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aberration) wrote2019-10-16 12:34 am
aberration) wrote2019-10-16 12:34 am
slow dancing to a silhouette
This is yet another Star Wars post, though with only one review because I rambled on for 5000+ words, why.
So I read Alexander Freed's Alphabet Squadron and for the most part really loved it? It may be my favorite Star Wars novel now (after A New Dawn, which still wins for on-point Hera characterization, fine). There were a few things I didn't like or that so clearly came off as Editorial Mandate, but overall it tackles a lot of interesting concepts successfully where other writers have fallen, and adds many cool and creative elements to the universe that I haven't seen before.
The book takes place post-Return of the Jedi and is about a group of pilots who are collected to hunt down Shadow Wing, a particularly dangerous Imperial TIE contingent. True to form (I think) for a Rebel story, this is a ragtag band that is sourced from various places - the squadron's organizers and de facto leaders are Caern Adan, a New Republic intelligence officer who is extremely determined and also totally out of his depth, and the book's protagonist Yrica Quell, a relatively recent Imperial defector who herself used to fly with Shadow Wing. These two recruit Nath Tensent, also a former Imperial defector who's more interested in being a scoundrel but especially hates Shadow Wing and so goes along with it; Kairos, who spends most of her time being a Mysterious Alien but okay I still love her; and Chass na Chadic and Wyl Lark, two long-term Rebellion pilots. Each pilot specializes in a different type of ship, hence "Alphabet." They operate out of the Lodestar, a New Republic carrier led by our Special Guest Preexisting Character General Syndulla.
A few of my highlights were:
- This is, I think, the first actual fighter pilot story of the new canon. I think some people expected that of Star Wars Resistance and it was… not. But this book is first and foremost about pilots, and the work of pilots. It also kiiind of wants to be about spies, or at least intelligence work, and it is the latter to some extent. But a lot of reading it felt like watching the pilot-heavy episodes of Battlestar Galactica. In a good way! And the "Alphabet Squadron" concept means organically incorporating basically every type of Rebel fighter, which is more fun than All X-Wings All The Time. Freed also very successfully makes space battles engaging on the page which is no small feat, there are multiple books where I've checked out on action and space battle action in particular because I can't follow what the author is trying to say. Freed works very well at giving the battles both beauty and horror, which makes them more emotionally engaging than a straight up list of maneuvers.
- With one exception, it's miles ahead of anything else I've read when it comes to handling Imperial characters. While the book shifts around POVs, the protagonist is really Quell, a pilot who defected from the Empire after Endor. And while she as an unreliable narrator tries to justify her actions, Freed through the narrative never does. He doesn't rationalize, justify, or defend her behavior in up until very recently supporting and perpetuating Space Fascism. He really doesn't engage in any of this "well sometimes they have a point in being mad at the Rebellion" kind of thing I've seen other writers do when trying to be "complex," nor does he take on the nihilistic attitude of "they're really all the same so it doesn't matter." Freed's narrative here understands that support for fascistic regimes is driven by emotion rather than logic, and that understanding makes for a richer story that combines Imperial defectors and Rebel stalwarts.
- Very creative additions to the universe: the interrogation ball droid reprogrammed to be a benevolent(?) psychiatrist like, *chef's kiss* there; Chass' music yes yes very good yes; Wyl Lark's whole background; Imperial numbers stations; Kairos in general; the Rebel pilots' nicknames for individual TIE Fighters; in general I thought Freed did really effective work with the planets, I was always really into it when I was reading about them and there was enough evocative detail to get a feel of the place without the narrative getting distracted.
- I like that there's a nice mix of humans and aliens? Tensent, Quell, and Lark are human, which Tensent and Quell are both ex-Imperials and so kind of have to be. Chass is Theelin, Adan is Balosar, Kairos is This Alien Species Will Not Be Disclosed At This Time. Anyway I was recently reading one of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars rulebooks which decided all Balosars are culturally conmen and grifters because of One Stupid Scene In A Movie and I'm still mad about it. why are ttrpg books so terrible at wordbuilding I'm saying
- For me, Freed managed to handle the darker themes/events of the book without falling into the kind of nihilism that has put me off other SW writers. There are some very dark elements to this story, but it's a full on war story and while I didn't always enjoy them, I did come out feeling like they were there for the purpose of a narrative about war and violence, and not the kind of performative edginess a lot of writers seem to like sinking into. I never felt like Freed was screaming "look how dark this is! This isn't your little kid's Star Wars!" and etc., and Freed also maintains the line of war is hell but also genocidal fascism so...
- Yes, okay, Hera was fine. It's fine. She's fine.
... and that's as much as I think I can say without going into straight up spoilers, so -
So we have to start with Quell, our principal point of view character and whose .... redemption? arc? mostly drives the story. Coming off the 'hero of another story' (yikes) Iden Versio from BF2/Inferno Squadron, or Sinjir from Aftermath who's played so so so so so to Brooding Former Bad Boy archetype that it's just unbearable - wow do I love Quell. Or at least, I love how she is handled as a character and how Freed writes her, particularly in how he very pointedly does not beg the audience for empathy or understanding on her behalf. Quell is not someone who joined the Empire because they helped get rid of pirates on her planet or the Rebellion Did Something Bad to Her - in fact, she initially joined with the intent of defecting to the Rebellion after flight training. She has no logical reason for supporting the Empire or staying with it as long as she did and through as much as she did - really, it seems her strongest reason for doing so was simply inertia. That she was already in one place and didn't have the drive to leave.
But the other motivation that Freed latches onto most strongly for Imperials is the idea of camaraderie. Which is just honestly brilliant - it's not that the Empire is right or just, it's not this logical argument of Actually The Empire Also Did Good Things So That Makes It Okay That I Supported Its Genocidal Fascism. What Freed places most centrally in the Imperial point of view is that your fellow pilots, soldiers, and officers are your family, and you fight to protect your family no matter what. No matter what they do, no matter what's asked of you, your family and the defense of your family from the enemy is what matters. And that's so great, because it shows how emotion, in this idea of family and camaraderie, overrides the logic of Genocide and Oppression are bad, actually. It's a kind of small-scale us vs. them nationalism that is uncomfortably shared with both fascistic regimes and military communities in general – and also makes sense of how Imperials would justify and carry out attacks on civilians, as the military machine has been disconnected from any justifiable reason for its existence, and the survival of that machine, rather than the safety of noncombatants, become what's paramount.
