Star Wars: A New Dawn [Book Review]

Star Wars: A New Dawn
By John Jackson Miller
Published by Del Rey, 2014
Print Price: $28.00
Ebook Price: $11.84

It's been 10 years since Gary Oldman from Bram Stoker's Dracula gave Order 66 to wipe out the dumb Jedi with clone troopers that the Jedi used but never even asked where they came from or who ordered their production. They just said "What, me worry?" and armed millions upon millions of clones copied from a contract killer. Makes sense huh? ANYWAYZ, what we have come to know as the Rebels in a New Hope haven't come into existence yet. This book takes place as the very first faint stirrings of that movement are awakening. This stems from the fact that some people are starting to think that life under the Republic, even with all its corruption and bickering, was a better time than under the Empire.

The action of the novel takes place on the planet of Gorse and its moon, Cynda. Cynda is the main mining hub for thorilide, a crystalline military material needed in Emperor Palpatine's constant war to build and maintain his Empire. Problem is, the Emperor is growing impatient with the rate of production by ragtag miners and corporate mining guilds. He has sent his personal "efficency expert", a General Grievous-like cyborg named Count Denetrius Vidian, to do anything he can to increase the refining and supply of thorilide. To give you an example of his benevolence, when one of the miner's spacecraft starts having engine trouble, he orders his star destroyer to target it and destroy it!

Vidian hasn't come alone to Gorse. He's being trailed by a young and beautiful Twi'lek named Hera who seems to be searching the galaxy for like-minded individuals like herself that have become disillusioned with the Empire's way of doing things. She smells something fishy about Vidian's arrival and becomes determined to find out why he's REALLY come to the planet.

Hera will also meet Kanan Jarus, a loose cannon that always finds himself in trouble, but never seems to have to face the consequences of his actions. He's good at getting out of scrapes, probably due to the fact that he was a young Jedi-in-training at the time of Order 66 and was one of the few Jedi to escape that purge. Ever since the day his master was killed, he's intentionally hidden all his Jedi powers, and until now, has done a pretty good job of it. Things start to get a little out of control when Skelly, a Clone Wars veteran, and probably a sufferer of PTSD, starts spreading the word that the Empire's mining operations are threatening to destroy Gorse's moon and maybe even cause the destruction of Gorse itself. Skelly isn't shy about his beliefs and is willing to plant a couple of bombs to get his voice heard.

In the foreword to this book, the executive producer of the new Star Wars Rebels cartoon, Dave Filoni, says that A New Dawn is the first novel in the "new" Star Wars canon. This means that, from this point, EVERYTHING that happens in the Star Wars comics, novels, videogames, movies etc will happen in the same universe. All the expanded universe stuff that came before never happened (except for the movies and The Clone Wars cartoon). So if you read all that stuff, here's lulz in your face! You don't matter! hahahahahaha...HA! Welcome to the Marvel Universe where retcon is a fact of life.

I really had a lot of hope for this book, thinking that it would have a better story than other Star Wars EU books I had read in the past. Why? Since everything was canon now, I felt that the author wouldn't be constricted by overstepping the boundaries of a movie or a tv show and would finally be able to tell a fully developed tale! I was wrong. The most glaring example of this is the "cocktease" of Kanan holding a fully ignited lightsaber on the cover of this book. He NEVER uses his lightsaber in this book. He never turns it on. In fact he hardly even has it on his person. That is the biggest joke of this all inclusive canon. Kanan CANNOT use his lightsaber because obviously it's going to be a big music swelling Force theme reveal on the Rebels cartoon coming on tomorrow. It made me laugh so hard. Here, stupid me, I thought, oh cool, new universe, more author freedom, and yet it's the same old constrictions that crush the author's creativity. To me, this smacks of false advertising. I wanted to see some good old fashioned lightsaber brandishment! I'm gonna tweet Star Wars and Del Rey to see what they have to say about this situation. But the cocktease of the lightsaber doesn't really gain momentum until the last 1/3 of the book, when Kanan starts to draw his sword and JUST THEN he doesn't need to. It's even worse than the Godzilla vs Muto fight at the end of Godzilla 2014. Like it's this big fight but in reality they had actually fought like 4 times but the movie kept on cutting away from it. But at least they DID ACTUALLY FIGHT AT THE END OF THE MOVIE!!!

Now as far as the book itself, it was just more of what you've come to expect from the Star Wars EU: mediocrity. It wasn't really good and not really bad. It was just average. I did like the characters of Kanan and Hera but I'm left wondering whether any of the other characters will appear in the new show or just appear for cameo easter eggs. None of the other characters I see on the Rebels site, besides Kanan and Hera, were in this book. I am excited for Rebels, or at least mildly interested, after reading New Dawn, but I don't have cable so too bad for me. I think the premier is supposed to screen on ABC later this month (the Mouse enslaved them years ago).

Oh, I almost forgot, one cool thing I DID like about this book was the fact that midi-chlorians never came up. It sounds like Kanan never made it to that class in the Jedi Temple. The Force is characterized as "mysterious" when it is mentioned and it seems like Kanan has very little knowledge of it beyond that. This hearkens back more to original trilogy mythology where The Force wasn't confined to being microbes in your blood but was more like an invisible example of paranormal activity. I REALLY liked that move and hope the new Star Wars movies continue down that road.

My Grade: B-