Aftermath (novel)

Trapped on an isolated world, a desperate group of rebels is all that stands between the galaxy's freedom and the Empire's fury.

The second Death Star has been destroyed, the Emperor killed, and Darth Vader struck down—devastating blows against the Empire, with major victories for the Rebel Alliance. But the battle for freedom is far from over.

As the Empire reels from its critical defeats at the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance—now a fledgling New Republic—presses its advantage by hunting down the enemy's scattered forces before they can regroup and retaliate. But above the remote planet Akiva, an ominous show of the enemy's strength is unfolding. Out on a lone reconnaissance mission, pilot Wedge Antilles watches Imperial Star Destroyers gather like birds of prey circling for a kill, but is taken captive before he can report back to the New Republic leaders.

Meanwhile, on the planet's surface, former Rebel fighter Norra Wexley has returned to her native world—war weary, ready to reunite with her estranged son, and eager to build a new life in some distant place. But when Norra intercepts Wedge Antilles's urgent distress call, she realizes her time as a freedom fighter is not yet over. What she doesn't know is just how close the enemy is—or how decisive and dangerous her new mission will be.

Determined to preserve the Empire's power, the surviving Imperial elite are converging on Akiva for a top-secret emergency summit—to consolidate their forces and rally for a counterstrike. But they haven't reckoned on Norra and her newfound allies—her technical genius son, a Zabrak bounty hunter, and a reprobate Imperial defector—who are prepared to do whatever they must to end the Empire's oppressive reign once and for all.

The story begins on Coruscant, former capital of the Galactic Empire. A large group of people have gathered in Monument Plaza to see the tearing down of Emperor Palpatine's iconic statue. The statue does not fall at first, but using a speeder attached to some chains that are wrapped around the statue, it finally does. The crowd erupts into applause. Then out of nowhere, three Imperial policemen on speeders arrive, firing into the crowd. In anger, the crowd fights back, throwing stones. A man in the crowd hands his young son, Jak, a stone to throw, realizing this is only the beginning of yet another war.

In the Outer Rim, Captain Wedge Antilles comes out of hyperspace in front of the planet Akiva. He has been doing some low-key reconnaissance for the New Republic, searching Outer Rim worlds for signs of the Empire, theorizing that they will go to the Outer Rim to avoid the Republic. His communications are jammed and two Imperial Star Destroyers drop out of hyperspace and hail his ship. He gives them a fake name, but on the Vigilance, Admiral Rae Sloane sees through his ruse and engages the tractor beam, pulling his little Starhopper towards the Star Destroyer. When his ship approaches landing, Wedge blows it up and jumps, injuring himself but escaping into the ducts.

Norra Wexley also approaches Akiva, her home planet. She has been serving for the Rebel Alliance for years, and now that the war is coming to an end, she wishes to come home to her son. The two Imperial Star Destroyers launch TIE fighters to prevent her ship from running through the blockade, but along with smuggler Owerto Naiucho, they fight their way onto the planet safely, destroying the TIEs.

On the surface of Akiva, Sinjir Rath Velus, former Imperial Loyalty officer, sits in a bar drinking, as he spends every day. A male Twi'lek named Orgadomo Dokura approaches and shows Sinjir the latest propaganda coming out of the New Republic: a holovid of Princess Leia speaking of the fall of the Galactic Empire and the destruction of the second Death Star. Sinjir has seen the Death Star blow up before; he was on Endor when it happened. An Imperial officer and two stormtroopers enter and see them watching the propaganda. Although Sinjir tries to fade away and let them move on, the Twi'lek speaks up against them. The Imperial starts a fight, and before Sinjir knows what he's doing, he takes down the officer and his stormtroopers, leaving the bar with his new companion.

Also on Akiva is Temmin Wexley, playing a game of Galactic Expansion with a repurposed interrogator droid. Three thugs walk in, employees of Surat Nuat, a Sullustan gangster on Akiva. When they threaten him for stealing something very valuable of Surat's, he tricks them into checking out his highly modified B1-series battle droid, Mister Bones. Temmin activates Mister Bones, who takes on all three thugs. Shots are fired from the main entrance, and when Temmin looks, he is surprised to see his mother, Norra Wexley.