(Freed doesn't get into this which may or may not be for the best because there are... very few writers I might trust this with, but I would kind of like to see a comparison with that and when "good guys" engage in a similar "found family" dynamic. There was a scene with Hera and Adan that rubbed me the wrong very slightly on that mark, but I think Hera's reaction to Adan's lack of military experience was meant to be about his wanting to lead a fighter squadron, rather than just in general – it's not a bad idea as something to explore within the Rebellion, but we've seen Hera deal with civilians, and she has specific reasons not to fall into that thinking, so I'd kind of want a reason as to why that would have changed. But this is beside the point. And I don't think was intended. Though my whole point is that would be an interesting thing to explore! But I'd also trust almost no one with it. Whatever.)
But I put a ? next to redemption for Quell because it's not entirely clear what she wants, and not in a bad way, just in a 'this is a mess person' way. Throughout the book, it first and foremost feels like what Quell wants is to break through the lethargy that kept her in the Empire. Joining the Rebellion means working with people who are generally apathetic toward her well-being, if not outright hostile, and not without reason. Tensent straight up threatens to murder her and the narrative isn't defensive of Quell. It's not saying Tensent is right, but Freed handles this similarly to how he handles Quell's injuries and her stress - Freed doesn't use these as tools to elicit pity, or to make Quell seem put upon, or even to demonstrate what she's willing to do to make up for her past behavior. Quell thinks frequently of how she can "prove" herself, but also what she's "earned" or can ever earn. She works with the Rebellion, it seems, because she finally understands where her previous inertia left her. Looking back over the book from the end, I get the impression that Freed intended to write Quell as reluctant to really admit to herself why she was there, to still hold to ideas about how the Empire wasn't really as bad as the Rebellion made it out to be, that it had been fine until Operation Cinder, while disabusing her of those notions over the course of the book until the climactic finale when we have Quell's Dramatic Backstory Reveal: that she left the Empire because her mentor/squad leader told her to, after she'd not only participated in but led a genocidal mission as part of Operation Cinder.
Which the Rebellion presumably now knows, and which certainly makes Quell a war criminal. Not because she's some mustache-twirling villain who enjoys murder, not even because she believed in the Empire, but simply because she didn't question her orders. She defects because her mentor tells her that if this is what she'll do for a dead Empire on its way to defeat, then she needs to get the fuck out now. As this is the first book in a trilogy (I think?), how Quell's story will be resolved is left open. But it doesn't feel like a redemption arc. I don't say that to presume any particular resolution, but. The New Republic uses her because they need her. The other members of Alphabet Squadron follow her lead because they need a leader. The bottom line is that in the midst of a war, and no one can afford an immediate understanding of justice. But I'd guess Freed intends to get to that at some point, and I think he's left what justice for Quell would look like as a genuinely open question.
Also, Quell's conversations with the Interrogator Droid are some of my favorite moments in the book, I love them and I love Reprogrammed Interrogator Droid. I also love that Quell, like really most of the characters in this book, feels very thoroughly human. She's stressed, she's lethargic, she panics and nearly destroys yet another planet for it. I don't need all characters to be as extremely flawed as Quell is - I mean, again, war criminal. But also while I like that she didn't have or pursue ideals until pushed into having to accept her capacity for unconscionable evil, she was someone in this universe who could afford not to have ideals. And it was also maybe a relief after what felt like some writers writing rather admiringly of their Space Fascists.
Being almost incidentally shoved into your ideals is something she has in common with Caern Adan, a Balosar man who was a financial reporter??? Until the Empire just started arbitrarily imprisoning him for no reason and that was what "radicalized" him, so to speak? Yes okay I loved that backstory, if in part because it wasn't just a straightforward "the Empire killed my family" and etc. Adan's now a New Republic intelligence officer who has Opinions about how the New Republic has to transition from being the militia that was the Rebellion and operate through governance and not militarism and he's right but also is just so out of his depth here. Freed I think successfully makes him come off as an ordinary person swept up into extraordinary circumstances. Adan also occupies a somewhat weird position in the narrative because while he is the drive that ultimately forms Alphabet Squadron, the extent to which he's their leader is a little more complicated. It's certainly his ends they're working toward, but it's Hera's territory he has to work out of – she insists he choose someone else to direct the pilots, and that ends up being Quell, and as the squadron's leader, and she's also the one generally giving the squad operations. I really liked the one-sided power-jockeying Adan engages in versus Hera, and his fear that she could take the squadron from him and his mission, meanwhile it's simultaneously clear that while Adan is focused on one fire, Hera is dealing with thousands. I think that uncertainty in his position really works for the narrative, both as Quell's direct recruiter/kind of extortionist, and as a non-military voice in a setting that's otherwise generally going to be military people.
And the next major character to show up is Kairos, and we… don't learn that much about Kairos? Maybe she's filling in the role of Alien Who Can't Speak Basic like Chewbacca, but having her just not speak at all is a much more writeable version of that. But I am hoping we get more POV chapters from her like we did near the end of this book. And even with the limited information we have about Kairos, Freed does give her consistent, demonstrative actions – that she allows Quell to leave with a stolen X-Wing when Quell expresses her need to "prove" herself, her "intensity" in fighting Stormtroopers, and the moment she finally opened up to the others in the whole 'everyone tells their back story' campfire scene. Incidentally I'm a sucker for 'everybody tells their back story' campfire scenes.
