Another Audio: "Battlefront: Twilight Company" by Alexander Freed

Another Audio: Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alexander Freed, 2015, overdrive download.

I readily admit that I would not have read this if I knew it was a video game tie-in. I just discovered the tie-in status a couple minutes ago when checking full title and pub date. I enjoyed the book.

Namir is an infantry Sergeant with the Rebellion. It's 13 years after the Clone Wars a couple years after the Death Star's destruction. The Rebellion is being pushed back on multiple fronts and losing planets previously won over from the Empire.

Namir is part of Twilight Company. Twilight works as shock troops by hopping from solar system to solar system in efforts to stop Empire attacks and allow the Rebellion to retreat.  The Company is filled with humans and aliens and has a casualty rate of well over 100%. The Company holds open recruiting calls on most planets to get new soldiers.

Namir and Co. are on a planet where they capture the local Imperial Governor. The Governor is a haughty and rude woman but surrenders and promises to assist the Rebellion. It turns out the Governor, Chalis, was demoted from higher rank and sent to a backwater planet. Chalis hopes to get revenge on the Empire - and avoid the execution that would result from her losing a battle to the Rebellion - and start taking apart the Empire's logistical train.

Chalis wins over the Company's Captain and Namir travels along with them to Hoth for Chalis to meet the Rebellion's Generals and planning attacks.

Things happen. Namir is a former child soldier. Namir spent his formative years listening to the local warlords justify their violence and greed and he is thoroughly cynical. Namir does not believe in the Rebellion, he joined Twilight during an open recruitment and he stays in Twilight for the food and colleagues.

Chalis is Imperial: ruthless, murderous, selfish, scheming. She starts to slowly believe in the Rebellion and risks herself.

Other characters talk, fight, die, and do other things. Freed does not spend a lot of time on the bad guys but does a fair job of making them real. Darth Vader's brief presence is a reminder of what a powerful and dangerous villain he was. Vader is a pitiless child killer,

Comments:
1. These Star Wars narrations are done as radio plays with plenty of sound effects and music. I enjoy that.
2. Silly stuff like how a small unit of 200 soldiers winning big battles or driving armies off planets.
3. Freed takes mentions how such a war would involve a massive scale of people, space ships, and supplies. Namir is off a backwater planet and doesn't always appreciate the scale of things.
4. Darth Vader.
5. I was helping stack firewood with the Boy Scout Troop on Sunday. After the loose piles of wood were stacked the loose bark, wood strips, and other refuse were getting bulldozed into a pile by a Bobcat. The Bobcat has big wheels, hydraulic powered arms, a caged driving compartment, and makes a machinery whine and groan. I mentioned to a couple other adults how those things remind me of Star Wars vehicles.