I gave trying to keep up with the extended chronology of the Star Wars universe a couple of years ago when I realized I was far too many books behind to ever fully catch up.
That doesn’t mean that every once in a while I’m not browsing the local library or bookstore and come across the latest Star Wars novel and I don’t feel a twinge of wanting to spend some time with old friends again.
In many ways, reading the extended universe novels, I feel like that person who moved away from a group of friends but has dropped by again after a couple of years for a visit. I recognize them but I don’t really know them anymore. They’ve continued to grow and have a certain code that I can’t or don’t understand simply because I wasn’t there to experience things with them.
That’s kind of how I felt about Star Wars: Crucible.
I recognized my old friends, but we’d grown apart. And while they were willing to fill me in on the broad strokes of what had happened since we last visited, there were still nuances I was missing. And that led to my not necessarily enjoying this novel as much as I could or should have had we kept up a bit better.
There’s some interesting stuff going on here with Luke, Leia and Han all stepping in to help out Lando. But so much of the backstory went over my head that I got frustrated and ended up skimming large chunks of the novel. There are some nicely written action sequences and the story moves at a brisk pace. But I couldn’t help but feel a bit left out of things.
I also am not sure how much of an incentive I feel to catch up on what’s gone before now simply because I have a feeling a lot of this continuity will be tossed aside when the new movie opens in 2015.
Nashville Book Worm 