Tensent, the ex-Imperial, ex-Rebel scoundrel who rejoins the New Republic to go after Shadow Wing was probably the character I had the most immediate reservations about, just because I feel like I've seen his type a lot before, and it tends to take a flavor of "look how jaded and smarter than everyone else I am." When there was a Hera scene from his POV I was thinking "you are on thin fucking ice pal" the entire time. But the negatives I was expecting never really materialized. Tensent certainly is jaded, but Freed allows him genuine interest and curiosity in others – he makes sincere efforts to befriend the other members of the squadron, and perhaps because essentially every other character has experienced a loss similar to his, his Tragic Backstory doesn't make him uniquely Weathered and Experienced. While he does go rogue in the final mission, that's not entirely independent of anyone else, and his character was probably the best positioned to kill Nurress – while others had their own reasons to want revenge on Shadow Squadron, Tensent, Lark, and Chass were the most directly impacted by their actions, and Lark had other shit to do and Chass is like – that's not her narrative place. Yet. So it didn't feel like Tensent getting this extra narrative attention because male writer loves his Gruff Hard-Edged Male Character. And Mr. Gruff Exterior did genuinely show vulnerability and emotional investment in others without having to be a complete jackass about it so, you know, good job.
Our final recruits are Rebel pilots Wyl Lark and Chass na Chadic, who thanks to Quell tracking them down are the only survivors of a Shadow Wing attack on the Rebel freighter Hellion's Dare. Which means they come into this completely traumatized. The Hellion's Dare sequences were a little weak for me because it was just a lot of names being thrown at you and there wasn't enough time to develop any of these very low-level side characters to really be viscerally hurt by their deaths. On the other hand, the speed at which the situation deteriorated did I think help convey Lark and Chass' mental states going into the main narrative. And it did allow for Freed to create some interesting maneuvers, like the Imperial practice of isolating a single fighter near the end of a battle to access its navigation data. I also really liked Lark's lesson in why We Don't Talk To Fascists and how it played into the rest of the book. Lark in general had some really nice worldbuilding in his background and how he was culturally chosen to join the Rebellion, which made him into something more than what could have been a pretty broadly drawn "nice guy" next to someone like Tensent.
Chass I had more complicated feelings for. I initially found her really frustrating, but then grew to really enjoy her reckless abandon and her humor and her music. Her martyr complex is… another story, though for most of the book what bothered me about it is that I wasn't sure the narrative was really questioning it, or whether Freed basically agreed that she should simply be allowed to die if she could find the right blaze of glory. By the end it seemed the narrative did come down on 'no this is extremely unhealthy' given that she nearly lets a planet burn rather than give up her great death wish aspirations, but. That's another where I guess we'll find out in a possible later book. I also found her backstory a little shallow by comparison to some of the other characters, but that's more discussed in the Editorial Mandate section of this.
And then aside from Adan and the Alphabet Squadron pilots, the most prominent character is IT-O psychiatrist, which again I love the concept and I love the execution here. I can't recall seeing another psychiatrist droid in this franchise (or a psychiatrist in general, which), but I found the way Freed gave the droid a very mechanical way of thinking that also reflected how he needed to react and appear in order to achieve certain reactions or feelings on the part of his "patients," while simultaneously seeming genuine rather than manipulative simply because he has no apparent ulterior motive beyond what he was reprogrammed for – that was just all really cool. It's also a pretty rare instance of a droid in a somewhat authoritative position relative to the other characters. He's not there to complete menial or mechanical tasks or act as an interpreter or generally just do whatever he's told, and the other characters often have to cooperate with him. (And being rebellious or grouchy is not the same as being in a position of authority.) The mindless or feeble military droids aren't really similar, the closest I can think of a fairly hostile medical droid in one of the Kanan comics. And the IT-O unit here is a lot more complex than Sarcastically Annoyed.
We have some other side New Republic characters, but obviously the most prominent of these is Hera Syndulla. This book imagines General Syndulla as confident and businesslike, a leader who deeply knows her ship and her crew and offers attention and some encouragement, but also has little room for patience or indulgence. She's really kind of used as that Dumbledore figure who just outright states the themes the author wants the audience to think about. Some of these I think would actually be a good fit for Hera, such as the difficulty the Rebellion faces in transitioning from being a rebellion to being the ones in power. Hera's experience, including beyond the Rebellion, has always been as the "underdog", as fighting against existing power structures. How that person decides to or defers from becoming part of institutional power once she has access to it is an interesting idea, but Freed unfortunately doesn't seem to have thought about this much beyond putting words in her mouth. Which, fine, she's a background character here. It just could have been another tool Freed used to pursue the themes he wanted to pursue anyway, and I'll get to this more also in the Editorial Mandate section. But again, beyond my overly picky eye, there was nothing wrong with this Hera portrayal. She was allowed to be a military commander, and I mean, the narrative was never condescending nor outright hostile to her, which is about where my bar is at this point. She's allowed to be a military leader while also showing compassion and engagement toward her troops. Like, I don't know what else to say, she's not treated as incompetent and here to be your mother, good job Freed!
This could also get into how the Rebellion/New Republic in general is portrayed, which is a line Freed walks pretty well for me here. Leaders like Hera don't exist to be killjoys, the New Republic isn't perfect but their faults also aren't ignored (and I think things like not prioritizing conditions at Traitor's Remorse aren't great but are also believable). One thing I didn't like was Freed's occasional suggestion that early rebel work didn't require strategic planning/thinking. That kind of work definitely does require strategic thinking, as much if not moreso than when you have plenty of resources to expend and bodies to throw at your wars. And where it didn't, I mean, it certainly should have. But regardless, there's never any Which Is Really Worse question – our Imperial perspective in this book opens when Shakara Nuress or "Grandmother" wiping out populated areas simply because they were close to an Imperial operating base. Fascism is worse, the end.
And speaking of Nurress, I really liked her as our principal Imperial point of view! Yet she's not really our antagonist – as much as this book has an antagonist it's basically Shadow Wing as a whole, but also just the conflict of whether this team would get its shit together and/or whether any individual member would get their shit together. Which, you know, they do, but it ends up coming together around them/Quell really nearly destroying another planet in panic.
Which, I liked the progression of this team, from their fuck ups in practice drills, to their first fight together against a surprise Imperial target, to their recovery mission at the Jedi Temple that gave them space to get to know each other, to the climactic battle sequence. Quell remains somewhat removed from the group through all of this, which I think given her final backstory reveal ends up making sense, and if that information becomes generally known among them it might be interesting to see how they react. But I think it all builds up well to get them to this attack on Shadow Wing, which doesn't end up succeeding, exactly, but Hera's right that they pull a victory from the brink of catastrophe.
