Writer: Claudia Gray One of the big pieces of news on last week's "Force Friday" was the release of Star Wars: Aftermath, one of the first new-canon stories that gives us insight into the post-Return of the Jedi galaxy.  You might have missed Aftermath's younger sibling, Lost Stars, a young adult novel from Disney's in-house press which accomplishes the same thing to a lesser extent.  And based on the complaints that have been brewing about the quality of Aftermath, readers may find Lost Stars to be refreshingly concise and focused while still giving us clues about what's coming in The Force Awakens.

Claudia Gray’s novel concerns two young friends, Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree, whose intertwined lives bring them through the major events of the original Star Wars trilogy.  At an early age, both are recruited into the Empire, but their exposure to Imperial cruelty in their academy training and later at the destruction of Alderaan set them on very different paths.  Thane’s conscience leads him to defect and join the Rebellion; Ciena’s borderline fanatical sense of devotion entrenches her deeper into the Empire.  Yet despite their differing paths, the two remain fast friends and even lovers, and in their repeated encounters even after Thane’s defection, they have to reconcile how they can balance their love with their opposition in the war.

Gray has to perform a careful balancing act here, because Star Wars as a film series has always been a pretty black-and-white “good versus evil” story with a stark contrast between the opposing sides.  Here, Thane’s defection to the Rebellion is natural, because our instinctive understanding of the Empire after 30 years of stories is that it’s pure evil at its head.  Ciena’s choice to stay with the Empire is a little harder to sympathize with.  Grey writes Ciena as a likeable character, and even an inherently good one who’s become irrationally committed to the wrong path.  The difficulty is that it’s a little hard to sympathize with her choices when she interacts with characters like Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader, who have always been presented as caricatures of evil in the Star Wars universe.

The story itself isn’t bad, although a little too familiar at times.  The essential story of Thane and Ciena is original, although the backdrop of their parallel lives isn’t.  In many ways, this story is a retelling of the original Star Wars trilogy, with the characters none-too-coincidentally ending up at the battles of Yavin IV, Hoth, and Endor.  They also happen to have just a few too many chance encounters with major figures of the saga, including Princess Leia and Darth Vader.  It doesn’t get too silly, with perhaps the exception of Ciena being the one who rescues Vader from his post-Yavin defeat, but the frequent name-dropping does get a bit repetitive.

The writing is a bit simple at times.  Although marketed as a young adult book, the writing level is on par with a middle-grade story, the “YA” rating perhaps being due to a few explicit sexual scenes.  Though Lost Stars is a whopping 552 pages, the print is large and the story makes for a relatively quick read with its level pacing.  Even though the story is set over some twelve years, it never feels explicitly rushed (although some of the time skips are a bit jarring, and it could have used a few “1 year laters” at the beginning of certain chapters).  Let’s also not mistake simple writing for poor.  Gray does give the characters a certain degree of depth that makes them likeable in their unwavering devotion to each other.  There’s some decent exploration of the concept of how two people can remain fast friends even when a vast political or social chasm divides them.  At a time when the world seems to be increasingly split along ideological lines, a reflection on friendship against devotion makes for some compelling food for thought.

As for Lost Stars‘ relation to The Force Awakens (and let’s face it, that’s the reason most of us are buying this book): well, it’s there, but it’s not as explicit as it is in that other novel, Aftermath.  In its last 70 pages or so, Lost Stars takes us a little over a year beyond Endor with the story moving into how the Empire and the Rebellion dealt with each other in the aftermath of the Emperor’s death.  Thane and Ciena’s final, dramatic confrontation of each other takes place against an important piece of scenery in the trailers for The Force Awakens, which…well, the book’s cover very obviously spoils what that is.  Readers will have a very obvious “A-ha, so that’s how that happened!” moment.  In spite of the obvious product placement, Gray actually manages to work that piece of scenery into the story in a dramatic and moving way.

Working a believable Young Adult romance into the Star Wars universe is an impressive trick, and one that I don’t think was ever done in the thirty years of Expanded Universe material that came before.  It actually manages to work quite well.  For readers who are looking for a solid and original Star Wars tale, Lost Stars is a welcome appetizer for December’s madness.

Please also see our Star Wars Journey to FASE as well as our Star Wars: Aftermath review.

Five Gratuitous Ackbar Appearances out of Five