Thursday, September 17, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Star Wars: Shadow Fall by Alexander Freed


Shadow Fall is the second book in Alexander Freed's "Alphabet Squadron" trilogy, following the first book - conveniently named Alphabet Squadron - which I reviewed here.  Alphabet Squadron was seemingly planned as a big deal multimedia project, with the novels meant to tie in with a comic book from the other side, but the comic book petered out after five issues (which were merely okay), so now it appears to be only another trilogy of novels set in the Star Wars universe.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because Alphabet Squadron was one of the most interesting Star Wars novels I've ever read, a dark cynical novel questioning what it means for Imperials to defect and fight for the New Republic after all they've done and how different the two sides really are on the ground level.  And it was really good at asking and dealing with those questions, making me really want to see where the story would go from there.

And Shadow Fall remains fascinating to read, in a way that still makes me so surprised that Disney was willing to publish this trilogy (in a good way).  The book doesn't lighten up its dark cynical take on Star Wars at all, and its lead characters - the four members of the squadron and a major antagonist character - remain fascinating in how they react to the dismal situations they find themselves in, in a galaxy on the edge of change....and yet not.  This is again really not the same type of book as the old X-Wing novels, being a far darker grittier piece of SciFi, but it's really damn good and I still highly recommend it.

NOTE:  Spoilers for book 1 are inevitable, but they don't really matter too much for your enjoyment of book 1.  That said, you may want to skim/reread book 1, or if you've read book 1 brush up on the characters again in Wikipedia, as this book doesn't recap exactly who everyone is in any way before it jumps in.


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After the events on Pandem Nai, Alphabet Squadron is in a state of stasis, running missions as part of Hera Syndulla's taskforce while searching for leads for the remnants of Shadow Wing.  Each of the members of the squadron is left wondering whether its worth to continue....except for Yrica Quell, who simply wonders in fear when their leader, Caern Adan, will reveal the truth about her defection to the others, and in the meantime, finds herself having sudden flashbacks to her time in Shadow Wing.  But soon the team is helping Syndulla's taskforce with a costly invasion of an out of the way planet in a mission that only they know is secretly a bait for a trap for Shadow Wing.

But unbeknownst to the team, the Shadow Wing that remains is not the one they first met - as Soran Keize, ace of aces and Quell's mentor who pushed her to defect, has returned to take command of the unit.  Keize knows the Empire to be doomed but has come to the conclusion that the New Republic will not let them live in peace either, and so has decided that he will find a way to hold the unit together and alive....no matter the cost.  And so when his forces meet up with Alphabet Squadron once more, they will do so in a way unexpected by anyone....with substantial costs to both sides.  In the aftermath, the members of Alphabet Squadron will be forced to make difficult decisions....or face extinction.
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Like its predecessor, Shadow Fall tells its story by jumping between the third person points of view of various characters - the four non-Kairos members of Alphabet Squadron (Chass, Nath, Wyl, and Quell) as well as Shadow Wing's potential new leader, Soran Keize.  None of these characters are particularly heroic or really WANT to be where they are, with tragic backstories for basically the whole main cast (sometimes of their own making), and the result is a book with a dark cynical tone unlike that of most Star Wars works.  This is a book which posits that for normal people, the New Republic really isn't different than the Empire - an entity which is often corrupt when it intrudes on people's lives, and which is supposedly willing to take actions just like that it fought against the Empire for.  We've been conditioned as Star Wars fans to disagree with that point of view, but this book makes a decent case on some level (even as some events are misinterpreted by the Imperial point of view, in Soran Keize).  Don't get me wrong, the Imps are still the bad guys here, and yet no one is really wholly good in a war like this.

Once again that's best conveyed through the story of Yrica Quell, Imperial defector, leader of Alphabet Squadron, and as revealed at the end of the last book: war criminal implicit in genocide.  After her secret was revealed (mostly), Quell finds herself flashing back to her past and repeatedly questioning herself....but what exactly she's questioning, she's not really sure.  The book doesn't conceal her secret from the rest of the cast for long, and her arc leads to a VERY Star-Wars-y plot mechanic that could seem incredibly cheesy, but instead really works.  I cannot wait really to see where the story takes her in the finale, because it does a great job here of giving her an emotional arc that feels both complete and unsure, leaving me guessing as to her true intentions in her final moments of this book.

But the rest of the cast shouldn't be sold short, either, really.  The book is split up into two parts for good reason, with the second part really throwing everyone for a loop and changing things up massively, resulting in our characters being forced to confront their demons - well Wyl, Chass, and Soran do (Nath sort of just is in this novel, without an arc like the others).  The book does an excellent job showing the stress and difficulty of where the war takes them and how they have to find a way to deal with it all, with the naive Wyl wanting to hope there is some peaceful solution, the cynical Chass thinking everything is shit, and Soran just desperate to find some way for his people to survive with purpose in a world that he is convinced is out entirely to reject them.

Again, it's not a perfect book - I still don't quite love the descriptions of the battles when they occur, which don't quite measure up to prior Star Wars novels, and again Nath doesn't have the journey that the rest of the cast does.  But it's an impressive work that I hardly believe Disney was willing to let them try in the Star Wars universe, with plot twists that I absolutely did not see coming.  I honestly have no clue how it will all end, and I find myself again really curious as to the answers: Is Quell's redemption possible after the atrocities she's committed?  And should she be able to find redemption (and live)?  It's a question and theme I've seen other books try to handle before and one that the Star Wars books in old canon have lightly touched, but this series' more in depth examination is utterly fascinating, and i urge you to check it out.
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