By this time, a third Imperial Star Destroyer has arrived above Akiva. These Imperial Star Destroyers have brought Grand Moff Valco Pandion, General Jylia Shale, slaver Arsin Crassus, and Yupe Tashu, a Sith cultist and former advisor to the Emperor. Meanwhile, Wedge is crawling in the ventilation shafts of the Vigilance, with Admiral Rae Sloane searching high and low for him. He reaches the comm station and tries to send out a message to the New Republic, but as soon as he calls for help, he is shot in the shoulder from behind by Sloane. She takes him aboard her shuttle down to the planet to meet the other Imperial leaders.

Back on Akiva, Norra and Temmin share a brief hug, where she realizes he's grown into a man during the three years she's been gone. Temmin sends Mister Bones away to dispose of the bodies and shows his mom around his shop, built in his family's former house. He reveals that he sells junk upstairs, but through a secret passage, he sells real treasures down below, including blasters, detonators, and books. She is shocked, and tries to convince him to stop, but he is angry that she left and abandoned him, choosing the Rebel Alliance instead of him. Realizing that he won't listen to her, she says sorry and stabs a needle in his neck, knocking him unconscious and carrying him away, with the goal of taking him off the planet.

In a flashback, a father on Saleucami and his two sons are sharing dinner. The two sons Dav, a former soldier for the Rebel Alliance, and Webb, a loyal supporter of the Empire and former student at the Imperial Academy. The father gives an anti-war speech and talks about Old Cut, who was a soldier who decided not to fight. This is a reference to Cut Lawquane: a clone trooper who deserted the Clone Army. Imperial TIEs appear and fire, and Dav realizes that Webb turned him in to the Empire. Dav's father gives Dav his speeder, and Dav flees.

Back on Akiva, Jas Emari watches as Arsin Crassus' opulent yacht, the Golden Harp arrives on the planet, waiting to kill him in order to collect the large bounty on his head. Right before she takes the shot, she sees more ships land, the rest of the Imperial leaders. She realizes if she can capture or kill them all, she will collect an even larger bounty, as they are all wanted individuals. Morna Kee, Admiral Sloane's pilot, sees the bounty hunter and shoots her down from her perch. Sloane introduces the Imperials to each other in the satrap's palace in Myrra, the capital of Akiva, and after being swamped with questions about the gunfire outside the palace, she reveals to the others that she has taken Wedge Antilles prisoner. She feels strong tension with Grand Moff Pandion, who clearly sees her as a threat to his intention to rule.

On the planet of Naalol, Chancellor Mon Mothma visits the site of a recent battle, the town still in flames and prisoners being marched away. Her two chief advisors, Hostis and Auxi, debate with her about the merits of decreasing the size of the military. After seeing how one small battle could change forever the lives of the people on this planet, Mon Mothma realizes that war must not be a constant state of existence, and decides to go ahead with the vote to demilitarize.

When Jas Emari awakens from her fall, she finds Surat, the gangster, and a bunch of his thugs surrounding her. He thinks she's in league with his main competition, Temmin, and takes her captive. He is afraid of the New Republic because he knows that they will crack down on his illegal business. When Surat returns to his shop, he finds Sinjir there, who is searching for a way to get off the planet before more Imperials come and find out about his treason. When Sinjir sees Jas, he has a flashback to Endor, where after the rebels had blown up the shield generator, he saw a female Zabrak bounty hunter flee the scene. He now realizes that that woman was the one he sees before him now. When he tries to talk to Surat in order to free her, Surat suspects him of treachery and tells his thugs to fire upon him. Sinjir avoids being shot, but is soon knocked unconscious.

Admiral Ackbar is on his flagship Home One practicing his skills with a kar-shak when he is interrupted by Ensign Deltura, who tells him that Captain Antilles is no longer responding to his comms and has not checked in recently. Ackbar sends out search teams looking for the lost Captain.

