Lit Books Alphabet Squadron: Shadow Fall (book 2) by Alexander Freed - June 2020

Any word on delay due to the current situation?

 

No delay. Of course the real world is an ever-evolving place so that could of course change, but as of right now, it is full steam ahead as planned with the June release.

Also if anyone is curious about checking out Book 1, but didn't get a chance - the digital version is currently on-sale for $1.99. Spiffy.

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/shadow-fall-novel-first-look-at-new-villain-and-more

Spoiler

The pilots of Alpha Squadron have a new enemy. Turns out, he’s also an old one.

Just revealed on This Week! In Star Wars, the upcoming novel Star Wars: Shadow Fall by Alexander Freed will feature Soran Keize — the master strategist behind the deadly TIE fighters of Shadow Wing. You can see new art depicting the squadron commander, available in the Barnes & Noble exclusive edition of the novel, below.



In addition, the art of Soran Keize will be featured alongside New Republic pilots Chass and Kairos in a series of Barnes & Noble-exclusive bookmarks. The bookmarks will also include dossiers from the desk of Republic Intelligence officer Caern Adan. Check them out below!



In Shadow Fall, book two of the Alphabet Squadron trilogy, we’ll not only see more of our New Republic pilots, but also get a deeper look into what the Imperial Remnant is up to. Major Soran Keize is now back in command of Shadow Wing, and the experienced commander is desperately trying to give the directionless Imperial unit something to fight for. As some members of his unit turn to specters of the past for comfort (like those creepy Palpatine messenger droids), Soran decides to give Shadow Wing a future — by targeting Alphabet Squadron and the other New Republic fighters under the command of General Hera Syndulla.

And if you missed out on the first book in the series, fear not: Alphabet Squadron is now available in eBook format for just $1.99 through April 10.

 

I'm holding out for maybe getting something on Jacen Syndulla. But I don't expect it

 

Wouldn't surprise me if he was mentioned, but I doubt he'll be present in the book, a kid on a warship. He'd be about four or five.

 

I could see him showing up at the end of the third book or something, once the post-war chaos softens and Hera could safely return home. Would probably be a decent little capper to her involvement in this trilogy. Otherwise, yeah I don’t think it’d be appropriate for him to show up in this madness.

 

I feel sorry for Keize....the war is over and he just wants to be left alone.
He took down a former Imperial setting himself up as a warlord.
Stopped another who was going to build a bomb to attack the NR at Traitor's Remorse.
If the NR just left him alone they would have had no trouble from him.

But what about Chopper??

 

Chopper is all over the place. Jacen is not. I want more Jacen Syndulla.

 

Jacen’s probably among the various characters reserved for Dave Filoni’s first use.

 

To be fair, he was really, almost crazily quick to double back and rejoin the Empire like he was looking for any excuse.

 

Enjoyed the first book, looking forward to seeing where the second takes us. And does that Soran Keize art give anyone else Pierce Brosnan vibes?

 

I just a mention or an acknowledgement by Hera that he exists.

 

Well, you’ll probably get that much at some point before this trilogy ends.

 

I haven't read the 1st book, is Hera big part of the series?

 

Alphabet Squadron more or less answers to her and they operate out of her ship. She’s a fairly signicant supporting role.

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/shadow-fall-exclusive-excerpt

 

Spoiler

Sixty-First...huh...Twilight Company??

 

Will Chass have more music to listen to? Will she ever listen to Prince's 'Alphabet Street'? ( :

 

My first thought was 61st Airlift Squadron, Green Hornets, but that's just because it was my squadron in the air force.

 

https://io9.gizmodo.com/in-this-star-wars-shadow-fall-excerpt-wyl-lark-recall-1844017749

Spoiler

“The battle didn’t last ten minutes,” Wyl said. He stood in the Lodestar’s observation deck, staring out at the peeling red paint of the maintenance bay and clutching the recorder in one hand. His voice was low, though that was a needless precaution—no one was up and about in that part of the battleship so late. “The lurkers were heavily armed but their plating wasn’t any thicker than a walker’s. We owe the win to Chass and Nath, mostly.”

