Empire's End

Ah, this trilogy. It had a very rough start, but then in books 2 and 3 improved to the point where they became “ok” with a few moments of greatness. Ultimately though, this really didn't need to be a trilogy.

It excels at expanding the universe a bit, telling us what's going on in the galaxy (with interludes and mentions), but it doesn't quite work on the character level. I imagine this ended up being a trilogy so by the end we would at least somewhat care about these characters in the final battle, but I just found them tiring and a bit of a waste. It makes me wish instead this had been a book with only the interludes, maybe expanded a bit, so it'd almost be a short story collection (those interludes are the perfect way to get us to check in with characters we haven't really heard from outside of the movies. One of the interludes in the book is about the ultimate fate of Jar Jar Binks and this was the perfect way/medium to do so). But most of all of course, I wish we'd have gotten characters that would have made the story more engaging.

Of course, not all characters are that bad. Sloane is still the best and Sinjir is pretty cool. Towards everyone else I'm either indifferent or I just don't like them to the point I don't like reading about them. (The latter being most notably Norra and Temmin). In the end, the book works because interesting things are happening, but that alone doesn't elevate the book to being a “must read”.