Chapter By Chapter> Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire ch 7

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

Last chapter focused solely on one group, our heroes, as they arrived where they think Slave-1 is about to stop. They met up with Rogue Squadron and our Han Solo replacement…if Han went into overdrive…Dash Rendar, hero of the video game. Can we keep this train going or are we back to switching between good guys and bad guys again? Let’s get into chapter 7 and find out.

There is an unnecessary scene of Vader practicing with a training droid to show us his shoulder is better after his last fight with Luke, but it’s a few paragraphs. The rest is in two scenes over three segments, but two of them are Luke and Rogue Squadron in battle. Perry does a good job of describing events and you can see the dogfight in your mind for the most part.

The other scene is with the Millennium Falcon as Lando, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO follow Dash, who is rather nuts with how low he’s flying over the forest. Lando is having trouble thanks to Chewie’s passenger seat driving (it’s like a backseat driver but he’s right next to Lando) and trying to explain to Leia what Rendar’s problem is. His family was rather wealthy and Dash was doing well at the Imperial Academy. And then his brother accidentally crashed his cargo ship into the Emperor’s favorite museum and the Emperor had a fit, seizing all of the Rendar family assets (I’m assuming the brother was already dead) and kicking Dash out of the Academy. Okay, that explains why he’s a mercenary now and doesn’t want to be tied to anyone, but not why he’s a wild child.

Overall this was a good chapter. The Vader scene was unnecessary but even that kept the action going, and the exposition of Dash’s history is mixed with the action of flying low over the forest and the crew’s interactions. I hope this is the trend now as we hit chapter 8.