One thing I wasn't entirely sure of by the end was, if the blowing the reactor of the Imperial station was going to create the atmosphere firestorm that was the whole reason they couldn't have a capital ship battle… why… did they plant detonators to do that? But looking over that again my impression is that this wouldn't have happened had the Imperials not blown holes in their own station to get their fighters out, and the plan was to disable rather than destroy the station. And Quell hadn't considered that before panicking and ordering the reactor blown, so. It makes sense for her character, to panic in at seeing her old squadron, to feel a need to protect those who were now her own, to need to react immediately, to do something, and to have her break from inertia put her at the brink of destroying another world.
Which, I thought the whole setting and the circumstances it created was really cool! I really liked this idea that space fighting had to be limited because the planet's atmosphere could easily catch fire, and I really loved that the final battle, with the Empire's command disabled, ended up with fighter ships on both sides desperately working together, and dying alongside one another, to stop that disastrous chain reaction from destroying Pandem Nai. I thought it was a really cool way to allow for a confrontation without a resolution, to throw some humanity into the conflict without again this dissolving into "everyone's the same really," and Freed gave space to each of his main characters who took up different actions during the fight.
And Tensent killing Nuress was pretty obviously coming, but I'll give it to Freed that I was vindictively hoping Nuress would die in despair, realizing too late that she had been wrong, and then when he gave me that it was all "oh damn it I have basic human empathy."
Anyway, there were a few things that rang out pretty heavy as Editorial Made Me Do This, which isn't always bad but, well, these were:
- I mean, honestly, Hera. It's not that she feels tacked on here – it actually completely makes sense to have some higher up Rebel commander in this narrative, given that the "leaders" of Alphabet Squadron otherwise are Adan and Quell, neither of whom can actually do that. Freed wrote this group of characters so that they would require a background leader like Hera, and while Freed could have invented a character or idk I guess used any other existing Rebel leader, Hera is the only canonical Rebel general other than Luke who's also a fighter pilot. Maybe. The point is she isn't at all out of place here and her appearance makes sense.
But Freed is best at writing Hera through the eyes of others. There were a few moments that felt extremely well-chosen for her character: her forcing people to follow her through the ship while they talked (yes, she knows every centimeter of her ship and she is also fine with annoying the fuck out of people); her telling Quell that she thought Quell would've liked seeing the Jedi Temple (she did live with a Jedi for a decade); and Adan's mental comment about her that "all soldiers are suicidal." But when it came from her perspective, Freed seemed to be writing from a provided list of character points, which, granted, he probably was. She thinks about her "family" or is described telling stories about them to the crew, but there's never more detail to it than that she had this "family," nor any consideration for her experience outside that one particular point about her because That's The Canon We Have, I guess. The most specific thing mentioned is actually Hera saying she was "there" when the Rebels "brought home first prototype" of the B-wing, which must refer to an episode in Rebels when she was actually the first to fly a B-wing, and that is so totally the modest way she'd say it and had to require knowledge of that event in particular so - okay, good job Freed. But otherwise, it can sound stilted and removed, kind of like Freed's just writing Sequel Trilogy Leia but with this "she used to have a family" thing. Which is probably how he was writing her generally, but perhaps having it from another's point of view makes it feel less hollow.
(Which honestly, I'm not complaining about Hera's treatment here, Freed's totally respectful and does not make her naïve or incompetent or Everyone's Mommy, quite the opposite, it's fine. But I'm starting to think that the reason John Jackson Miller's portrayal of her in A New Dawn works so well for me is that he couldn't use any of her existing canon, except to formulate how a person like this would come into being, which is work I imagine other writers didn't do for one reason or another.)
2 – Chass na Chadic's obsession with Jyn Erso – I know Freed wrote the Rogue One novelization and so he may have… let's say, a different idea of Jyn's character than I do, and how this whole thing is supposed to work or come off. I don't really know. But part of this is Chass repeatedly imagining or "remembering" things Jyn did that there's no way she could have witnessed in any form, like things that were definitely not being recorded so another person in this universe could watch them at some point, so it just comes off a lot like "hey remember those scenes you liked in Rogue One!!?!?!?" (Also I'm not going to harp on this a lot, but that movie has been out for nearly three years now, you know what lines were actually in the movie and it's telling that you won't stick to them.) It's also just the case that this book otherwise has zero ties to the actual movies, I don't think anyone ever mentions Han or Leia or Luke or anything, Hera has a thought about how Mon Mothma owes her dinner and some of the characters are described as having been present at events from the movies, but that's it. With the only preexisting character in this book being Hera, who is also from a Side Property, I can imagine editorial was like, "you have to work in a Movie Character People Already Know."
And I mean, maybe Freed did answer that with "well okay then I'm going to make that be the reason this character has A FUCKING DEATH WISH."
3 – Devon, as Quell's previous mentor/squadron leader now goes by. Because he's left the Empire to be an anonymous superhero or something. And. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is this character. Especially in a book so full of flawed, colorful, multifaceted characters, Mr. Tie Pilot/Private Investigator/Ninja/Super Genius is just. What. What? Why. I guess to give Quell a Dramatic Antagonist, but yeesh, Grandmother was a much more interesting character for just being a diehard Imperial. Every time I came upon one of his chapters it was just so "I've had enough of this dude." And none of this is really much evidence that Editorial Made Freed Write This, but this character actually does feel so out of place in this book that I can't help but wonder if Freed was encouraged to make Devon into this absurdly badass villain so it would be So Dramatic when he's revealed in the end to almost certainly be the Future Antagonist. His sections also feel like they have something closer to what I've seen from other writers trying to analogize Space Fascism and Not Fascism, like Devon mentally comparing slavery under the old Republic and the Empire and deciding the Empire was better because they regulated it and that??? Makes it better???? wtf???? Which, this could be the same unreliable narrator aspect that Quell had, except that Quell you know has flaws, whereas Devon's only flaw is I guess deciding to go back to the Space Fascists because Family, even though the reasons he had for leaving in the first place are still all there and completely unchanged so like???? ugh whatever.
