Saturday, August 31, 2019

Star Wars Galaxy's Edge: A Crash of Fate | Book Review


Hello all, I am here today with my extremely late review of the novel, Star Wars Galaxy's Edge: A Crash of Fate by Zoraida Córdova. You see I was given an advance uncorrected copy of the book (thank you, Disney.) But the cost of getting the book early and for free is that there will be typos and mistakes, which for the most part are fine but some of them made the book hard to understand. That's just my problem though, so let's move on.

One of the most important features of this book is that it ties into the new Star Wars land at Disney, Galaxy's Edge, by taking place in Black Spire Outpost on the planet, Batuu, the setting of Galaxy's Edge. I haven't been to Galaxy's Edge, but my favorite part of the book is how much it made me get to know the planet of Batuu and developed the world of Black Spire Outpost. Although it did go overboard slightly when it decided to incorporate products that are sold at Galaxy's Edge into the plot, however great they are it was too much and they did this too much.
The book is about the characters Izal Garsea and Julen Rakab, Izzy and Jules for short. And the chapters are sorted in an alternating pattern, from each of their perspectives. I liked reading the chapters from Izzy's perspective more, for most of the book opposed to of that of Jules, because I felt that Izzy was a far more interesting and complex character. Plus, she was often doing more interesting things than Jules.
The book is in the Young Adult (YA) genre, so you get a lot of those silly YA themes here. This has been handled very well in some Star Wars YA novels and not so well in others and sadly I think this one was handled not so well. The narration was in third person and limited to the thoughts of Izzy or Jules, depending on the chapter. But we just had to hear ever single thing that they thought and it was really repetitive. Now that gets in to how the book is longer than it needs to be, because it keeps on repeating the same things about the characters instead of advancing the plot. It takes until the final third or fourth of the way through to really get into the plot.
I would like to finish this review by citing some connections to other Star Wars books that I felt from A Crash of Fate. First up would be Lost Stars, a great Star Wars book that is similar to A Crash of Fate in many ways. And going into A Crash of Fate, I felt like it could be a lot like Lost Stars, and there was much to compare, but overall Lost Stars was a lot better, in the plot and the relationship between the main characters.

Then there was a character involved in A Crash of Fate by the name of Nate Grattonius who could be the titular Force Collector from that upcoming novel. Although on Twitter the author of A Crash of Fate said it wasn't him. I found him very cool in this though and I hope actually is him. I'm very excited for that book and how it could possibly connect with the characters from A Crash of Fate. I'll leave a little bit of wisdom from him, that I thought was good to include here, from A Crash of Fate. Right before this, Jules helped Nate while he was being attacked, "'I seem to be in the right place at the right time today,' Jules said. 'Or the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm not exactly sure.' 'Both things can be true, Jules.' Nate's face split into a bright smile. 'For my assailants it was the wrong time, for me it was the right one.'"
The last connection would be the small little pieces we can gather from the book about the state of the galaxy and the Resistance at this time, after The Last Jedi. Every time we heard about that it made me want to be reading a book all about the Resistance instead of one where it was something going on in the background. And there will be a book all about that soon, Resistance Reborn. Which A Crash of Fate also makes me more excited for.
Overall I think that A Crash of Fate isn't a bad read, but it isn't great and there are many Star Wars books I would recommend before it. I would say read it for Galaxy's Edge, but I haven't read every Galaxy's Edge book, so I don't know if it's the best one of those either. But at least read A Crash of Fate if you're a die-hard Star Wars, fan like me and you're sure to get some enjoyment out of it. Thanks for reading and as always, Stay Connected.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, I did not know you were so well connected inside the Disney organization to get an early release copy of the book.

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