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to start off, i think i need to talk about my initial thoughts before i started the book itself. i was REALLY excited when it was first announced (who wasn't?) but compared with all snippets released, sam maggs' confusing and worrying tweets about "spicyness🌶️" and how she would regularly leave out main characters in favour of merrin and/or cal, and reviews from people who had read it in advance... my excitement began to dwindle as we got closer to the release date.

while it released on the 8th of march for majority on the world, australians got it on the 14th--- and it took almost two weeks until my local book shop got in physical copies. in those two weeks, i was spoiled IMMEDIATELY and eventually wrangled an illegal pdf with majority of the pages missing. and what i found in there was... not great. so that brings me into the review itself. i'm gonna try to keep this structured, otherwise it's just going to be a giant overdump of complaints and me bitching lol

the book's cover is gorgeous, but it leads to the question of why the characters featured are still their jedi fallen order designs when the book is set a few years after the game (we assume-- the exact amount of time is never specified). i tried to have good expectations going into this despite my initial reaction, but very quickly did i become disappointed. the writing style, especially in the first chapter isn't amazing. the author continues to repeat the same sentence over and over--- it was fun at first, but by the sixth "damn good _____" i was becoming tired. it was not captivating at all, and i found myself struggling to continue reading, something that's never happened to me with the worst of fiction. while at some point i was able to ignore it, the repetitive sentence structures and continued use of telling and not showing was a big problem in jbs. the author would tell us information we already knew (telling us the shield outside the haxion brood base didn't pick up human sized objects, but did pick up ships more than twice was annoying), while simultaneously not giving us information or contradicting herself about other topics (such as where merrin's room is placed in the mantis).

this is a personal preference, but the length of the book annoyed me as well. my bookstore only stocked paperbacks, and the paperback itself is 153 x 234mm meaning it's long but the book itself is thin. the pages were so long (as were the chapters) that i found myself growing bored as i read through, just wanting the page to end already. the cover also can't seem to stay shut, no matter what i do

as you can probably tell, the plot and story was as disappointing as the writing.

we might as well rename it to the cal and merrin book, because despite having a collection of 7 characters (yes, i'm counting bd-1. fuck the author for trying to say he didn't count), there was an intense focus on them. i should've known from the get go it would be mainly about them as sam maggs constantly left cere, greez and bd out when tweeting about the book, but oh well. we're introduced to two new characters, fret and irei (though irei was introduced quite late in the story so i'll be focusing on fret) who very quickly made her way into the mantis crew, and into merrin's heart and pants. her character goes from scared, desperate to leave, and anxious to a cocky, always has a smirk on her face expert flirter within a few pages of her getting introduced. merrin immediately falls in love with her, they have sex, etc etc etc. i tuned half of it out.

i'm gonna take a break from the negativity here to put some parts i did enjoy. i liked all of the new characters quirks given to the crew, such as the knowledge cere plays more instruments, that merrin blushes green, etc. even if some seemed contradictory (cal having a fear of needles, yet calling stims "green syringes" and having no effect) they were still fun to read. i like the confirmation of cal's suicidal past, and this might just be me but the autistic traits given to him felt very personal and made me happy as an autistic person. the sapphic representation, while handled poorly in some parts, was nice. very rarely do we see lgbtq rep in a major franchise like star wars and merrin is a very popular character. seeing a character with confirmed top surgery scars was great, too. of course, positives always have a negative--- there was a strange aura of the author having been given free reign over merrin's sexuality, but cal was completely off limits. disappointing but expected.

back to criticism LOL. i found that characterisations were poor, some worse than others. it is insanely clear to me that the author worked on the dlcs for marvel's spider-man on ps4, because cal turned into a sassy, quipping smartass who winked at stormtroopers before fighting them. he is constantly butting heads with the mantis crew, regularly thinking shitty and rude things at them and sometimes even saying them aloud. it's a huge leap from the sweet, sometimes moody but majorly friendly character from jfo, and sam maggs constantly describes him as such--- but his actual written personality is far different. merrin is not much better, and neither is cere; both of them having one trait amplified to the max (for merrin, her bloodthirstiness- for cere, her want to restore order). it is clear the author does not have a clear grasp on these characters. there is no complexity, no understanding of how they tick, and what their motives are.

i'm actually kind of glad that there was so little important details, because it means i can write 90% of the book off and pretend it never existed. of course, the biggest