The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1996)

Crystal Star 2 The New Rebellion

This was fucking stupid.

This is the book everyone thinks Crystal Star is. Some Darth Vader cosplaying loser (he was a student at Luke's academy. No, he's never shown up before.) is turning droids into bombs. Every time he kills someone he gets more powerful, soon he will be more powerful than Luke! (Somehow, this didn't work for the Emperor/Vader.)

Brakiss is back, because... dunno? She needed an extra dark Jedi to dump exposition and pad the book another hundred pages.

Speaking of padding, there's an entire Han Solo/Lando plot that makes no sense and I couldn't even tell you what happens in it. I think they fight hippo dragons?

Yeah, there's a lot of random aliens in this book that aren't very well described. Most of them never show up again. It's 1996, there are enough aliens you can get by without making up shitty ones, but whatever.

Wedge shows up! He's an idiot.

Leia is useless. (Rusch claims that the male authors had made her too weak, but this is probably the weakest she's ever been.)

COLE FARDREAMER shows up, because every all canon characters are so useless she needs some weird ass Gary Stu mechanic guy to fix everything.

0/5. This one was just garbage, saved from being the worst Star Wars book by the fact that it's at least understandable, unlike the Callista books. Everyone is out of character (and completely ineffective), the plot doesn't make sense at a mechanical or logical level , and it's soooo long. Like, 30% to 50% longer than most of the other adult novels. There's not even close to enough plot here to fill even a "normal" book, let alone a pointlessly doorstoppery one.

BUT GOOD NEWS!

I have been strategically arranging my reading to clear out all the unknown books in 1995.

Here's the Wookiepedia list for the year (unread books in bold):

• X-Wing: Rogue Squadron – January 1
• Junior Jedi Knights: Lyric's World – January 1
• Before the Storm – March 1
• Young Jedi Knights: Lightsabers – March 1
• Junior Jedi Knights: Promises – April 1
• Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire – May 1
• X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble – May 2
• Young Jedi Knights: Darkest Knight – June 1
• Shield of Lies – August 1
• Young Jedi Knights: Jedi Under Siege – September 1
• X-Wing: The Krytos Trap – October 2
• Tales of the Bounty Hunters – November 1
• The New Rebellion – November 7
• Tyrant's Test – December 1

"Gee, you skipped the first book of they year," you might be saying to yourself.

You're goddamn right, because I wanted a clear shot to read the X-Wing books back to back.

And I'm super excited to make a little project out of Shadows and do the comic, video game, etc. as well.

I'm gonna clear Tales of the Bounty Hunters as a quick palate cleanser, and then jump into the good stuff.

1997 should be a decent year. The second half of the Rogue Squadron part of X-Wing (I'll have to figure out what to do with Isaard's Revenge), I cleared out most of the YA already, but Galaxy of Fear is at least weird (and there are less of them than YJK). AC Crispin is decent, so hopefully her Han Solo trilogy is good. The first Hand of Thrawn is in there. William Dietz is good, I've read one or two of his before, and I've heard the Dark Forces tie-ins are solid.

I think I'm basically done with the garbage until I get to all the Episode 1 tie in stuff.