Star Wars: Before the Awakening By: Greg Rucka Illustrator: Phil Noto

Plot:

A companion piece to the “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” character novels, Star Wars: Before the Awakening is an anthology book that focuses on the lives of Rey, Finn, and Poe before the events of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Review:

The book is broken up into three short stories, one about each of the new Star Wars characters.

I liked Finn’s/FN-2187’s story, though it was the shortest by a lot. It really helped build his character and filled a lot of holes that the movie left. You still don’t know much about his history, how he became a storm trooper, but you find out that he was in the top 1%, that he excelled at everything, and that he was very empathetic. That Captain Phasma picked him out specifically and was watching him. The story ends immediately before the movie.

Rey’s story I didn’t like so much. I ended up skipping some pages of it so I might have missed some stuff, but it was so depressing and from the minute the new characters were introduced you knew they were going to take advantage of her, and they did. I guess the point of the story was to show how she was such a good pilot, she ran simulations, and it showed just how much she wanted to stay on Jakku, though it didn’t give any more details about her family. It didn’t do much to make Rey’s character seem interesting or fun or awesome in any way.

The story you learned the most from was Poe’s. You got his back story and more about the New Republic and the Resistance. It ends right before the movie starts, but you get to see Leia and C3-P0 and there’s lots of space flying. The First Order is even a part of it.

Overall, if you loved the characters and demand to know more, I would recommend reading this. Other than that, though, I really don’t think there’s a reason to.

3/5

Side note: Illustrations were cool to look at