When Temmin wakes up from the drugs that put him to sleep, he finds himself with his mother on an Imperial ship. She needs his help to get to one of the freighters so that they can escape the planet, but he starts arguing, telling her he can't leave his whole life behind. Telling her he has a plan, he steals a speeder, drawing the attention of an entire squadron of stormtroopers. Two speeders follow closely behind, firing their lasers with the clear intent to kill. Instead of going into the forest to lose them, like his mother suggests, Temmin takes off into the city, where the streets are barely large enough for them to navigate. After losing one of the stormtroopers' speeders, Temmin jumps off his speeder, landing on the other Imperial's speeder and taking out the driver. Norra has no choice but to speed on, realizing once again she lost her son.

In the satrap's palace, the meeting between the leaders of the Empire begins. The group assembled is the Imperial Future Council, IFC, with the goal of planning the future of the Empire. With revelations that two Rebel A-Wing fighters were shot down by the Vigilance before they could escape to report their findings, the meeting is thrown into chaos. There is little trust between each individual present, and a constant jockeying for power. Pandion insists that Sloane bring out the entire Imperial fleet that is in hiding in order to surprise the New Republic when they bring an armada, but in the end, Sloane's idea of sending the Imperial Star Destroyers away so that their ships cannot be detected wins, and with that the space above Akiva is once again clear.

Norra speeds off to the home of her sister, Esmelle. Instead of finding Temmin there, as he promised, she is alone. Temmin was back at his shop, spying on the thugs who were ransacking it. They still hadn't found the secret entrance to the lower half of his shop. However, he falls off the roof because of how slippery it is, and the noise draws the attention of one of the thugs, who captures Temmin. Soon after, Norra shows up, looking for her son, and shoots the only thug still there after he tries to shoot her first.

Sinjir wakes up in a cage, dangling from the ceiling in a dark room, after someone threw several stones at him. When he looks around, he sees that it was Jas who was throwing the stones. She uses a lockpick that she keeps hidden in a fake horn on her head to pick her lock, then going and releasing him. They go to Surat's place and find him about to remove Temmin's tongue, before killing him. Jas pushes Sinjir in, and he defeats one of Surat's thugs and steals away with Temmin. However, right as they are about to leave the cantina above Surat's prison, a quartet of stormtroopers arrive. They sneak out the side door, taking out one of Surat's thugs, but are soon pursued into a dead end. Jas drops her blaster in surrender, but then, through the lightning, Temmin sees Mister Bones behind the Imperials and thugs, who jumps into the fray. Jas, Temmin, and Sinjir take off, and Norra pulls up in a speeder, escorting them to safety.

As the meeting goes on with the Empire's leaders, Rae Sloane slowly realizes that nothing of importance will ever come out of this meeting. Pandion is calling for direct confrontation, the style of which had lost them the war to this point, whereas Tashu is calling for retreat to the Outer Rim, where they should learn the ways of the dark side of the Force. Arguments rage, and no conclusions are made.

On Chandrila, during a news broadcast, an angry citizen throws rotten food at Olia Choko, a New Republic public relations representative. Instead of taking the citizen away, Olio calls him forward, asks to hear his concerns, and then proposes that he become a member of the new Senate in order to voice those concerns and have them addressed. The citizen is shocked, but he gladly takes the opportunity.

Jas and Sinjir are crowded around a table, examining a makeshift map in order to plan their capture of the Imperials. Norra walks in, and then Temmin, and they all discuss what to do about the secret meeting taking place in the palace. They all decide to work together, splitting the bounty, and more importantly for Norra, doing her duty to the New Republic.

After not hearing back from the search teams, Admiral Ackbar sends out a probe droid into the Akivan system in order to find out more information. The last thing he wants to do is fall into another Empire trap. The probe droid finds traces of the destroyed ships, and reports back. Ackbar then decides that it would be best to send a small strike force of commandos into Akiva to get a ground report on the events taking place there.

Jom Barell is in the atmosphere above Akiva. He and his fellow five commandos make a jump from a shuttle into the air, and right as they jump, the shuttle that they jumped from blows up. Then the bright flash of turbolaser, and one of his fellow commandos is shot down. Soon, Barell is the only one left alive, and he makes a very rough crash landing on the planet surface below.