But – overall good, would continue to read
So I read Alexander Freed's Alphabet Squadron and for the most part really loved it? It may be my favorite Star Wars novel now (after A New Dawn, which still wins for on-point Hera characterization, fine). There were a few things I didn't like or that so clearly came off as Editorial Mandate, but overall it tackles a lot of interesting concepts successfully where other writers have fallen, and adds many cool and creative elements to the universe that I haven't seen before.
The book takes place post-Return of the Jedi and is about a group of pilots who are collected to hunt down Shadow Wing, a particularly dangerous Imperial TIE contingent. True to form (I think) for a Rebel story, this is a ragtag band that is sourced from various places - the squadron's organizers and de facto leaders are Caern Adan, a New Republic intelligence officer who is extremely determined and also totally out of his depth, and the book's protagonist Yrica Quell, a relatively recent Imperial defector who herself used to fly with Shadow Wing. These two recruit Nath Tensent, also a former Imperial defector who's more interested in being a scoundrel but especially hates Shadow Wing and so goes along with it; Kairos, who spends most of her time being a Mysterious Alien but okay I still love her; and Chass na Chadic and Wyl Lark, two long-term Rebellion pilots. Each pilot specializes in a different type of ship, hence "Alphabet." They operate out of the Lodestar, a New Republic carrier led by our Special Guest Preexisting Character General Syndulla.
A few of my highlights were:
- This is, I think, the first actual fighter pilot story of the new canon. I think some people expected that of Star Wars Resistance and it was… not. But this book is first and foremost about pilots, and the work of pilots. It also kiiind of wants to be about spies, or at least intelligence work, and it is the latter to some extent. But a lot of reading it felt like watching the pilot-heavy episodes of Battlestar Galactica. In a good way! And the "Alphabet Squadron" concept means organically incorporating basically every type of Rebel fighter, which is more fun than All X-Wings All The Time. Freed also very successfully makes space battles engaging on the page which is no small feat, there are multiple books where I've checked out on action and space battle action in particular because I can't follow what the author is trying to say. Freed works very well at giving the battles both beauty and horror, which makes them more emotionally engaging than a straight up list of maneuvers.
- With one exception, it's miles ahead of anything else I've read when it comes to handling Imperial characters. While the book shifts around POVs, the protagonist is really Quell, a pilot who defected from the Empire after Endor. And while she as an unreliable narrator tries to justify her actions, Freed through the narrative never does. He doesn't rationalize, justify, or defend her behavior in up until very recently supporting and perpetuating Space Fascism. He really doesn't engage in any of this "well sometimes they have a point in being mad at the Rebellion" kind of thing I've seen other writers do when trying to be "complex," nor does he take on the nihilistic attitude of "they're really all the same so it doesn't matter." Freed's narrative here understands that support for fascistic regimes is driven by emotion rather than logic, and that understanding makes for a richer story that combines Imperial defectors and Rebel stalwarts.
- Very creative additions to the universe: the interrogation ball droid reprogrammed to be a benevolent(?) psychiatrist like, *chef's kiss* there; Chass' music yes yes very good yes; Wyl Lark's whole background; Imperial numbers stations; Kairos in general; the Rebel pilots' nicknames for individual TIE Fighters; in general I thought Freed did really effective work with the planets, I was always really into it when I was reading about them and there was enough evocative detail to get a feel of the place without the narrative getting distracted.
- I like that there's a nice mix of humans and aliens? Tensent, Quell, and Lark are human, which Tensent and Quell are both ex-Imperials and so kind of have to be. Chass is Theelin, Adan is Balosar, Kairos is This Alien Species Will Not Be Disclosed At This Time. Anyway I was recently reading one of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars rulebooks which decided all Balosars are culturally conmen and grifters because of One Stupid Scene In A Movie and I'm still mad about it. why are ttrpg books so terrible at wordbuilding I'm saying
- For me, Freed managed to handle the darker themes/events of the book without falling into the kind of nihilism that has put me off other SW writers. There are some very dark elements to this story, but it's a full on war story and while I didn't always enjoy them, I did come out feeling like they were there for the purpose of a narrative about war and violence, and not the kind of performative edginess a lot of writers seem to like sinking into. I never felt like Freed was screaming "look how dark this is! This isn't your little kid's Star Wars!" and etc., and Freed also maintains the line of war is hell but also genocidal fascism so...
- Yes, okay, Hera was fine. It's fine. She's fine.
... and that's as much as I think I can say without going into straight up spoilers, so -
So we have to start with Quell, our principal point of view character and whose .... redemption? arc? mostly drives the story. Coming off the 'hero of another story' (yikes) Iden Versio from BF2/Inferno Squadron, or Sinjir from Aftermath who's played so so so so so to Brooding Former Bad Boy archetype that it's just unbearable - wow do I love Quell. Or at least, I love how she is handled as a character and how Freed writes her, particularly in how he very pointedly does not beg the audience for empathy or understanding on her behalf. Quell is not someone who joined the Empire because they helped get rid of pirates on her planet or the Rebellion Did Something Bad to Her - in fact, she initially joined with the intent of defecting to the Rebellion after flight training. She has no logical reason for supporting the Empire or staying with it as long as she did and through as much as she did - really, it seems her strongest reason for doing so was simply inertia. That she was already in one place and didn't have the drive to leave.
But the other motivation that Freed latches onto most strongly for Imperials is the idea of camaraderie. Which is just honestly brilliant - it's not that the Empire is right or just, it's not this logical argument of Actually The Empire Also Did Good Things So That Makes It Okay That I Supported Its Genocidal Fascism. What Freed places most centrally in the Imperial point of view is that your fellow pilots, soldiers, and officers are your family, and you fight to protect your family no matter what. No matter what they do, no matter what's asked of you, your family and the defense of your family from the enemy is what matters. And that's so great, because it shows how emotion, in this idea of family and camaraderie, overrides the logic of Genocide and Oppression are bad, actually. It's a kind of small-scale us vs. them nationalism that is uncomfortably shared with both fascistic regimes and military communities in general – and also makes sense of how Imperials would justify and carry out attacks on civilians, as the military machine has been disconnected from any justifiable reason for its existence, and the survival of that machine, rather than the safety of noncombatants, become what's paramount.
