If you haven’t checked out the new cartoon series Star Wars: Rebels, you really ought to be ashamed. It’s fantastic and it does a wonderful job at capturing that spark and spirit of the original trilogy. If you have checked out the series and want to know more about the main characters, than you owe it to yourself to pick up the new canon book Star Wars: A New Dawn, which focuses on the lead characters of Kanan Jarrus and his co-pilot / more than friend Hera Syndulla. It’s certainly not a kids book, as there is some rather shocking scenes and it’s rather lengthy, but if you’re old enough, you definitely want to crack this open ASAP. Read on to see if you agree…
Publication: 2014
Pages: 288
Star Wars: A New Dawn focuses on the life of Kanan Jarrus, who is actually named Caleb Dume, but had to change his name once Order 66 was issued and all Jedi were meant to be exterminated. Kanan escaped execution and now lives a life of dangerous jobs towing bombs and helping out people here and there. He does his best to hide his force powers and doesn’t want anyone to know about his past, out of fear he might be caught and killed. What was beginning as a normal day for Kanan, soon turns to chaos, as the Empire takes an interest in a nearby moon that houses materials that are to be used for the Empire’s war machines. Leading the charge is Count Vidian, part man, part machine, who’s sole purpose is to tighten everything up and make sure all is in order for the Emperor. The only thing standing in this evil man’s way is Hera, a Twi’lek, who is taking a stand against the evil Empire. Kanan eventually crosses paths with Hera and they team up to take down the evil Vidian and save a moon and the entire planet of Gorse in the process.
The best thing coming out of Star Wars: A New Dawn, besides expanding on the existing characters of Kanan and Hera, is introducing us to the purely evil Count Vidian. What a character this guy is. Having nearly died from a disease, he builds himself up with droid parts and becomes insane in the process. Much like Vader, he is more machine than man, but unlike Vader, the human side is pure evil. He has no problems killing people and when he does, it’s pretty damn dark. Without spoiling anything in this book, I would really like to see more about this guy in other stories down the road.
The biggest focus of the book is on giving you the back story of how Kanan and Hera met and their relationship and connection they share in Star Wars: Rebels. That was awesome to read, but it also leads me to my number one complaint in the book. The book only focuses on these two characters from the show. Zeb and Sabine are not introduced in the story and instead we have two other people that have no relation to the show. I thought it was strange that they wouldn’t introduce them and give us some info on how they met. They are probably waiting to either give you that information in a season of the show, or in another book. This really is the only thing though that bothered me about this book; everything else is gold. There is lots of action, story, bits of romantic developments and a new villain, who is bad to the bone.
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| Zeb and Sabine are nowhere to be seen. |
Star Wars: A New Dawn is first the in the new canon books and it’s thankfully off to a strong start. If you’re a fan of the new series Star Wars: Rebels, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book and dive into the back story of some really solid characters. It’s a new beginning for Star Wars folks and it’s looking to be wonderful.