On the planet Sevarcos, a site where the Empire used slaves to mine spice, a battle between the New Republic and Empire rages. Three slaves are huddled away from the battle, torn about what to do. One of them says they must run before the Empire wins and sends them back into the mines. However, the Wookiee among them suggests they charge into battle, believing they should help the Republic soldiers defeat the Imperials. He runs out, ducking laserfire, to release some rancors kept captive by the slavers, and unleashes them onto the battlefield. The tide of the battle is turned, and the New Republic wins. The three slaves decide to explore the galaxy on their own, free to do as they please now.

The shooting down of the commandos has sent the meeting of the Imperial Future Council into even more chaos. Pandion suggests they fight the New Republic head on, knowing that they will soon send their fleet, but Shale believes this will only lead to the defeat of the Empire once and for all. Sloane tries to calm everyone down and pretend that nothing bad is happening, and finally they agree to once again start the meeting. Meanwhile, Jom Barell wakes up from his crash landing to see three stormtroopers standing in front of him, which he quickly disposes of despite the pain he is in.

Norra and Jas travel together through Myrra, the capital of Akiva. They see a random citizen throw a rotten fruit at a pair of stormtroopers, a good sign that the people are fed up with the Imperial occupation. Jas heads to Temmin's shop, where she clears out the thugs who were attempting to drill their way to the lower half of his shop, where the real goods lie. They then head to the rooftops, where two TIEs are parked. While Norra distracted the pilots, Jas used her sniper to take them down. Norra then steals one of the TIEs. Meanwhile, Sinjir walks up to an Imperial communications station, telling the stormtroopers he is an Imperial and demands to see their officer. Grudgingly, they call up their officer, and when the scans ensure that he really is Sinjir Rath Velus, who is supposed to be dead, they let him in. Inside, Sinjir steals the officer's pistol, shooting him in the back, and Mister Bones jumps in, taking care of the two stormtroopers. Once in the comm station, they make a holovid showing a supposed stormtrooper shooting an innocent kid in the back and laughing. They then broadcast this across Myrra, planting the seeds for an uprising.

On the planet Taris, three Acolytes of the Beyond, Sith worshippers, purchase a lightsaber from a dealer who claims the lightsaber belonged to Darth Vader before his death. They say they plan on destroying it, so that it can return to its master in death. However, while the lightsaber's blade is red, there is no guarantee it was actually Vader's.

At the comm station, Temmin, Sinjir, and Mister Bones head to the rooftop to escape. On the roof, they hear the distinctive sound of TIE fighters, as two appear in the sky. They take cover as the TIE's shell the comm station with laserfire, intent on destroying it before more propaganda can be spread. Mister Bones jumps into the air as the second TIE passes, breaking its windshield and taking it to the ground. A third TIE enters the fray and starts shooting at the first, blindsiding it and taking it out of the sky: Norra has entered the fray. She takes off for the satraps palace, but is dogged by two more TIE's. Taking down one, she aims for the shuttles that are the Imperials' only lifeline off this planet. Admiral Sloane sees this from the ground and, thinking quickly, fires a turbolaser at Norra from the ground, totally destroying her right wing and sending her into a death spiral. Norra aims for the shuttles as her crash site, with one last wish that they actually put ejector seats in these fighters.

Sloane looks out from the palace windows to survey the damage. All three Imperial shuttles have been taken down, but fortunately Crassus' yacht wasn't on the planet and is still functional. She notices a growing crowd outside of the palace; Akivans who are ready for change, creating a dull roar of noise. She returns back to the meeting and tells the rest of them that they will be leaving on Crassus' yacht as soon as it arrives back on the planet.

In hyperspace, Han Solo and Chewbacca travel to Dasoor. As soon as they pull out of hyperspace, they receive a transmission from an old friend named Imra. She mentions that she has a job on Kashyyyk, the home of the Wookiees, with a very small window. Han tells Imra to gather everyone they know, and tells Chewbacca to gather some fellow freed Wookiees, so that they can head down to the planet and free their homeworld.

