Main Review:

After the highs and lows of Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune, I was in the market for something quick and easy before leaping into some of the bigger books I’ve got lined up to read. Having recently being encouraged by a friend to give space dog-fight simulator Star Wars: Squadrons another go, I angled my deflector shields towards Shadow Fall, the second instalment of Alexander Freed’s Alphabet Squadron series for yet more tales of plucky rebels pilots dealing with the remnants of the Empire in the period between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian.

Now the first book in the series never made it onto the blog, largely because I was struck at the time by how formulaic it felt, even for a Star Wars novel. I was reminded of this fact very soon into Shadow Fall, when I realised I had retained precisely zero information about the main events of the first book and had to try and pick things back up again on the fly (pun only partly intended). With Yrica Quell, former Imperial pilot turned rebel ace front and centre, the galaxy, far far away that Freed takes the audience to is one fraught with tumultuous alliances and a worrying number of cults. The rebels of Alphabet Squadron are more full of secrets and inner turmoil that the average soap opera cast. Drinking too much, guilty over past decisions, and at each other’s throats almost as often as they fight the enemy, every one of them seemed well suited for your typical Bioware RPG, patiently waiting for the opportunity for their backstory to take centre stage and have their core crisis be resolved ‘loyalty-mission’ style. By the end of the book, they’ve all starting to learn the important lesson that ‘everyone is flawed, the trick is doing the right thing anyway’.

It is through the eyes of main antagonist Soran Keize that the most interesting perspective of the book can be found, as through him we find an Empire firmly on the back foot, forced to act cautiously in the face of their looming defeat. Should they scrap X ship to try and salvage another that may be more worth it in the long run? Should they try and join up with the various rival factions of the Empire or try and strike out by themselves? Far from a fanatical ultra-loyal supporter of the (now dead) Emperor, Keize actually seems to care about the livelihoods of the soldiers under his command, which I’m sure is great news to whatever’s left of the Empire’s HR department.

When the book finds its rhythm, the quality is definitely there, and all the boxes you’d expect get ticked, there’s dynamic action, some cool set pieces and lots of things blowing up. The trouble is that the majority of the book just sorts of plods along without any pep or spirit. It is much more of a sequel in the vein of Dead Man’s Chest rather than Shrek 2 or The Last Jedi. The majority of the sub-plots feel tacked on, acting as little more than dead weight to puff out the story. In reality, all they do is keep the characters separate to run down the clock as the book meanders to a fairly weak ending.

My other big rankle with the book was the way it goes about trying to nestle itself into the wider Star Wars canon. It’s not officially a novelisation of Star Wars: Squadrons, but it’s certainly game adjacent. Vanguard Squadron, the heroes of that game are frequently mentioned throughout the book, but whilst the references are frequent, they’re also incredibly shallow, with none of the actual characters from the game actually being referenced by name, rendering them being there at all a bit superfluous. It’s not just Squadrons that gets this treatment though. In order to make the most out the many references the book makes, you need to have played both Battlefront II and Squadrons, watched the majority of Star Wars: Rebels, and read the TIE Fighter comics, the Aftermath trilogy and Twilight Company, not to mention the first book of this series. And honestly, who’s got the time?

There isn’t really much more to say about Shadow Fall. Even compared to other Star Wars novels, which are hardly revolutionary, the book is just sort of fine. It does just enough keep the story going so that things that can be brought to a close in the final part. Here’s hoping it manages to stick the landing better than The Rise of Skywalker did, and manages to do it without leaning on a thousand and one references to other, better, adventures in a galaxy far far away.