OK, If anybody recalls, I was very critical of the first Aftermath book's writing style. This one (and the one in between) has been better in that regard, so I'm going to save my criticism for the story itself.

So, what's the big secret here? Is Gallius Rax actually Snoke? What is the secret of Jakku? Read on...

Rax is not Snoke. He's not even much of a leader really. He's a zealot suicide bomber, and Jakku is his bomb vest. Yep, the whole plot is to destroy what remains of the Empire (along with any pesky New Republic types that happen to be nearby) by setting Jakku to self-destruct. Yep again, that super secret "Observatory" on Jakku is just the detonator for making the planet go BOOM. It's all the story of the Emperor's "Contingency" which is to burn his whole Empire to the ground so nobody else can rule it. It's pretty cartoonish IMO.

Oh, Rax doesn't plan to die there though, because he's Super Evil and plans to head into the Unknown Regions with his merry band of fanatical child soldiers. He'll form a new society outside of known space and eventually return to wipe out the corrupt fools that remain behind. It's like Kerensky's Exodus from BattleTech that leads to the Clans only with the stupid turned up to 11.

Since we all know that Jakku survives, we know the plan fails. However, we have a really stupid battle described along with plenty of hokey excuses for how starships get pulled down to the surface more-or-less intact. We have more ramming in space battles (why is this becoming such a thing?), and somehow a rebel battleship gets blown to hell with turbolaser salvos literally punching all the way through it, but its Super-Mega-Awesome-Tractor-Beam can still power-up and wrangle a Super Star Destroyer to the ground (yeeee-hah!).

This book drips with guest appearances: Lando's back. Remember him? JJ Abrams didn't. We also get to see a pathetic continuation of Jar Jar's later years and appearances by Dengar and Embo.

After this, my opinion of the new canon continues to drop. I need something to give me a new hope...

20 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I need something to give me a new hope...

She has a name: Rey.

14 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

She has a name: Rey.

I've already long since flushed from my mind the turd that was Episode VII. I liked the characters, but the story was terrible.

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I've already long since flushed from my mind the turd that was Episode VII. I liked the characters, but the story was terrible.

I agree with almost every word of your comment. The only part I can't agree with is that I'm unable to forget the movie. But it did have great light side characters (the evil ones really sucked) and the story ripped off so much of the plot from Episode IV (including an X-wing trench run) that I still want to spit on J.J.Abrams.

Well, if I hadn't already been committed to ignoring official canon, I sure as heck would be now.

For trivia, this book also sets the black Imperial uniform as being for NCOs while the gray one is for commissioned officers (and white is for the top, such as grand admirals).

Of course, if they wanted that scheme, they probably should have used white for all flag officers and just used some added decoration (epaulets or sash or something) for grand admirals, moffs, and the like.