Ahsoka

After finishing watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars with a friend, he recommended that I read Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston before we start watching Star Wars: Rebels.  Luckily the library had a copy, so I picked it up after the holidays.

Ahsoka takes place a little after The Clone Wars.  Ahsoka has been doing her best to hide on the Outer Rim, but the Empire keeps creeping farther and farther out, making it harder and harder to stay hidden.  After leaving yet another planet, she makes her way to Raada, a small farming moon.  But the Empire decides that Raada is the perfect place to raise a deadly crop that will completely ravage the soil, and so follow her there.  But this time, rather than flee, Ahsoka decides to stay and help the farmers fight back.

Ahsoka is a fairly fast-paced read. I liked the various characters and their motivations - like the farmers who manage to make things worse for themselves on Raada by failing to listen to Ahsoka - it's completely understandable why they did so.  I also liked how Ahsoka grew - she found her path after Order 66, in large part thanks to the friends she made along this journey.  It was also really neat to see the changes to the galaxy the Empire has wrought - from purposefully occupying a place specifically to use it and decimate it, to the way they were stripmining the planet where the Jedi used to find their lightsaber crystals (super glad I watched Clone Wars for this brief part of the book - I had more of an appreciation for the loss of this world).

While overall I really liked the book, I did find parts of the ending to be a bit of a let-down.  An Inquisitor starts tracking Ahsoka after she reveals herself on Raada.  The book builds the Inquisitor up to be a worthy adversary, but when he finally faces Ahsoka, he is no match whatsoever for her (she defeats him without using lightsabers - he has a double one)..  How Ahsoka got her new lightsaber crystals was a neat idea, but seemed far too easy.  The book kind of felt like it wrapped up a bit too quickly after all the set-up. And there were a few weird in-between sequences (I don't know how else to describe them - there were brief interludes spaced throughout the book) that dealt with characters who were not otherwise in the book (and honestly didn't need to be).

But despite these few flaws, Ahsoka was a really good read.  And now I'm looking forward to starting Star Wars: Rebels with my friend!