Bloodline

Preface: I've read 90+% of the Star Wars Legends books.

Star Wars: Bloodlines is by far the best book I've read from the new Star Wars continuity. It pulls the right strings for Space Opera, has a healthy blend of influence from the original trilogy as well as the Legends material.

I like how this book portrays Leia. It gives her a proper badass vibe, as both a powerful political figure as well as a war hero.

This book was incredibly lovely, moving, sad and powerful. I love everything it represents and how well it is executed. Amazing how she made a galaxy far far away feel so close to home, commenting on our times in insightful ways. The new characters were fantastic and the old ones were perfectly done. It genuinely made me cry in many places. Love love love it

Important to know: Lando lives.
Less surprising: no one likes you if Darth Vader is your father.

Well, that's 2 for 2 for Claudia Gray on the Star Wars front.

I had been looking forward to this one a long time, and I was not disappointed. It answered a lot of the questions people had after viewing TFA, like how long ago Luke had disappeared or when the temple massacre happened, and more on the state of the politics, like how The First Order came to be and why there was a need for the Resistance. Politics are a huge part of this book, but there's so much more.

What I was mostly excited about was more insight on Leia's character, and how she experienced the events in the Original Trilogy. Combine that with some really great side characters (that I came to care about deeply), that were either new or from the movies or other novels, and a great story, and you get this great gem of a book.
Though I was kind of hoping (and I realize this is entirely my fault) that we'd get a bit more on Ben and Luke and Snoke and that entire situation, but we'll likely get into that more in the following two Episodes so they can't exactly spill the beans on that one. The information we did get though, did ruin some popular theories out there (especially for the timeline!), so the mystery thickens!