He described it as he remembered (and maybe, mostly, as it had occurred). Chass had broadcast a Snivvian rhythm-rhyme as she’d descended. Nath had struggled to pitch his Y-wing toward the ground without crashing. But they’d both launched guided bombs through gaps in the broken grating above the lake and annihilated the enemy below. Kairos had ignored Quell’s command to get clear, instead evacuating ground troops clinging to shattered streets or caught by waves of boiling water. “Kairos packed thirty soldiers aboard her ship,” he said, clasping the holorecorder between both hands. “People are scared of her—you don’t know much about her—but I’ve never met anyone who fought harder to keep her allies alive.

“When it was over, and I got clear of the spray, and looked around.” His voice was soft and calm. “There was water everywhere. Spilling from the tanks and the pipes, running down the buildings. Kicked up from the bomb blasts. Someone had broken the dams, and I could hear the water rushing out. It takes a lot of water to hear over an A-wing’s engines.

“We did a quick pass to check for other enemies, but we didn’t find any. We listened to the ground troops checking in, and Quell told us we’d done well—we’d kept casualties low, under the circumstances. Chass laughed and said: ‘If you sign up to be a ground-pounder you know what you’re in for. If you’re in the first wave something’s going to kill you.’ She didn’t mean it to be callous. We’ve all seen people get hurt.

“After we finished with the aerial pass I set down, just to see if we could lend a hand. Water had washed out whole floors of the big towers. One of them’s bound to collapse from the damage, and that’ll probably take down others. In a year the whole district will be ruins rising out of a lake.

“Nath set down, too, and we looked for anyone to rescue. I asked him, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and he knew what I meant. We were wading through thigh-high water, searching for missing troops.

“’We get the capital, we get Shadow Wing,’ he said.”

They would do it, too. Wyl didn’t know what would happen when Shadow Wing came, but he was confident they would take the capital. He’d seen enough of Troithe to realize that there was no defense Governor Hastemoor and the Imperial forces could erect that would stop the New Republic; all the enemy could do was delay the inevitable, to force the expenditure of lives for every meter gained.

Long ago, Wyl had been part of Riot Squadron. He and his colleagues had fought for the Rebel Alliance seen more losses than wins. They had wept together and danced after missions no one would ever remember. (Missions only Wyl was alive to remember.)

“We’re fighting a different war now,” he told the holorecorder, “and I’m feeling a little sick.”

In the early days after Wyl had left Home, he had often written to the elders of his birthplace, Cliff. He’d asked about the righteousness of killing and how to mourn his enemies without betraying his duty. He’d reaffirmed his commitment to fighting until the Emperor was defeated and Home was free. He’d been unable to receive answers, but it had been enough to quiet his mind.

Now he envisioned the recipient of his message—not an elder of Home, but a more nebulous figure—replying. He heard a voice smooth and low, backed by static and neither evidently male nor female. The voice was exactly as he had heard it months earlier, and it showed no sympathy for Wyl’s plight.

What do you think a soldier is for, Wyl Lark?

He found nothing else to say. Nothing more he wanted to confess, even knowing that the message would never leave his recorder. He squeezed a button with his thumb and erased the data, as he had every time he’d prepared to contact Blink, his friend and enemy. Blink, the anonymous pilot of the 204th Fighter Wing; Blink, who had killed Riot Squadron in the Oridol Cluster and helped save a planet at Pandem Nai.

Even in his imagination, the Shadow Wing pilot would offer no escape from the ocean of blood Wyl swam through. Blink wouldn’t listen; and the elders of Home would never understand.

 

https://nerdist.com/article/star-wars-shadow-fall-excerpt-alphabet-squadron-alexander-freed/

Spoiler

There were words Kairos did not understand. Even after years of exposure, she struggled to comprehend the intricacies of the language so demeaningly called Galactic Basic. But words were not always a barrier to understanding, and she knew what was occurring on the battlefield.

She knew why the ships and soldiers pulled back. She would not join them.

