To my eternal shame I'm back on the Star Wars novels. Currently 2/3 of the way through Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, set in the months (or is it years? No-one seems sure about that) immediately after Endor, but in line with the Disney continuity. I don't quite know what to make of the YA-level sex'n'violence in a SW setting, but I think it works overall. In some ways this is a much more detailed look at the fall of the Empire than anything we had in the old EU canon, and one that (obviously) sets-up the setup of the Sequel Trilogy. Wendig writes this stuff well, and there are some well-sketched new characters that do most of the heavy lifting, but there is a distinct absence of a strong editorial hand: he has a few favourite stock phrases that are massively overused ("his one arm", for example), and a tendency to overuse certain aliens (I find it hard to believe that the New Republic is heavily Pantoran, a minor world introduced in The Clone Wars, and IIRC only represented on film by Lucas and his family) employed in a way that suggests a SW thesaurus rather than any particular racial characteristics, and at the same time populates worlds with distinctly Earth-based flora and fauna. Easily fixed, I would have thought.
Anyway, I didn't come here for the literary fireworks, rather for a dose of plot and adventure, and this has both in abundance. The use of the main screen characters and events alongside, but not dominating, the new ones is the best implementation of this approach I've seen (shades of I, Jedi). I had a few 'oh no!' moments, which means I got my money's worth.
Oh the shame.
