Galaxy's Edge: Kill Team

Another month, another Galaxy's Edge release, and another review!  I didn't actually review the first book, Legionnaire, although I talked about it plenty.  I did review book 2: Galactic Outlaws and I may yet continue the streak.  In any case, I'll do Book 3: Kill Team.  So far, the schedule has been something like the following:

• Every month, a new title is released (not only are Cole and Anspach writing at a furious pace, but they must have had a lot of groundwork laid ahead of time.)  I can't remember if they said that they're planning a 9 or 10 book arc, but it's something of that order of magnitude; so by next summer, we'll have done it.
• I've got the book on pre-order as a Kindle download.
• I get it on the day it's released.
• I finish it by the next day.

There's not a lot of books that I tend to finish that fast—the only ones in many years until now that I consistently did so was with Butcher's Dresden novels.  And he hasn't even put one out in over three years now, so he's pretty overdue and behind schedule.)  But these seem to do the trick.  They're that good.

First; let me reiterate for those just catching up what the premise of Galaxy's Edge is, paraphrased by me from the authors' own words.  It can be neatly encapsulated in their hashtag, #StarWarsNotStarWars, and it means that the authors are fans of the Star Wars franchise... but are somewhat disheartened by much of what has happened to it.  While chatting about it, they decided to work together, writing it the way it should have been; the way it once was (read my Secret History of Star Wars posts for more info here, linked in the review to book 2).  It's kinda a pastiche of Star Wars, which of course was also a pastiche of Dune and Lensmen and especially Flash Gordon to begin with.

And like the Star Wars movies, which started off imitating the plots of unrelated genre movies, before "evolving" into something where the plot wasn't exactly the same, you can see clear analogs to some other plots you may be familiar with.  Legionnaire had a lot of obvious similarities to Zulu (1964) and Galactic Outlaws reminded me very closely of True Grit (1969 or 2010—take your pick.)  Kill Team reminded me strongly of John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold in one plot arc, but it also reminded me strongly of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, especially in how it went back and forth between an assassination (or terrorist) plot and those carrying it out, and those who are tasked and racing to thwart it.

The voice of the character "Tom" who makes up the more Le Carré-like half of the novel, is quite different than what we've seen in the series to date.  It felt a little more navel-gazing-like, especially early on, than I was expecting, but at the same time, I've read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, albeit probably twenty years ago, so I was able to recognize immediately what it was probably meant to be a direct homage of, and thereby appreciate it.  And it didn't wallow in self-introspection all that much, really, which is of course would be death to any swashbuckling space opera action story.  This sounds like a complaint.  It's not; it's just a heads-up that they adopt a somewhat different voice for about half (roughly) of the novel which might have been a bad move if it had not been handled carefully.  But it works great here.  And for those (like me) who get and recognize the reference, it's actually kind of cool.

Once again, Cole and Anspach do not fail to disappoint, and I really enjoyed Kill Team.  It serves as a direct sequel to Legionnaire, and from the perspective of Galactic Outlaws I guess that would make it a flashback, or a prequel—although it does a fascinating job of tying together elements of both of those books, just in case you were starting to think that maybe the first was just a somewhat more distantly related prologue.  It's not.  The two story lines from the two respective novels are actually deeply intertwined.

But I can't tell you much about them without spoiling stuff, so I won't.  

I also don't know for sure what more to say about this novel that I didn't say about the last one.  The premise of the series, and any grand philosophical maundering about that, I've already done.  The fact that they're still great; I've also done.  I did also appreciate that the subtle (yet quite pointed) social and political satire that's there for those with the wit to see it, but it never even comes close to the ham-handed message fic that the Left loves to indulge in.  It actually—like, OMG!—serves the needs of the plot and creates believable and plausible motivations for functional, normal characters to do things that we readers can relate to as functional, normal people ourselves.  So, not knowing what else to say about the book other than that, well—just get it and read it!  You will not be disappointed.