Colten Cavegn

Despite other people's opinions, the book is not really horrible. The book has incredible action moments and incredibly deep story and character development that fundamentally shakes the Mantis crew into splitting up as we see in the Jedi: Survivor trailer. It has references to previous moments in Fallen Order, which I enjoyed, like the Haxion Brood. I loved the inclusion of the Fifth Brother, as he is my favorite Inquisitor, although one of my gripes is how little time he had in the book. For him being marketed as the main character, he had three paragraphs of his point of view and then two fights, which honestly was not a lot and even though I love that character, it is nothing compared to Trilla in Fallen Order, and besides those few paragraphs of his perspective at the beginning, the book really did not do anything for the Fifth Brother. He even has a strange ending that sort of makes fun of the rule that when there is no body, the character is still alive, as he is in Obi-Wan-Kenobi and Rebels, but it was still strange. The worst part of the book, though, were the multiple chapters dedicated to a love story with Merrin. For one thing, I feel like it is completely weird and out of line to have Merrin be in a romance story, but still tease a relationship between her and Cal. In my opinion, that makes no sense, and because of these chapters, it is pretty inappropriate for kids, as opposed to George Lucas' view of Star Wars. Other than the references to it at the end of the book, though, it can be ignored once the first half of the real mission starts, and without the author doing too much with the romance, the book would have been near perfect. The story with the overall Mantis crew was fantastic, like I said, teasing things that happen in the Survivor game as we saw in the trailer, and in my opinion, is a must read to see what happened to the Mantis crew and why they are not together. Merrin's story arc, despite the romance, is absolutely perfect, and is better than even Cal's arc in the book. I do believe Sam Maggs did great at portraying the characters' inner thoughts and making them believable to the way they act in Fallen Order. In other words, the book would be almost perfect if they toned down the romance or found another, albeit harder, way to explain Merrin's story arc and how it was solved. This is the main reason why I am giving it three stars, and I must admit, I do not know if I would read it again just because of the romance, but putting that aside I still believe the book is great, which is why I am stressing that it is better than a 1 star review, although it is not fantastic, either.