A single broad boulevard led to the Tri-Center complex, joined by narrower tributaries. A horde of white-clad troopers pushed toward the front entrance—toward the once-transparent metal façade towering like a cliff wall, pockmarked and ash-smeared into opacity where particle bolts had left their mark. Where the eternal gloom of Cerberon enveloped the streets, the interior atrium blazed with light, illuminating the trapped rebel soldiers who attempted to repel the invasion.

Perhaps they had a means to escape. A way out of the complex.

She swept in low above the boulevard, flickering particle lances from the horde shattering against her shields. Her vessel trembled as the electromagnetic field churned and coruscated. She fired her cannons into the crowd, sending burning bodies flying into packs of survivors. They were too many for her to miss, even as they scattered.

Perhaps her allies did not need Kairos to save them. Perhaps she acted for her own sake.

She fumbled with her vessel’s controls through ungainly gloves, smelling the rotting odor of her twisted body trapped inside her mask. She could not scent the smoke or charred corpses, though she could imagine both with perfect clarity. She angled her ship ten degrees upward, exposing aft and underside to the continuing fire of the enemy and making for the complex. She diverted all power from her forward deflectors and into her killing cannons–an act of technical wizardry that possessed no deeper meaning, no resonance in the true world, yet proved effective for her needs.

Cannons flashed. The howl of torn metal resonated through her organs (somehow she could taste the tang of iron) and she entered the atrium through the newly created gap in the wall, shifting from thrusters to repulsors, turning ninety degrees, and floating ten meters above the startled New Republic soldiers.

Kairos had been at war with herself, her spirit sundered. She’d often thought of leaving her people–leaving the defector, leaving Adan. But she would not leave Adan.

Half-sheltered by the fragmented wall of the atrium, Kairos accepted the blow of an incoming rocket against her flank. The vessel heaved and listed to one side; she saw on her console the damage to thrusters and repulsors, but she was still aloft. She gently adjusted a lever and climbed out of her seat, retreating to the main cabin. With the touch of a button, she opened the loading door and–stepping behind the turret gun–fired into the horde once again.

She understood that Adan and the defector sought to ensnare their foe in a trap–she’d comprehended those words well, after Adan had taken her aside and explained each step. The butchers of Nacronis and Pandem Nai and so many other worlds did not deserve to escape justice. Nor did the beast of Troithe who called himself governor–who unleashed monsters against his enemies–deserve to escape punishment. So she had accepted the strategy of a man wiser than she, and agreed to the price in blood.

She raked the stream of the turret through the gap in the wall and across the boulevard, tearing apart stormtroopers and black-clad troops, their faces sweaty and screaming. She could hear the battle clearly now, the shouts and the sizzle of bolts and the crackle of flames. As her foes returned fire and the deck began to shake, she thought that the horde seemed smaller.

Since their time on Troithe had begun, she had slaughtered and allowed noble warriors to be slaughtered. In her commitment to vengeance, to the scouring of her foes, she had accepted the sacrifice of the soldiers she was expected to preserve. She had agreed to the price. She would not, could not turn away now.

The deck jumped once to warn her that the ship was failing. She leapt from the turret to seize the crew seats as repulsors died and the U-wing dropped to the atrium floor. She heard only a cacophonous roar and saw nothing–her vision was obliterated by the stresses of gravity and bulkheads–and when sight returned her body was suffused with pain. Motion was rewarded with surges of agony. But she had suffered worse, and she scaled the wreckage of the askew cabin to retrieve her weapon.

She could not turn away. Never turn away. Not after all that had happened.

She didn’t know what had become of the New Republic soldiers. She lodged her bowcaster against her shoulder and gurgled instead of screamed as it kicked back against her with every shot fired. The crash of the U-wing had left the atrium thick with smoke and flame, and the clouds glowed like the clouds of Pandem Nai, exquisitely scarlet, as they soaked the colors of particle bolts streaming toward her.

She felt air against her skin. Her forearm wrappings were scorched. She had broken her last vow.