(Freed doesn't get into this which may or may not be for the best because there are... very few writers I might trust this with, but I would kind of like to see a comparison with that and when "good guys" engage in a similar "found family" dynamic. There was a scene with Hera and Adan that rubbed me the wrong very slightly on that mark, but I think Hera's reaction to Adan's lack of military experience was meant to be about his wanting to lead a fighter squadron, rather than just in general – it's not a bad idea as something to explore within the Rebellion, but we've seen Hera deal with civilians, and she has specific reasons not to fall into that thinking, so I'd kind of want a reason as to why that would have changed. But this is beside the point. And I don't think was intended. Though my whole point is that would be an interesting thing to explore! But I'd also trust almost no one with it. Whatever.)
But I put a ? next to redemption for Quell because it's not entirely clear what she wants, and not in a bad way, just in a 'this is a mess person' way. Throughout the book, it first and foremost feels like what Quell wants is to break through the lethargy that kept her in the Empire. Joining the Rebellion means working with people who are generally apathetic toward her well-being, if not outright hostile, and not without reason. Tensent straight up threatens to murder her and the narrative isn't defensive of Quell. It's not saying Tensent is right, but Freed handles this similarly to how he handles Quell's injuries and her stress - Freed doesn't use these as tools to elicit pity, or to make Quell seem put upon, or even to demonstrate what she's willing to do to make up for her past behavior. Quell thinks frequently of how she can "prove" herself, but also what she's "earned" or can ever earn. She works with the Rebellion, it seems, because she finally understands where her previous inertia left her. Looking back over the book from the end, I get the impression that Freed intended to write Quell as reluctant to really admit to herself why she was there, to still hold to ideas about how the Empire wasn't really as bad as the Rebellion made it out to be, that it had been fine until Operation Cinder, while disabusing her of those notions over the course of the book until the climactic finale when we have Quell's Dramatic Backstory Reveal: that she left the Empire because her mentor/squad leader told her to, after she'd not only participated in but led a genocidal mission as part of Operation Cinder.
Which the Rebellion presumably now knows, and which certainly makes Quell a war criminal. Not because she's some mustache-twirling villain who enjoys murder, not even because she believed in the Empire, but simply because she didn't question her orders. She defects because her mentor tells her that if this is what she'll do for a dead Empire on its way to defeat, then she needs to get the fuck out now. As this is the first book in a trilogy (I think?), how Quell's story will be resolved is left open. But it doesn't feel like a redemption arc. I don't say that to presume any particular resolution, but. The New Republic uses her because they need her. The other members of Alphabet Squadron follow her lead because they need a leader. The bottom line is that in the midst of a war, and no one can afford an immediate understanding of justice. But I'd guess Freed intends to get to that at some point, and I think he's left what justice for Quell would look like as a genuinely open question.
Also, Quell's conversations with the Interrogator Droid are some of my favorite moments in the book, I love them and I love Reprogrammed Interrogator Droid. I also love that Quell, like really most of the characters in this book, feels very thoroughly human. She's stressed, she's lethargic, she panics and nearly destroys yet another planet for it. I don't need all characters to be as extremely flawed as Quell is - I mean, again, war criminal. But also while I like that she didn't have or pursue ideals until pushed into having to accept her capacity for unconscionable evil, she was someone in this universe who could afford not to have ideals. And it was also maybe a relief after what felt like some writers writing rather admiringly of their Space Fascists.
Being almost incidentally shoved into your ideals is something she has in common with Caern Adan, a Balosar man who was a financial reporter??? Until the Empire just started arbitrarily imprisoning him for no reason and that was what "radicalized" him, so to speak? Yes okay I loved that backstory, if in part because it wasn't just a straightforward "the Empire killed my family" and etc. Adan's now a New Republic intelligence officer who has Opinions about how the New Republic has to transition from being the militia that was the Rebellion and operate through governance and not militarism and he's right but also is just so out of his depth here. Freed I think successfully makes him come off as an ordinary person swept up into extraordinary circumstances. Adan also occupies a somewhat weird position in the narrative because while he is the drive that ultimately forms Alphabet Squadron, the extent to which he's their leader is a little more complicated. It's certainly his ends they're working toward, but it's Hera's territory he has to work out of – she insists he choose someone else to direct the pilots, and that ends up being Quell, and as the squadron's leader, and she's also the one generally giving the squad operations. I really liked the one-sided power-jockeying Adan engages in versus Hera, and his fear that she could take the squadron from him and his mission, meanwhile it's simultaneously clear that while Adan is focused on one fire, Hera is dealing with thousands. I think that uncertainty in his position really works for the narrative, both as Quell's direct recruiter/kind of extortionist, and as a non-military voice in a setting that's otherwise generally going to be military people.
And the next major character to show up is Kairos, and we… don't learn that much about Kairos? Maybe she's filling in the role of Alien Who Can't Speak Basic like Chewbacca, but having her just not speak at all is a much more writeable version of that. But I am hoping we get more POV chapters from her like we did near the end of this book. And even with the limited information we have about Kairos, Freed does give her consistent, demonstrative actions – that she allows Quell to leave with a stolen X-Wing when Quell expresses her need to "prove" herself, her "intensity" in fighting Stormtroopers, and the moment she finally opened up to the others in the whole 'everyone tells their back story' campfire scene. Incidentally I'm a sucker for 'everybody tells their back story' campfire scenes.
Tensent, the ex-Imperial, ex-Rebel scoundrel who rejoins the New Republic to go after Shadow Wing was probably the character I had the most immediate reservations about, just because I feel like I've seen his type a lot before, and it tends to take a flavor of "look how jaded and smarter than everyone else I am." When there was a Hera scene from his POV I was thinking "you are on thin fucking ice pal" the entire time. But the negatives I was expecting never really materialized. Tensent certainly is jaded, but Freed allows him genuine interest and curiosity in others – he makes sincere efforts to befriend the other members of the squadron, and perhaps because essentially every other character has experienced a loss similar to his, his Tragic Backstory doesn't make him uniquely Weathered and Experienced. While he does go rogue in the final mission, that's not entirely independent of anyone else, and his character was probably the best positioned to kill Nurress – while others had their own reasons to want revenge on Shadow Squadron, Tensent, Lark, and Chass were the most directly impacted by their actions, and Lark had other shit to do and Chass is like – that's not her narrative place. Yet. So it didn't feel like Tensent getting this extra narrative attention because male writer loves his Gruff Hard-Edged Male Character. And Mr. Gruff Exterior did genuinely show vulnerability and emotional investment in others without having to be a complete jackass about it so, you know, good job.
