the Imperial side. BUT it was pretty disconnected from the main plot, mostly serving as a spoiler that somehow the story would take us to Sullust. I would have found someway to connect her to the main plot, maybe she joined Charmer's old unit or her uncle was related to one of the minor Rebel characters. We already had Chalis turn out to be an old, ahem, "acquaintance" of the semi-retired Imperial captain, so what's one more interstellar coincidence?

Challis and Namir were by far the characters with the most development (him learning to be in command and what to focus on, her learning that she's not nearly as important as she thinks she is), and they're the characters whose names I remember the most several months after reading the book. The others were fine, but just not as memorable. Indeed that can probably sum up why I took off two points: It's a solid story with good themes, but some parts just don't stick out as much as some other stories I've read.

Final Verdict: 8/10. It may not be perfect, but it's still pretty damn good.