Star Wars: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray
Publisher: LucasBooks
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: Novel (560 pages)
Rating: 5/5 stars
I’d heard so many good things about this book that I decided to give it a shot. I usually don’t like young adult so I wasn’t sure it was for me.
I’m so glad I took the chance. This was easily the best new canon Star Wars novel I’ve read so far by a long shot. In my opinion, never before has Star Wars gotten so personal. This story of the love and connection during war, between Thane and Ciena, was as captivating as any I’ve ever read. Sure there are some young adult elements like during their training and some love scenes that had me roll my eyes, but never enough to take me out of it.
The war between the rebels and the empire is a staple of Star Wars as everybody knows, but it never felt realistic to me until now. It was more an exaggerated dark vs light conflict. But seeing the war from both sides, from the perspectives of two normal officers who are drawn to opposite sides, really had me invested in the struggle. This book didn’t need the force or bounty hunters to hold my interest, and I think proved to me how ripe the Star Wars universe is for every type of story.
And the way Gray plays on the events of the original trilogy to bring Thane and Ciena at crucial times added so much to those movies for me. It made me care about the people on the Death Stars who died in ways the movies couldn’t. The horrors of war were plainly visible here, like a story of two people on opposite sides of our own civil war drawn to fight one another.
I highly recommend this book. Don’t be scared off by the young adult tag if that’s not your thing. This book is rife with realistic relationships and adult themes.
This book can be purchased for kindle here.
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