Rogue Squadron

After the disappointment I had in reading Star Wars Aftermath (Chuck Wendig) I decided to move my eyes to one of the classic novels of the Expanded Universe, X-Wing Rogue Squadron (Bantam, 1996) by Michael Stackpole. Today the book belongs to the LEGENDS brand and, despite not being canonical anymore, it has an engaging story.

I'm talking about the most famous starfighter squad of the Rebel Alliance. These heroes were present in the decisive moments of the Alliance battle against the Galactic Empire, as in the clashes of the First Death Star, Hoth and Endor.

Michael Stackpole led this series of 10 books (in partnership with Aaron Alston). For the first time in the history of Star Wars we had books not focused in the heroic axis Leia- Luke-Han. The proposal was to bring adventures such as in that Top Gun movie, without the political discussion of the episodes I, II and III (at that time still in embryonic stage) and without the fantastic-religious motto of the Jedi, the Force and the Dark Side. X-Wing tells stories about regular guys dedicated to the elimination of the evil Galactic Empire, as fighters and defenders of Freedom and Justice.

In this book Commander Wedge Antilles rebuilds the famous squad for the New Republic (six years after the Battle of Yavin), now having to consider the political importance of the group to the newly aligned planets. Sponsored by Admiral Ackbar, Antilles requests the aid of former squad member, Captain Tycho Celchu. Quickly he meets starfighter aces such as Corran Horn from Corellia and Gavin Darklighter from Tatooine.

As a Symbol of the Rebel Alliance and now the New Republic, the Rogue Squadron is always assigned to the main (and most dangerous) missions against the Empire, now in the hands of Ysanne Isard. Isard chooses the intelligence agent Kirtan Loor to track and destroy the squad throughout the first book.

Despite being a book that tells the story of the squad itself, we have as protagonist the former agent of CorSec (Intelligence Agency and Corellia Security) Corran Horn. Well written and with a very dynamic pace, the reader is presented with numerous fantastic maneuvers, and various adventures set against the Empire.

Focused on action, in Rogue Squadron we can observe the perilous political landscape of the New Republic, now in the hands of influential leaders such as the bothans Borsk Fey'lya in the Provisional Government and General Kre'Fey in the military. The shattered Empire continues its powerful incursions and attacks in the galaxy, being a huge threat to the new order.

Very engaging and a must-read for any fan of Star Wars, Rogue Squadron unfortunately suffers the same disease from almost all of the saga books (with the exception of Timothy Zahn): a “cardboard villain” Syndrome. With the aforementioned exception of Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade, both characters created by Zahn, Ysanne Isard and Kirtan Loor play the roles of bad guys just because they're “bad”, without any depth and more interesting motivations. These characters are not Sith or Force sensitive to the dark side to be evil “evil”, but only people with a thirst for power and, in the words of Han Solo, with delusions of grandeur.

However, Rogue Squadron is a very entertaining book, keeping the same spirit of episodes IV, V and VI. I read the books in the series in their respective release years and this re-read brought me a lot of nostalgia.

Marginally better than most Star Wars tie-in novels (which are generally abysmal), because at least this one features Wedge Antilles.

X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, a fun, camaraderie-driven action-romp, sets up the X-Wing series with great individual character moments; fantastically, often tongue-in-cheek, snappy dialogue; and notably hard-to-follow dogfighting action that at the very least always felt cool.