Review: Resistance Reborn will make you want more, and isn’t that the point?

There’s a lot to like in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Resistance Reborn, and I suspect that the other reviews will be quite effusive. If I can’t manage that, well, I can say that if you’re at all interested in how the Resistance begins to rebuild after The Last Jedi – or if you’re a longtime reader of the new canon fiction, this is a must-read.

Keeping things mostly spoiler-free under the cut.

There are quite a few characters in the novel, and many of the established ones get quite a bit to do. The stuff with Leia is fairly minimal, and we don’t get much into the heads of Rey and Rose, but Poe Dameron gets plenty of time and he and Finn get to have a bit of an adventure. Wedge Antilles and Norra Wexley are also full present, as well as Black Squadron and a number of other characters, including a particularly loathsome First Order toadie.

We got to a lot of worlds – some familiar, some not – and there’s one returning character you absolutely won’t expect.

In fact, there’s just a lot going on here, period. Things are drawn from all over the new canon, and if your memory is a bit shoddy these days or you only read certain books once (ahem) you might not be able to place everyone. (It was only on my second read-through that I thought to Google some of these folks, something that probably won’t be spoiler-free after November 5, if it even is after today.)

But is it a good read? I think so. I certainly had no problem getting through it twice in time to write this, which has not always been the case lately. And despite my own confusion at parts, sometimes you just go with the flow of the story, and that’s enough.

The book is fun, but it also feels a little incomplete, maybe by nature. It will certainly whet your appetite for the film – a great hors d’oeuvre – but don’t expect much more than that. The real answers are yet to come. But if the last Rise of Skywalker trailer told us anything, it’s that the events of this book are only the beginning.

Grade: B+

Resistance Reborn will be out in hardcover, eBook and audio on November 5. A copy of the book was provided by Del Rey for this review.