SWNN Book Review: Battlefront – Twilight Company

Star Wars Battlefront: Twilight CompanySo, in and amongst all of the The Force Awakens coverage, I thought I’d lay a quick book review on you all. Yes, it’s been out for a month or so now, but let’s take a look at Star Wars Battlefront:Twilight Company.

 

Let’s cut right to the chase here: I really liked this one. It’s a different kind of Star Wars story, but it never strays far from the action-oriented drama that we all grew up with. Sure, it’s got its flaws like any novel does, but they didn’t get in the way of the ride. And for me, that’s always been the key to the Star Wars experience – at its best, in addition to anything and everything else it might be, Star Wars is an amazing ride.

This latest ride, Battlefront: Twilight Company, has been variously described as “gritty”, “dark”, and “grim”. Unlike so many other stories set in the Star Wars universe, Twilight Company is not a tale of legendary superheroes upon whose shoulders the fate of the galaxy rests. It is, instead, a glimpse into the life of the average foot-soldier during the Galactic Civil War.

Twilight Company is a Rebel Alliance mobile infantry unit that uses the Thunderstrike, a Corellian corvette, as its base of operations. The story takes place at roughly the same time as the Battle of Hoth, with Twilight Company pushing deeper into Imperial-held territory even as the Rebel high command is hunkered down at their new base in a distant corner of the Outer Rim Territories. Changing fortunes and the arrival of an unlikely collaborator sends Twilight Company on a bold series of strikes designed to divert sufficient Imperial defensive forces to allow for an assault on the orbital shipwright facilities of Kuat Drive Yards.

Along the way, of course, we meet a diverse cast of characters. Here is one area where I feel that author Alexander Freed truly shines. Again, we are not presented with the usual big-H Heroes that we’ve come to expect from Star Wars stories. However, that’s not to say that these are flat, powerless characters. Not at all. Indeed, Twilight Company’s well-earned motto is “Twilight survives!” As is the case with all truly successful combat units, these are ordinary people who act extraordinarily.

TwilightCompany_2up

The main character, Sgt. Hazrim Namir, is a jaded, angry veteran of numerous wars, despite the fact that he’s barely in his 20s. Through a series of brief flashback chapters, we learn that Namir, had been fighting for faction after faction on his backwater home planet since since he was about 13 years old. By the time he left the planet and joined Twilight Company, he’d already seen more combat than many of Twilight Company’s senior members. His real name isn’t even Hazrim Namir, for that matter. It was just the latest nom de guerre he happened to be using when he left his home planet and joined the crew of the Thunderstrike.

Over the course of the novel, Namir circumstances conspire to thrust more and more responsibility on his shoulders, especially once another of the main characters is introduced. Everi Chalis is a former Imperial governor who claims to be defecting to the Rebellion, but whom nobody (the book characters and the reader included) every really manages to trust. Her bargaining chip is her intimate knowledge of Imperial logistics, which Twilight Company uses in its campaign to take out the Kuat shipyards. Chalis is haughty, devious and manipulative, but most of all she’s just an insufferable ass – and it works very well in the context of the story, especially where her antagonistic relationship with Namir is concerned.

And of course, there are the battles – LOTS of battles. No real surprise there, seeing as how Twilight Company is a spin-off of the new Star Wars: Battlefront video game. And yet, the battle scenes are very well done. Cinematic, yes, but they also focus heavily on the moment-to-moment experiences of the soldiers. And, to reinforce the point that this is not a tale of untouchable superheroes, the author is not at all afraid to kill off characters in the blink of an eye – not just obvious blaster fodder characters, but also characters he’s spent some time developing. It quickly becomes all too apparent that when Twilight Company gets into a scrap with the enemy, you really don’t know who is going to walk away from it once the smoke clears.

