Star Wars: Bloodline
Author: Claudia Gray
Genre: Sci-Fi
Grade: B
This was a good book but personally I had a hard time connecting with the story.
Bloodline takes place a couple of years before the movie and deals with Princess Leia, the gridlock in the Senate, her fear that a new enemy is gathering strength and most interestingly… What happens when knowledge of who her daddy is falls into the hands of political enemies!
I have always loved Princess Leia and been fascinated by how she would have responded to the news of Darth Vader. I mean let’s be honest in Jedi there wasn’t much time and she was kind of like, “Oh hey, I kind of knew that… moving on…” Her thoughts on that and the way people respond to the information is very interesting. Everything she did (or didn’t do) regarding Vader made sense to me.
I mean if my biological father took pleasure in torturing me and blowing up the entire planet that I grew up on I would probably compartmentalize as well.
Still a lot of the political stuff was easy to see coming. There’s a Centrist Senator she befriends that is definitely the stand out of the new characters. Honestly, all of the other characters could have been background in the movies which I suppose is the point. Han makes a couple of appearances here and there. Luke and Ben are mentioned but completely incommunicado.
Makes sense. Whatever went down there is for the movies though I still couldn’t help be disappointed that he still hasn’t had a scene with his mother. I think part of my disappoint was that I was hoping for something more (or anything at all) with Leia, Luke and Ben.
I also rather enjoyed the fact that parts of the book are almost tinted with longing for the good old war days. There was a sense of nostalgia, if that makes any sense, Leia misses the feeling of being alive that she had even while being terrified which also felt realistic and human to me.
So long story short this is a good serviceable Star Wars book with character insight into Leia and some (not very surprising perhaps) insight into how the First Order came to be. But I just didn’t connect with the story overall  and it took me longer to get through then I would have imagined.
Recommend: Yes/No I would definitely say this is one of the stronger Star Wars books that I’ve read and if you’re a fan of Leia of course but otherwise you can probably just wait for the next movie.
