By: Christian Corah
Descriptives
Page count: Hardcover, 410
Author: Beth Revis
Intended Audience: Young Adult
Timeline: Precedes Rogue One
Main characters: Jyn Erso
Brief synopsis: After being separated from her parents, Jyn Erso must learn to survive and find her way in a galaxy that is constantly reminding her that she is alone.
Gut Feeling
I specifically read this book because I had a lot of interest in Jyn’s life between when she left her parents and the Rebels picked her up. This book did just that starting immediately as she left her parents and ending immediately as the Rebels picked her up. The story did not disappoint. She definitely lived a very exciting life, which is what I would expect from an awesome character like Jyn Erso. While the book did have peaks and valleys in its excitement, it never really got boring. If I wasn’t so busy while I was reading it, I probably would have finished reading it much faster than I did. While reading it, I didn’t want to put it down. Revis didn’t pull any punches when writing this one, and that is something that made Rebel Rising a great read.
Characters (9/10 pts)
Obviously, the most important character to the story was Jyn Erso. But what I wasn’t expecting was significant development of Saw Gerrera as well. Saw is a classic anti-hero character in Star Wars. While he does fight alongside the Rebellion, his actions often parellel closely to that of terrorism. While his character has been explored well in Rogue One and the TV shows, I think his character was at his best in Rebel Rising. His actions are pretty shocking, but Revis did a good job of explaining his motives for them, making the actions almost understandable. I did not expect this from Rebel Rising, and it is a big reason why it scores well in this category.
And now for Jyn Erso. Considering she goes through a traumatic experience at the start of the book, her character goes through a lot of changes and development during this time of her life. She obviously is a completely different person as a kid in Rogue One than she is in her early 20s. Rebel Rising helps to bridge that gap. Her character also didn’t develop in ways that I expected, but Revis did it in a way that still made sense. I have even more appreciation for Jyn’s character now that I have read Rebel Rising.
The one downside that I do have for the book’s characters is that I really didn’t have much interest in the characters outside of Jyn and Saw. They were not developed in a way that made them super strong, even though some of them were pretty crucial to the story. Regardless, characters are still a strength for Rebel Rising and that is why I am giving 9 points for them.
Writing Style (8/10 pts)
Well we’re back at it, another Star Wars novel and another New York Times Best-Selling Author. So it was of course well written, but let's examine what was unique about Revis’ writing style. The biggest plus was that it was easy to read. I never felt that it took much energy to sit and read for lengthy periods of time. And I didn’t think that the details were too lacking due to the book being an easy read. One of the few downsides that I did see about the writing style was it seemed a bit repetitive at times. Especially at the beginning of chapters, I felt that some plot points were briefly repeated. This may be a good strategy if readers put the book down between chapters, but for those of us who don’t, it felt like temporary lulls in the reading. But these were fairly short and didn’t take away from the overall high quality of the writing. It is just me being nitpicky. I am giving 8 points for the writing style of Rebel Rising.
Plot (8.5/10 pts)
The plot overall seemed pretty good. It had no glaring weaknesses to it. Most books have certain weaknesses in the plot, but Rebel Rising was an exception. It was exciting from beginning to end, with the necessary peaks and valleys. It also finished well, transitioning into Rogue One seamlessly. Certain plot points of the book were pretty shocking, which I greatly appreciate in any story. Like I mentioned before, Revis didn’t really hold back punches with this book. Events for Jyn Erso should have been shocking during this time of her life, and they certainly were. Also, it jumped back and forth in Jyn’s life, in a way that wasn’t confusing. This gave certain plot points time to breathe and kept my interest high throughout the book. I’m also glad that it completely bridged the missing gap in Rogue One, not leaving much out. The only downside I see is some of the plot points were less exciting than others, but it isn’t a huge weakness. While it may not have been perfect, the plot was very strong earning 8.5 points.
Intrigue (9/10 pts)
Whenever a book is both easy to read with an exciting plot, it will score high in the intrigue section. I simply didn’t want to put the book down while reading it. The only thing that it did lack was a truly climatic experience where my intrigue would have been at its highest. I would have expected this to occur near the end of the book, but it did not. Instead, my intrigue stayed essentially the same throughout the whole read. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was what keeps Rebel Rising from getting a perfect score for intrigue. Instead, it will settle for the slightly imperfect score of 9 points.
What does it add? (6.25/10 pts)
A lot of books that are written to supplement movies don’t score well in this section because the book is meant to just add content to the movie, and not to Star Wars as a whole. Unfortunately, Rebel Rising is no exception here. The book felt fairly self-contained in showing what Jyn was up to during this time in her life. While the book was certainly successful in adding character development for Jyn, it didn’t provide much more information to Star Wars. The most it did, and it did do this well, was expand the universe slightly by giving us some new interesting species. Revis got creative with it and it paid off. But it wasn’t enough to give Rebel Rising a great score for this section, so I am only giving 6.25 points.
Logic (0 pts)
Rebel Rising neither added to nor took away from the logic within the Star Wars universe, so I am neither adding nor taking away extra points.
Final Thoughts
So my final score for Rebel Rising is an 8.15/10, or a B minus. This causes it to fall right in the middle of the books that I have reviewed so far. Because I like Jyn Erso so much, I liked it even more than this rating suggests. But that opinion is biased, because not everyone will like Jyn Erso as much as me (Rogue One falls second in my movie ranking).The quality of the story was very good, but I do think that you should have an interest in Jyn Erso if you are wanting to read this book. If so, I am convinced that you will love it. And if you don’t have much interest in her, this book has the potential to change your mind about her (and Saw!).
I hope you enjoyed this book review and if there is a book that you want me to read or review, please let me know at christiancorah@gmail.com. As for now, I will only be doing Canon books (but in the future that might change).