She fired into the smoke. She fired at the stormtroopers who hurled themselves toward her, piled body upon body–few in the grand tale of it all, few compared to those she’d killed in the past and those soldiers she’d failed to save–and kept on firing until she could no longer feel, could no longer stand. She heard cannon fire outside the complex but she could not raise her head to see.

She heard the calls of rebel soldiers still alive.

The last thing Kairos saw was the beautiful face of Yrica Quell–the defector, the traitor–looking down at her.

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/shadow-fall-author-interview

Spoiler

StarWars.com: How much time has gone by between the end of Alphabet Squadron and the beginning of Shadow Fall?

Alexander Freed: We’re around a month or two post-Alphabet Squadron at the beginning, something approximating half a year after the Battle of Endor. Enough time for the pilots to have settled into a routine, but not enough for their conflicts to have boiled over.

StarWars.com: The past is on the minds (and is catching up) with many characters in Shadow Fall — most noticeably for Yrica Quell and Quell’s former mentor Soran Keize. What is it about a character feeling pulled in two directions that appealed to you as a writer?

Alexander Freed: I think of the year after Endor as a period of transition — the war’s still going on but peace is within reach, and everyone is grappling with what that means for themselves. At this pivotal moment of change, many characters are being confronted with their actual, immutable pasts and how those may contradict their hopes for the soon-to-arrive future. In some respects, that’s the heart of the trilogy.

You can absolutely write a compelling story by saying, “The audience knows who this character is. The question is how will they get through a situation intact or how will they affect the world around them?” But Shadow Fall is largely about characters who haven’t fully decided who they are themselves — and hopefully the reader feels that tension, and wants them to resolve it one way or another. Who will Quell become? What of Devon remains in Soran?

StarWars.com: I enjoyed the relationship between Hera Syndulla and Quell in Shadow Fall. They respect each other but aren’t best buddies. How would you describe their relationship in this book?

Alexander Freed: Hera sincerely wants to mentor Quell, but she’s a general now — she doesn’t have the time to be as hands-on as she was in the past, and has to make do with the opportunities she’s given. Quell, meanwhile, longs for a mentor but isn’t ready to trust Hera with her secrets — even though she recognizes that Hera is the sort of person she aspired to be.

StarWars.com: Much of Alphabet Squadron was about the pilots of Alphabet Squadron coming together as a team while in much of Shadow Fall the team spends time apart from one another. Why did you decide to spend so much time focused on members of Alphabet Squadron on their own journeys?

Alexander Freed: Quell brought the team together, and Quell, in the end, caused them to fall apart. She was integral to Alphabet as a unit, but their bond was based on a lie and that had to reverberate through the whole team. Plus, it’s a Star Wars tradition to split the group in the second part of the trilogy!

StarWars.com: Conversely, why did you have Wyl and Nath spend so much time together?

Alexander Freed: I found Wyl and Nath to be one of the more interesting combinations of characters to write in the first book, and I wanted to get deeper into their relationship for Shadow Fall. Their arc together is an important one for the trilogy — and there’s much more Wyl-Nath content coming in book three.

StarWars.com: I loved how Chass kept comparing herself to Jyn Erso as she was looking for meaning in Shadow Fall. Do you think your experience writing the novelization of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story influenced your decision to mention Jyn here?

Alexander Freed: I’m sure it did! Writing the Rogue One novelization meant living with that film for quite a while. It uses space in my brain in a way the other films don’t, no matter how many times I’ve seen them. So I see opportunities to connect to Rogue One more rapidly than I do with, say, Solo: A Star Wars Story or Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Which isn’t to say I don’t grab those opportunities when they arise…

StarWars.com: There are a lot of interesting moments with Kairos in Shadow Fall. I’m wondering if Kairos was inspired by a previous Star Wars character from a different story or what made you want to include a character that is such a mystery to others.

Alexander Freed: Kairos was partly born of necessity — I needed a five-person squadron to fill out the different ship types, but I knew it would be a struggle to give ample page time to five different characters in book one. Rather than accept this as a structural weakness, I decided to use it to my advantage and create a character who would be more interesting because of — not despite — her lack of point-of-view scenes. She’s become one of my favorites!