Our final recruits are Rebel pilots Wyl Lark and Chass na Chadic, who thanks to Quell tracking them down are the only survivors of a Shadow Wing attack on the Rebel freighter Hellion's Dare. Which means they come into this completely traumatized. The Hellion's Dare sequences were a little weak for me because it was just a lot of names being thrown at you and there wasn't enough time to develop any of these very low-level side characters to really be viscerally hurt by their deaths. On the other hand, the speed at which the situation deteriorated did I think help convey Lark and Chass' mental states going into the main narrative. And it did allow for Freed to create some interesting maneuvers, like the Imperial practice of isolating a single fighter near the end of a battle to access its navigation data. I also really liked Lark's lesson in why We Don't Talk To Fascists and how it played into the rest of the book. Lark in general had some really nice worldbuilding in his background and how he was culturally chosen to join the Rebellion, which made him into something more than what could have been a pretty broadly drawn "nice guy" next to someone like Tensent.
Chass I had more complicated feelings for. I initially found her really frustrating, but then grew to really enjoy her reckless abandon and her humor and her music. Her martyr complex is… another story, though for most of the book what bothered me about it is that I wasn't sure the narrative was really questioning it, or whether Freed basically agreed that she should simply be allowed to die if she could find the right blaze of glory. By the end it seemed the narrative did come down on 'no this is extremely unhealthy' given that she nearly lets a planet burn rather than give up her great death wish aspirations, but. That's another where I guess we'll find out in a possible later book. I also found her backstory a little shallow by comparison to some of the other characters, but that's more discussed in the Editorial Mandate section of this.
And then aside from Adan and the Alphabet Squadron pilots, the most prominent character is IT-O psychiatrist, which again I love the concept and I love the execution here. I can't recall seeing another psychiatrist droid in this franchise (or a psychiatrist in general, which), but I found the way Freed gave the droid a very mechanical way of thinking that also reflected how he needed to react and appear in order to achieve certain reactions or feelings on the part of his "patients," while simultaneously seeming genuine rather than manipulative simply because he has no apparent ulterior motive beyond what he was reprogrammed for – that was just all really cool. It's also a pretty rare instance of a droid in a somewhat authoritative position relative to the other characters. He's not there to complete menial or mechanical tasks or act as an interpreter or generally just do whatever he's told, and the other characters often have to cooperate with him. (And being rebellious or grouchy is not the same as being in a position of authority.) The mindless or feeble military droids aren't really similar, the closest I can think of a fairly hostile medical droid in one of the Kanan comics. And the IT-O unit here is a lot more complex than Sarcastically Annoyed.
We have some other side New Republic characters, but obviously the most prominent of these is Hera Syndulla. This book imagines General Syndulla as confident and businesslike, a leader who deeply knows her ship and her crew and offers attention and some encouragement, but also has little room for patience or indulgence. She's really kind of used as that Dumbledore figure who just outright states the themes the author wants the audience to think about. Some of these I think would actually be a good fit for Hera, such as the difficulty the Rebellion faces in transitioning from being a rebellion to being the ones in power. Hera's experience, including beyond the Rebellion, has always been as the "underdog", as fighting against existing power structures. How that person decides to or defers from becoming part of institutional power once she has access to it is an interesting idea, but Freed unfortunately doesn't seem to have thought about this much beyond putting words in her mouth. Which, fine, she's a background character here. It just could have been another tool Freed used to pursue the themes he wanted to pursue anyway, and I'll get to this more also in the Editorial Mandate section. But again, beyond my overly picky eye, there was nothing wrong with this Hera portrayal. She was allowed to be a military commander, and I mean, the narrative was never condescending nor outright hostile to her, which is about where my bar is at this point. She's allowed to be a military leader while also showing compassion and engagement toward her troops. Like, I don't know what else to say, she's not treated as incompetent and here to be your mother, good job Freed!
This could also get into how the Rebellion/New Republic in general is portrayed, which is a line Freed walks pretty well for me here. Leaders like Hera don't exist to be killjoys, the New Republic isn't perfect but their faults also aren't ignored (and I think things like not prioritizing conditions at Traitor's Remorse aren't great but are also believable). One thing I didn't like was Freed's occasional suggestion that early rebel work didn't require strategic planning/thinking. That kind of work definitely does require strategic thinking, as much if not moreso than when you have plenty of resources to expend and bodies to throw at your wars. And where it didn't, I mean, it certainly should have. But regardless, there's never any Which Is Really Worse question – our Imperial perspective in this book opens when Shakara Nuress or "Grandmother" wiping out populated areas simply because they were close to an Imperial operating base. Fascism is worse, the end.
And speaking of Nurress, I really liked her as our principal Imperial point of view! Yet she's not really our antagonist – as much as this book has an antagonist it's basically Shadow Wing as a whole, but also just the conflict of whether this team would get its shit together and/or whether any individual member would get their shit together. Which, you know, they do, but it ends up coming together around them/Quell really nearly destroying another planet in panic.
Which, I liked the progression of this team, from their fuck ups in practice drills, to their first fight together against a surprise Imperial target, to their recovery mission at the Jedi Temple that gave them space to get to know each other, to the climactic battle sequence. Quell remains somewhat removed from the group through all of this, which I think given her final backstory reveal ends up making sense, and if that information becomes generally known among them it might be interesting to see how they react. But I think it all builds up well to get them to this attack on Shadow Wing, which doesn't end up succeeding, exactly, but Hera's right that they pull a victory from the brink of catastrophe.
One thing I wasn't entirely sure of by the end was, if the blowing the reactor of the Imperial station was going to create the atmosphere firestorm that was the whole reason they couldn't have a capital ship battle… why… did they plant detonators to do that? But looking over that again my impression is that this wouldn't have happened had the Imperials not blown holes in their own station to get their fighters out, and the plan was to disable rather than destroy the station. And Quell hadn't considered that before panicking and ordering the reactor blown, so. It makes sense for her character, to panic in at seeing her old squadron, to feel a need to protect those who were now her own, to need to react immediately, to do something, and to have her break from inertia put her at the brink of destroying another world.