After the TIE fighter crashed into the palace, the power went out temporarily, freeing Wedge from his shackles. He sneaks around the palace, narrowly avoiding being caught by stormtroopers looking for him. Once he comes across a secret passage, he uses it to ambush Sloane's personal assistant, Adea Rite, wounding her and stealing her holoscreen, allowing him to send a message to the New Republic calling them to war. Sloane soon finds his body, crumpled up on the ground, with the holoscreen open to a rebel frequency.

Meanwhile, the team of Jas, Temmin, Sinjir, and Mister Bones reassemble, one member short. Temmin starts to break down into tears, when the door opens and a cloaked figure sits down at the end of the table. When Norra pulls back the veil and reveals that she is still alive and that TIEs truly do have an ejector seat, Temmin launches himself towards her to embrace her in a huge hug.

On Coruscant, Jak walks through the most dangerous underworld levels on the planet. Using a special card, he is allowed entrance to meet the Thorn, where he asks for a weapon, having saved the life of one of Thorn's closest companions. He wants to use it to take out power in Coco-Town with the help of the Anklebiter Brigade, a group of very young kids fighting against the Empire.

Back on Akiva, the planet is consumed in turmoil. People burn effigies of the satrap and Darth Vader in the streets, chanting and raging at the Empire and the satrapy. Jas watches it all, proud of herself and her new friends for setting the spark to set Myrra ablaze. Meanwhile, Sinjir tells Norra to trust him, because even though he was an Imperial, it was his job to hunt down other Imperials, to find the weakness in other Imperials, and then punish them accordingly. When Temmin returns from his shop with maps of the catacombs below Myrra, they plan on how to sneak into the palace using the catacombs. However, their plan involves traveling past the old underground droid factory, which is supposedly haunted and nobody has returned from alive. They will use some thermal detonators from Temmin's shop to blow holes into the walls of the palace once they get there.

On Naboo, two kids from the Anklebiter Brigade are meeting potential parents, people who could adopt them. One of the kids feels entirely out of comfort with all of the rich nobles around, and decides to run away from it all, hoping to find a transport back to Coruscant where he can rejoin the hot war between the rebels and the Empire.

Finally beginning their trek into the catacombs, Jas pulls Temmin back and asks him about his crate. When he says it's a weapon, she tells him that he's wrong, and opens it for him. What's inside are data cubes, and they agree to sift through the information on them and sell them to the right client as soon as this is over. When they near the droid factory, Sinjir begins to probe Temmin, thinking he's hiding something secret from them down here. He throws a stone at the droid factory entrance to prove it isn't haunted, but then a mechanized howling comes from inside, and they all start running.

Admiral Ackbar has received Wedge's transmission, a very short message calling for help. He decides now is the time to act, sending a small fleet to Akiva, with more in reserves, ready to arrive at any sign of trouble. In the palace, Sloane is still attempting to calmly control the situation as the others of the IFC grow increasingly restless and angry with her. The shuttle is taking too long to arrive, she thinks, but nothing can be done about that. She decides to call the three Star Destroyers back into the system, ready for battle when it arrives.

Jas turns to fire at the oncoming horde. At first they look like droids, with glowing eyes and mechanized wails, running along the walls like spiders. However, as they approach, she realizes they're not droids, but creatures, noseless with a mouth full of sharp teeth, identified by Temmin as Uugteen. They keep getting closer and closer, an entire hive, and she can't stop them. Temmin comes back, tugs on her shoulder, telling her to come along, and she relents. As they start running, he realizes they have a box of detonators. Pulling Mister Bones along, who wants to stand and fight to protect Temmin, he pulls one detonator out of the box, setting it, and then throwing it back into the box. They all sprint for safety. When the tunnel explodes, a huge collapse happens and the Uugteen are blocked off from following them. With no explosives to blow their way into the palace, Sinjir decides that he will head to the surface to contact the palace himself, pretending to be an Imperial once again. His plan is to tell them to open the doors to the catacombs from the inside, telling them it's their only path to safety.