StarWars.com: Who are your favorite characters in this trilogy to write dialogue for?

Alexander Freed: When it comes to dialogue, Nath Tensent probably wins — he’s (to my tastes) the funniest of the team, and it’s enjoyable to bring out his duplicitous side. Ito, the torture-slash-therapist droid, is pretty high on the list as well. Ito has a mixture of craftiness and sincerity that’s appealing to write, particularly when I picture the dialogue coming out of a black sphere of death.

StarWars.com: There’s a new group introduced in Shadow Fall, which one character describes as a cult. Will we be hearing from them again in the next book?

Alexander Freed: Let’s just say that the cult has had a significant impact on one of our lead characters, and that impact will continue to be felt in a major way. Anything else would be saying too much!

StarWars.com: How do you approach writing battle sequences? Do you outline the main points before you start writing or sketch anything out to visualize what you are describing?

Alexander Freed: It depends on how elaborate the sequence needs to be. For a big action set piece like the Pandem Nai sequence from book one or Shadow Wing’s attack on Cerberon, I’ll break it down in great detail as I outline the book — I want to make sure every beat resonates with the characters, figure out the pacing, and know that everyone is where they need to be. Smaller scale battles I’ll often figure out the particulars as I go. For those, it’s usually less about making dozens of pieces align in harmony and more about evoking a visceral physicality — feeling the pain and elation and fear of the characters involved.

StarWars.com: The pursuit of Shadow Wing is unfinished business for Alphabet Squadron, but both groups struggle to destroy each other without destroying other worlds in the process. Do you think the characters in Shadow Fall are driven more by their affiliations with the Rebellion and the Empire or by their individual sense of right and wrong and in some cases personal vendettas?

Alexander Freed: By the time of Shadow Fall, the New Republic is clearly winning the war. That’s a good thing! But if the Empire is going to collapse one way or another, it casts a different light on the question of why a pilot might be fighting. What are they really trying to accomplish? How do they fight — what tactics do they emphasize — when victory seems assured? What vendettas arise that might risk what’s been gained?

StarWars.com: I’m curious if before you wrote the first book of this trilogy, Alphabet Squadron, you outlined all three books and knew how the third book was going to end.

Alexander Freed: I didn’t plot out all three books in exquisite detail, but I had a pretty clear idea of the overall arc. For example, I knew the emotional journey Quell would be going on in book two, that she’d be separated from the team at one point, but I didn’t know exactly the way it would play out — the nature of the Cerberon system, the particular battles, etc. My earliest outline had slightly more detail on book three than book two, simply because I needed to know how the story would ultimately end!

 

He'll get his own tv show down the line

 

Just ordered this (and some other non-SW books) from Amazon UK - should come next week. I'm currently re-reading the first one as a refresher. I'd forgotten about The Messenger.

 

A few chapters in and I'm thinking about where this fits on the timeline. I'm not even sure if this would be a spoiler but just in case:

Spoiler

Shadow Wing has just learned that Moff Pandion is dead and his fleet has allied with "Admiral Sloane". So, this has to take place shortly after the end of Aftermath 1 (even though the Del Rey timeline included with the book places it before).

Alphabet Squadron begins with Yrica already having been at Trader's Remorse for one month the first time she talks to Adan, and it takes another month before the next time they talk and the book really starts up. Wookieepedia says the Battle of Theed was 20 days after Endor, and the Nacronis thing happens around the same time, so if that "20 days after Endor" date is correct, that would mean by the time the book really gets going, it's already about three months after Endor. Freed just said in the interview on starwars.com that "We’re around a month or two post-Alphabet Squadron at the beginning, something approximating half a year after the Battle of Endor."

I know a lot of people say Aftermath takes place three months after Endor, but I can't remember, is that in the text anywhere? Because this would imply that Aftermath really takes place closer to six months after Endor (which I think is at least slightly more realistic than three months, considering the New Republic already has a ton of senators and everyone seems to be pretty settled on Chandrila and nearly everyone has already given up on the Empire).