Which, I thought the whole setting and the circumstances it created was really cool! I really liked this idea that space fighting had to be limited because the planet's atmosphere could easily catch fire, and I really loved that the final battle, with the Empire's command disabled, ended up with fighter ships on both sides desperately working together, and dying alongside one another, to stop that disastrous chain reaction from destroying Pandem Nai. I thought it was a really cool way to allow for a confrontation without a resolution, to throw some humanity into the conflict without again this dissolving into "everyone's the same really," and Freed gave space to each of his main characters who took up different actions during the fight.
And Tensent killing Nuress was pretty obviously coming, but I'll give it to Freed that I was vindictively hoping Nuress would die in despair, realizing too late that she had been wrong, and then when he gave me that it was all "oh damn it I have basic human empathy."
Anyway, there were a few things that rang out pretty heavy as Editorial Made Me Do This, which isn't always bad but, well, these were:
- I mean, honestly, Hera. It's not that she feels tacked on here – it actually completely makes sense to have some higher up Rebel commander in this narrative, given that the "leaders" of Alphabet Squadron otherwise are Adan and Quell, neither of whom can actually do that. Freed wrote this group of characters so that they would require a background leader like Hera, and while Freed could have invented a character or idk I guess used any other existing Rebel leader, Hera is the only canonical Rebel general other than Luke who's also a fighter pilot. Maybe. The point is she isn't at all out of place here and her appearance makes sense.
But Freed is best at writing Hera through the eyes of others. There were a few moments that felt extremely well-chosen for her character: her forcing people to follow her through the ship while they talked (yes, she knows every centimeter of her ship and she is also fine with annoying the fuck out of people); her telling Quell that she thought Quell would've liked seeing the Jedi Temple (she did live with a Jedi for a decade); and Adan's mental comment about her that "all soldiers are suicidal." But when it came from her perspective, Freed seemed to be writing from a provided list of character points, which, granted, he probably was. She thinks about her "family" or is described telling stories about them to the crew, but there's never more detail to it than that she had this "family," nor any consideration for her experience outside that one particular point about her because That's The Canon We Have, I guess. The most specific thing mentioned is actually Hera saying she was "there" when the Rebels "brought home first prototype" of the B-wing, which must refer to an episode in Rebels when she was actually the first to fly a B-wing, and that is so totally the modest way she'd say it and had to require knowledge of that event in particular so - okay, good job Freed. But otherwise, it can sound stilted and removed, kind of like Freed's just writing Sequel Trilogy Leia but with this "she used to have a family" thing. Which is probably how he was writing her generally, but perhaps having it from another's point of view makes it feel less hollow.
(Which honestly, I'm not complaining about Hera's treatment here, Freed's totally respectful and does not make her naïve or incompetent or Everyone's Mommy, quite the opposite, it's fine. But I'm starting to think that the reason John Jackson Miller's portrayal of her in A New Dawn works so well for me is that he couldn't use any of her existing canon, except to formulate how a person like this would come into being, which is work I imagine other writers didn't do for one reason or another.)
2 – Chass na Chadic's obsession with Jyn Erso – I know Freed wrote the Rogue One novelization and so he may have… let's say, a different idea of Jyn's character than I do, and how this whole thing is supposed to work or come off. I don't really know. But part of this is Chass repeatedly imagining or "remembering" things Jyn did that there's no way she could have witnessed in any form, like things that were definitely not being recorded so another person in this universe could watch them at some point, so it just comes off a lot like "hey remember those scenes you liked in Rogue One!!?!?!?" (Also I'm not going to harp on this a lot, but that movie has been out for nearly three years now, you know what lines were actually in the movie and it's telling that you won't stick to them.) It's also just the case that this book otherwise has zero ties to the actual movies, I don't think anyone ever mentions Han or Leia or Luke or anything, Hera has a thought about how Mon Mothma owes her dinner and some of the characters are described as having been present at events from the movies, but that's it. With the only preexisting character in this book being Hera, who is also from a Side Property, I can imagine editorial was like, "you have to work in a Movie Character People Already Know."
And I mean, maybe Freed did answer that with "well okay then I'm going to make that be the reason this character has A FUCKING DEATH WISH."
3 – Devon, as Quell's previous mentor/squadron leader now goes by. Because he's left the Empire to be an anonymous superhero or something. And. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is this character. Especially in a book so full of flawed, colorful, multifaceted characters, Mr. Tie Pilot/Private Investigator/Ninja/Super Genius is just. What. What? Why. I guess to give Quell a Dramatic Antagonist, but yeesh, Grandmother was a much more interesting character for just being a diehard Imperial. Every time I came upon one of his chapters it was just so "I've had enough of this dude." And none of this is really much evidence that Editorial Made Freed Write This, but this character actually does feel so out of place in this book that I can't help but wonder if Freed was encouraged to make Devon into this absurdly badass villain so it would be So Dramatic when he's revealed in the end to almost certainly be the Future Antagonist. His sections also feel like they have something closer to what I've seen from other writers trying to analogize Space Fascism and Not Fascism, like Devon mentally comparing slavery under the old Republic and the Empire and deciding the Empire was better because they regulated it and that??? Makes it better???? wtf???? Which, this could be the same unreliable narrator aspect that Quell had, except that Quell you know has flaws, whereas Devon's only flaw is I guess deciding to go back to the Space Fascists because Family, even though the reasons he had for leaving in the first place are still all there and completely unchanged so like???? ugh whatever.
But – overall good, would continue to read
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But I'm glad I could give you an idea of what was in the book, even if you might not get through it! :)
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I think some of it is that its a book that's so about grey area and difficult post war stuff and I'm just not in the space for that kind of tough story. Though I have been reading an amazing nonfiction book about one of the women leaders of the French Resistance Intelligence network which works better for me called Madame Fourcade's Secret War by Lynne Olson. I really like how she writes about history mainly WWII and really focuses in on stories that aren't often told like the Polish pilots.