On Tatooine, a man named Adwin Charu, a member of a new local mining company, is attempting to buy goods from the Jawas in one of their massive sandcrawlers. Knowing there are real goods hidden in there, he keeps trying to tell them that he doesn't want the junk they have on display, but they won't listen. A local named Cobb Vanth shows up and tells him that he must build rapport with the Jawas by first buying small stuff, before they'll let him see the good stuff. He offers to take Adwin in, and they go. Soon, they start arguing over a set of Mandalorian armor, and Cobb shoots Adwin. Styling himself Sheriff Vanth, he tells Adwin that he won't let the crime syndicates come to Tatooine under the guise of mining companies and take over his planet after the fall of the Hutt Cartel.

Back on Akiva, Jom Barell is trying to save the day singlehandedly. Knowing the coordinates of one of the turbolasers, he takes out the three stormtroopers guarding it while injured, with the goal of shooting down any Imperial ships. When he sits down in the console, he sees a large yacht with an Imperial code descending towards the palace. Instead of firing at the ship, the turbolaser makes a clicking sound, showing that it was damaged by the fight with the stormtroopers. He races to fix it.

Jas, Temmin, Norra, and Mister Bones lie waiting to ambush stormtroopers outside of the palace, so that they can then sneak in. However, instead of coming through the gate, stormtroopers sneak up on them from behind, blocking any escape route. Norra has a chilling moment where she feels that Sinjir sold them out. Captured, they enter the palace as prisoners, and soon Sinjir is hauled out with them, hands bound and face bloodied. Then Temmin stands up and walks over to Sloane, asking her to honor their deal and let him, his droid, and his mother go, but Sloane refuses to let anyone go but him. In shock, Temmin calls for his droid to help, but they take Mister Bones down before he can even move, and Sloane fires six shots straight into his head, completely destroying it and knocking it off. They then take Temmin to the roof with the intent of throwing him off the edge.

Crassus' yacht finally arrives at the palace. When some protesters futilely throw rocks at the ship, some stormtroopers fire at the crowd, but Sloane pulls them back and chastises them. The stormtroopers throw Temmin off the walls of the palace, but the crowd catches him, carrying him. He then runs to the walls and begins scaling them, drawing on his skills from his youth in the streets. Right as the yacht takes off, with the members of the IFC and the prisoners captured on Akiva onboard, Temmin scales the wall. He grabs the vibroblade of a fallen guard and uses it to make a running jump into the air, catching onto the ship. As soon as he makes it into the ship through a window, stormtroopers arrive, so he runs.

Jom Barell can't figure out how to make the turbolaser work, so in frustration he slams on the console repeatedly. Suddenly, the turbolaser activates, homes in on the yacht, and fires. The yacht is shot right in the middle, but can still fly, albeit detached into two barely connected parts. The stormtroopers chasing Temmin vanish into the air, and Temmin barely hangs on inside. Then, the rebel fleet arrives in space.

On Bespin, in Cloud City, a rich old man from Onderon has his house sacked by rebels. He refuses to give in to them, calling them traitors, and when they tell him that the Emperor is dead and that the holovids of him alive and well are a fraud, he refuses to believe them. They then take him captive.

Commander Agate leads the New Republic forces into battle, shaking as she always does. The battle quickly swings in their favor. On Crassus' limping yacht, Temmin uses the maintenance shaft connecting the two separated parts of the ship to pick the locks on the handcuffs of his friends, and they take Pandion hostage. The yacht crash lands on the Vigilance, killing Crassus, but allowing Jas to capture Tashu and Shale. Rae and her pilot, Morna, escape on a Lambda-class shuttle in the landing bay, so Norra takes a TIE fighter and follows them through the raging battle. She comms the rebel fleet and tells them that she's in a TIE, and they join her in chasing down the shuttle. On the shuttle, Pandion appears and attempts to take control away from Sloane, but she disarms him and locks him away. She then blows up the shuttle, escaping in an escape pod with Morna to the only Star Destroyer still intact, the Vanquish. The Vanquish then takes off through hyperspace, a big victory for the New Republic.

