Star Wars: Ahsoka
by E. K. Johnston
Space Fantasy (Star Wars)
356 pages
Published 2016

I’ve been wanting to read this novel for a long time, as Ahsoka Tano is my favorite character from the Clone Wars cartoon, and second-favorite in the entire Star Wars series. (Because General Leia exists.) I picked the book up at a used book store in Oregon when we went home from the holidays, but I’ve just had so many other things to read. I finally read it for May 4th, Star Wars Day.

I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. I’ve read another book by Johnston, That Inevitable Victorian Thing, which I enjoyed but thought was too fluffy. And comparing this to the last Star Wars book I read – Phasma – this tilts that way too. It’s not as fluffy as TIVT – people die, and the Empire is the ever-looming possible doom that it always is – but it just didn’t feel as gritty as Phasma did. Perhaps it shouldn’t; Phasma is a villain, and her backstory is suitably dark. And Ahsoka, here, is floundering a little in the wake of Order 66, and being alive when none of her compatriots, to her knowledge, are.

I did enjoy learning how she got her lightsabers back, and the story should lead well into the Rebels cartoon, which I have yet to watch.

So I don’t know. It was an entertaining book, and it was effective at furthering Ahsoka’s story, it just…wasn’t quite what I wanted.

The book does, however, fit the Popsugar 2018 prompt of “Takes place on another planet.”

From the cover of Star Wars: Ahsoka:

She thought her war was over, but a new battle is just beginning…

Ahsoka Tano, once a loyal Jedi apprentice to Anakin Skywalker, planned to spend her life serving the Jedi Order. But after a heartbreaking betrayal, she turned her back on the Order to forge her own path, knowing Anakin and the other Jedi would still be there for her should she ever need them.

Then the Emperor took over the galaxy and the Jedi were ruthlessly murdered. Burdened with grief and guilt, Ahsoka is now truly on her own, unsure she can be part of something larger ever again. She takes refuge on the remote farming moon Raada, where she befriends a young woman named Kaedan and begins to carve out a life for herself. But Ahsoka cannot escape her past or the reach of the Empire. When Imperial forces occupy Raada, she must decide whether to become involved – even if it means exposing her Jedi past. Her choices will have devastating effects for those around her . . . and lead her to a new hope for the galaxy.