Star Wars Battlefront: Twilight Company

As I mentioned before, it’s a different take on the Star Wars universe. Michael Stackpole gave us a taste of it in his X-Wing series (an old favorite of mine) but in my opinion Twilight Company goes even further in shifting focus away from the Skywalker clan and the broader galactic conflict. It’s a story about foot soldiers doing their job under the worst possible conditions – far more along the lines of Band of Brothers and Blackhawk Down than we usually see in a Star Wars novel. And given the fact that these are the kinds of war stories that we’ve been told inspired the story for next year’s Star Wars: Rogue One, I think this bodes very well for what we’ll see on the big screen in December of 2016.

And even if Rogue One and Twilight Company end up being radically different types of stories, I still can’t recommend Twilight Company enough for those of you who want to see what the “blue collar” side of the Galactic Civil War was all about. No lightsabers, no prophecies, no bigger-than-life heroes… just a good old ass-kicking war story straight from the trenches. I’m very much looking forward to the next book in the series (and there will undoubtedly be one.)

 

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19 thoughts on “SWNN Book Review: Battlefront – Twilight Company

  • December 31, 2015 at 4:53 pm
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    I loved it!

    • January 1, 2016 at 12:34 am
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      Isn’t Twilight Company also the name of a Clone Trooper squad from one
      of the unproduced Clone Wars story arcs?

  • December 31, 2015 at 5:15 pm
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    And i was wondering where is campaign for Battlefront EA and look here it is !!!

    • December 31, 2015 at 5:19 pm
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      XD i would love to see a campaign like this for the game where if you die you fail the campaign and you can even walk around the thunderstrike Here is how the story would go
      1.Prelude
      2.Battle of Hoth
      and just keep going it would be like 10 hour’s of playtime

  • December 31, 2015 at 5:34 pm
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    Well, there is a cameo of our favorite smuggler for those who caught the indirect references during the scene. And also the mention of “high profile, top-secret arrivals” where the group happened to be. Those were great moments that really helped this scream Star Wars for me.

    • December 31, 2015 at 6:06 pm
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      I loved Namir’s drink with Solo. That was one of my favorite moments in the book.

    • December 31, 2015 at 7:06 pm
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      Namir & Han was a great scene. But, also Twilight’s face off with Vader.

      • December 31, 2015 at 7:39 pm
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        This.

  • December 31, 2015 at 6:21 pm
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    I thought you already reviewed this? Never mind, you convinced me to get this with “many battles”

    • December 31, 2015 at 7:38 pm
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      Pomojema did a review also.

      • January 1, 2016 at 2:54 am
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        Again you! XD All right, good to see multiple reviews of something 🙂

  • December 31, 2015 at 6:26 pm
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    Need to read this (along with Lost Stars, and TFA). This sounds like the kind of tone I would like to see and feel in Rogue One.

  • December 31, 2015 at 7:24 pm
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    Is that a dexter jettster type alien?

    • December 31, 2015 at 7:37 pm
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      Yep. Gadren is a besalisk, the same as Jettster from AOTC and the Jedi General and Benedict Arnold Pong Krell from Clone Wars. I hated the diner scene in AOTC, but I always thought the species was cool. And seeing General Krell rocking two double-bladed lightsabers in CW was pretty sweet.

      • December 31, 2015 at 8:28 pm
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        Is Naka in this one?

        • December 31, 2015 at 9:10 pm
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          Lol. ‘fraid not.

  • December 31, 2015 at 8:21 pm
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    i listened to the audiobook of this over christmas and it was awesome. as with lost stars it gives a different perspective of the galactic civil war, but this time at the dirt level, which i love. and as the article said, it definitely raises my hopes even more for rogue one.

  • January 1, 2016 at 8:26 am
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    I definitely recommend this book too for anyone who hasn’t read it, it’s great! Very dark, and there’s a scene on hoth that is truly chilling (it had me in awe tbh)

  • January 3, 2016 at 6:55 pm
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    Read and loved it. The level of thought and detail put into this book was amazing!

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