Although Norra was injured in the shuttle explosion, she came to a full recovery, along with Wedge Antilles. She decides to join Jas, Temmin, Sinjir, Jom, and Mister Bones in a new mission, to track down Imperial targets as a team. Meanwhile, Sloane escaped to the Vulpinus Nebula, where a growing Imperial fleet lurks. She speaks with the fleet admiral Gallius Rax, her superior, who tells her that the summit on Akiva was a test for her, which she passed, and that it helped weed out those in Imperial service who were weak.

Aftermath was originally planned for release in November 2015, before being moved forward to September 4. On September 4, 2014, Wendig had posted a tweet expressing his strong desire to write a licensed Star Wars title. Several individuals involved with the Star Wars franchise, including Jason Fry and Gary Whitta, passed along the message, which eventually reached Shelly Shapiro, editor at large at Del Rey, who felt that Wendig would be a good fit for the project, based on having read his title Under the Empyrean Sky. Upon being approached to write the book, Wendig had a reaction of "girlish joy." He wrote the title in under 45 days.

The novel's chapter headings made use of an early design for the New Republic, the successor government to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. On September 21, 2015, Del Rey released an official colorized version of the emblem via social media, which served as the first canon depiction of the government's insignia.

Reaction to Aftermath has been mixed. As of November 1, 2015, 1,415 reviews of the title had been posted on Amazon. 37% gave the title a rating of only 1 star, but 35% gave it either 4 or 5 stars. The most helpful critical review (according to the site's visitors) stated that while it "wasn't as abysmal as other reviewers made it out to be" and there were certain things he liked, such as a reference to "Fulcrum" and the well-rounded nature of the character Admiral Sloane, it wasn't his favorite Star Wars read and there were many things he didn't like: these included improper use of idioms when a Star Wars term could have been used, the excessive focus on introspection and interpersonal conflict, and the use of characters who felt "shoehorned in." The author with the most positive review stated that while the book was "not The Thrawn Trilogy," it "wasn't intended to be", and did well in focusing on smaller stories. He found himself interested in the "nuanced cast of characters" and also enjoyed the vignettes throughout the novel, rather than simply its main story.

However, over time the book's overall reception would improve. On June 7, 2023, out of 9,485 reviews on Amazon only 9% of reviewers had given it one star while 60% had givin it four or five star reviews. One of the most helpful reviews, with 142 finding it helpful, gave the book five stars, saying it wasn't perfect but they had fun with it, concluding "For me, I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, don't at all regret doing so, and will read it again in the future. Thus: five stars."

Jared Petty of the popular entertainment site IGN reviewed the novel and rated it "mediocre," stating that it was "well-written but ultimately disappointing." He too praised the character of Sloane, but felt that the novel lacked substance and stated that he had met almost nobody he cared about by the time he reached the end of the novel.

The author, Chuck Wendig, took to his blog in response to the negative reception, and supplied a scathing retort criticizing those of his detractors who hated the book because of it containing gay characters, comparing these readers to the Empire.

• ISBN 9780345511621; September 4, 2015; Del Rey; US hardcover
• ISBN 9781101885482; September 4, 2015; Del Rey; Signed edition
• ISBN 9780804177665; September 4, 2015; Del Rey; US eBook
• ISBN 9781101885925; March 29, 2016; Del Rey; US mass market paperback
• ISBN 9780593972694; December 3, 2024; Random House Worlds; US paperback

• ISBN 9781473517585; September 10, 2015; ; UK eBook; May 26, 2016; Arrow Books; UK paperback

• "The Saga Continues" — Star Wars Insider 157
• "Blaster" — Star Wars Insider 157
• "Red Five" — Star Wars Insider 158
• "Blaster" — Star Wars Insider 159
• "Launch Pad" — Star Wars Insider 160
• "50 Things to Notice in Star Wars: The Force Awakens" — Star Wars Insider 165
• "Star Wars: The Mandalorian Season Two Companion" — Star Wars Insider 202
• "After Endor" — Star Wars Insider 222
• "John Jackson Miller: The Living Prose" — Star Wars Insider 225