Nicis's Reviews > Resistance Reborn

I danced at the edge of 3 stars when I was at 80% but, at the end, the last chapters didn't had the pay off I expected. But let's go back to the beggining.

Resistance Reborn is supposed to be in line with the rest of the "adult" books of SW -think Bloodline, Last Shot, Aftermath, Thrawn- but it actually feels like a YA one, and not a particulary good one.

There are chuncks of the book that are good, mainly the bits that are more heavy with descriptions than dialogue, because freaking hell was the dialogue bad and awkward (something I was already afraid of with the snippes they shared before release). Rey literally stuttering in every scene? Finn *gestures around* in general??? Her most solid voice was Poe, something I appreciated with him being the main character here. Wedge was also solid.

Yes, it's cool to see a lot of the other characters we know from the other complementary material here (Black squadron from the Poe comics, Zay and Shriv from Battlefron II, Norra and Wedge from Aftermath, mentions of Hera or Sabine, etc.), but as the book progressed, characters were divided in 4 groups (3 in resistance missions to get ships/information/people and one grounded on base) and one of them felt so irrelevant that I would had prefered not having that people on the book at all. (view spoiler)[I'm talking about the Zay group mission. Yes, they got some ships but nor the characters nor the action were interesting and dragged a story already quite boring. The dead of a team member? I couldn't have cared less. (hide spoiler)]

One of my problems with all the most recent batch of SW books is how terrible every writer seems to be about their villains. They are so involved with their heroes been amazing that the bad guys end up always a sort of punch line: nothing intimitating about them, no intelligence, no real danger or demostration of why the First Order is something difficult to defeat. I need tension to enjoy a story and HAVING A TON OF FAMOUS CHARACTERS IS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR THAT.

As an anecdote, I read 3 different fanfics (70k-90k) in between the book because I was that bored about everything that was happening, and I couldn't stop rolling my eyes every time the bad guy had a scene until he just... almost beats a girl to death??? It was super random and, I asume, a way to show the dark side??? Of course he's then unceremoniously deal with so not even that felt relevant.

Having been a mediocre book until that point I was waiting for the redemption they usually get with the action on the last 4-5 chapters but, as I said on the top, it never came. The actiont was flat with no real stakes, and so Resistance Reborn cemented it's fate as just an ok book that I'll probably forget in a few days. At least is real that you don't really need it to watch Rise of Skywalker and it does includes the return of a personal favorite.

(view spoiler)[Yes, I love Ransolm Casterfo, too, and credit where is due to Claudia Gray for making me care for him in wich is still one the best books of this era: Bloodline. (hide spoiler)]