Bloodline by Claudia Gray
Ugh I had such high hopes for this, it hits every single bingo block for me: Star Wars! Leia! Inevitable Doom with Irony! Instead, I found it lacking in a very similar way that WW84 was lacking–namely that 24 years later a woman who has now been a public figure the vast majority of her adult life is still being defined by or remembering four years worth of events from ages ago? With much of the EU (almost all of it) non-canon, Gray has the […]
Star Wars: Master & Apprentice by Claudia Gray
Still ace at Star Wars novels, Claudia. I really should read her non-Star Wars work at some point, but every time I finish one of her SW books, I’m left satisfied, and feel no need to do so. Perhaps this is a mistake. This book was unexpected, both in that she chose to write about the earlier period of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s partnership instead of the later period most SW writers play in, and that I enjoyed it so much, when I’m usually […]
Star Wars: Leia, Princess of Alderaan (Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi) by Claudia Grey
I really enjoyed Claudia Gray’s Bloodline when I listened to it almost exactly two years ago. I was delighted to find an audio version of Gray’s Leia: Princess of Alderaan and immediately dropped everything else I was listening to. I was 8 when Star Wars: A New Hope came out. I have never been a super fan, but Star Wars is one of the cultural touchstones of my life. As a kid, my roll models were Jamie Summers – the Bionic Woman, Diana Prince – […]
Claudia Gray is three for three with Star Wars books. I’ve been reading Star Wars books for over half my life now (!) and she is probably the best, most consistent author of these books that I have any experience of. She brings such a nice sense of nuance and character depth. And she really gets Leia, as she proved in her adult novel, Bloodline (which is probably my favorite Star Wars book), and as she proves again here in this young adult take on […]
What’s happening to me, personally, doesn’t matter. If it’s not the ideal time, well, it’s the only time we’ve got.” As I was listening to a section about a third of the way into Bloodline I was struck by the deeply screwed up dynamic of the Skywalker family. Some friends and I joke that Anakin and Luke Skywalker are the biggest drama queens in the galaxy. Listening to Leia recount being tortured for hours by the man she now knows was her father, it doesn’t feel like […]
I’m not sure how to review this book. Bloodline is the first time that I have ever read a novel set in the Star Wars universe. Or, really, any universe that I knew first from movies. I was not a kid who stalked the science fiction and fantasy aisles of libraries of bookstores looking for the next hit of my favorite universes. As far as I knew, the movies were all there was and I was happy to revisit the story of Leia, Han, and […]
