This one took me a little longer than it probably should have. Sorry about that. I’ll try to get these finished a little quicker from here on out.
cover art by Paul Youll
So, here we have the first novel on the list that doesn’t feature the main cast of Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Artoo, and Threepio. In fact, the majority of the characters in Michael A. Stackpole’s first entry in the X-Wing series are entirely new. The only returning characters to my memory are Wedge Antilles, who featured in all three original films, and Admiral Ackbar, who only featured in Return of the Jedi. There may be others (one character, Tycho, is mentioned as having been a part of the attack on the second Death Star at Endor), but that brings me to my point – most of the characters in X-Wing: Rogue Squadron are, frankly, forgettable.
The exception is, thankfully, the main character of the book (and, I presume, the series) – Corran Horn. A former Corellian Security officer turned Imperial turned Rebel, Corran has spent much of the time prior to this book on the run from a man he used to work with, Imperial Security officer Kirtan Loor. Eventually, Corran finds himself flying an X-Wing for the Rebellion and, proving to be an exceptional pilot, is assigned to Rogue Squadron.
The Squadron itself has become something of a symbol for the Rebellion (or the New Republic, depending on who you ask). Eager to win worlds away from the Empire, the leadership of the Rebellion sent Rogue Squadron on several missions after Endor, sacrificing many rookie pilots in the process. Sick of seeing so many friends die, the leader of Rogue Squadron, veteran pilot Wedge Antilles, is focused on training his new batch of recruits to be the very best they can possibly be before they embark on more dangerous missions for the Alliance.
Interestingly, this idea of so many green Rogues dying in combat because they weren’t ready gels quite well with the depictions of the Squadron in battle during Matthew Stover’s Shadows of Mindor, despite the fact that Mindor was written and released long after Stackpole’s novel. I’m sure this was at least partly intentional on Stover’s part, but it’s still nice to see things flow so well from one book to the next even when one was written more than a decade apart. But I digress.
Stackpole’s novel is well plotted and paced – in fact, the second half of the book feels like a movie, jumping from scene to scene without falling into the pitfall of describing exactly how the characters got from one scene to the next. That might sound like a bad thing, but it’s not – such transitional scenes are usually unnecessary, and in this case they would likely have bogged the story down unnecessarily, killing the pacing. I do, however, have some issues with other aspects of Stackpole’s style.
The biggest problem is Stackpole’s tendency to use a lot of technical jargon when describing the way the fighters move in space. I can’t tell you how many times I read “Corran stood the fighter up on its left S-foil and snap-rolled while inverting” or something similar. I’m sure it’s all accurate, but not being a pilot, these types of descriptions went over my head to the point where it became difficult to follow many of the battle scenes.
Stackpole also has a similar issue with dialogue. I may have been spoiled by the fact that the last two Star Wars books I’ve read involved established characters who had a voice and personality the authors tried to stick to, while Rogue Squadron establishes many entirely new characters that have no such voice established. Even so, Stackpole’s dialogue doesn’t feel much different from his narration. Characters wax philosophical and think out loud in long, awkward paragraphs that feel rather dry at times. Even Wedge, an established character, suffers from this – though I will admit that Wedge’s role in the films doesn’t offer us much in the way of his personality.
Which brings me, again, to the characters. Any character outside of Corran Horn, Wedge Antilles, and Tycho Celchu is woefully underdeveloped. For instance, Corran’s chief rival within the Squadron, Bror Jace, can be summed up as, “That egotistical guy whose family owns a large chunk of the bacta market.” Beyond that, we know little about him, and he appears so sparingly that it’s easy to forget he’s there at all. As such, I don’t particularly care when he and Corran argue about who had more kills.
Then there’s Gavin Darklighter, the cousin of Luke’s friend Biggs from the original Star Wars. His character seems to exist to lend more legitimacy to the book by including more “established” characters – even though Gavin isn’t established, and Biggs, having had most of his scenes cut from Star Wars, is barely established as is. Corran’s wingman and bunkmate, the Gand pilot Ooryl, is probably the next-most-interesting character behind Corran, but even he doesn’t do much besides be an alien. The rest of the Squadron? Well, I had to look up their names, and even then I didn’t remember who was who.
Finally, there’s the awkward “love triangle” between Corran, his squadmate Rhysati Ynr, and the smuggler Mirax Terrik. Luckily, Mirax gets much more characterization than any of the other Rogues. There’s a history between her family and Corran’s, and a personal history between her and Wedge. She even has some effect on the outcome of the final mission – but her character still boils down to “Corran’s main love interest,” while Rhysati is “Corran’s backup love interest.”
At this point, it really sounds like I’m trashing this book. I don’t mean to give that impression because, despite all the flaws I’ve highlighted, I actually enjoyed it for the most part.
One of the few characters that holds some promise is Tycho Celchu. We know little about him so far – all we know is that, while he’s a member of the Rebel Alliance, he’s considered enough of a possible security risk that he can’t fly a ship with weapons, and spends his free time in his quarters under guard. While we learn little about him during Rogue Squadron, there’s a lot that can be done with the character, and the gaps in his backstory intrigue me. I hope Stackpole (and later, Aaron Allston) expand on this in future entries.
Then there’s the villains.
While Kirtan Loor isn’t a particularly interesting or effective nemesis for the Rogues or Corran, his superior, Ysanne Isard, is. She has little “screen time,” but her presence is felt throughout the story. Based on Coruscant, Isard has filled the power vacuum left by the Emperor’s death, and is out to destroy the Rebellion out of vengeance. It’s implied that she may have had some sort of relationship with the Emperor, but that’s kind of gross so we’ll just move along from that.
I suspect that part of what makes Isard effective creates the problem with Agent Loor – he’s terrified of her. Sure, most of the Imperials we see in the films are terrified of Vader, but none of them feel like a real threat – not Piett, not Jerjerrod, nobody. The only one that does feel like a threat outside of Vader and the Emperor is Grand Moff Tarkin, and did he ever seem to fear Vader or the Emperor? No. I think making Agent Loor so fearful of his superior diminishes his effectiveness as a villain. We’ll see how his arc plays out throughout the X-Wing series.
Rogue Squadron obviously places heavy focus on Empire vs. Rebellion. While I always like to see Star Wars EU material do new things (the introductio of the Ssi-ruuk in Bakura being a big part of the reason I enjoyed it so much), I didn’t expect anything but the Rebellion fighting the Empire in this book. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see that no Jedi or lightsabers made an appearance, something that much Star Wars media seems to be stuck on.
Having said that, there seem to be subtle hints that Corran may be Force-sensitive. It’s never said outright, but he has enough moments of “intuition” to convince me of this. If this ends up being the case, I suppose I have no issue with that, but I am glad they left the “big reveal” out of his introductory novel. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few books.
In fact, I’d say that sums up X-Wing: Rogue Squadron fairly well. It does a very good job of setting the stage for future books, and I don’t just mean X-Wing books – there are several references to the Katana Fleet of the Thrawn Trilogy, for instance. Usually such references in “prequels” bother me (like the ending of Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon…) but in this case it serves to ground Rogue Squadron in relation to the books that surround it. A book like this could have easily felt disconnected from the rest of the Star Wars universe, as that universe tends to revolve around the Skywalker family. Stackpole has done a fairly good job of making sure those connections are felt. Occasionally he goes a little far (as evidenced by Gavin Darklighter, or Stackpole’s stubborn insistence that no Corellian ever wants to hear “the odds”), but for the most part, these connections help the book feel like it belongs.
In short, this book is an entertaining, if flawed, novel that has me looking forward to the squadron’s next mission.
X-Wing: Rogue Squadron: GOOD
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