In Empire's End, the final battle between the Empire and the New Republic takes place over a previously little known backwater planet called Jakku. Driven by Norra Wexley's need for vengeance, the crew of the previous two Aftermath books is on a hunt for Admiral Rae Sloane even as Sloane pursues her own vengeance against the Imperial puppeteer Gallius Rax. On and above Jakku, the fate of the galaxy will be decided.

Well, it's done. Empire's End wraps up the Aftermath trilogy more with a whimper than the bang that I would have preferred. I finished this series largely because I wanted to know what secrets it had to tell about the time period between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens so now I can check that box. As with really the entire series, reading Empire's End was a frustrating experience. At this point, I cared deeply about many of the characters and I wanted to know what would happen to each of them during the battle over Jakku. Yet again, Wendig's writing frustrated me over and over again. While Star Wars has never exactly been free of plot holes, Wendig is one of the laziest writers I have ever come across. He's perfectly capable of writing compelling action scenes but what works for graphic novels and screen writing does not work here. There were WAY too many unbelievable moments, just like there were in Aftermath and Life Debt.

This spoiler section will contain all of my specific complaints:

- Any chapter that ends with "And that's when everything went wrong." is only slightly worse than starting the story with "It was a dark and stormy night..." Both are stupid and lazy.

- A wookiee who leaned her head back really far to deal with the pain caused by a brain chip and somehow managed to snap her own neck. I'm not an expert on wookiee biology but I'm 99% sure that's not how their spines work.

- I know that Wendig has both a wife and a son but I think he's got some therapy he needs to work through. More than one character rants about how terrible kids and marriage are. His characterization of Han Solo was obnoxious beyond belief.

- Please for the love of God stop with the "I've got a bad feeling about this" lines.

- Mister Bones apparently turns into HK 47. Just...no. He's not HK, he should not be saying shit like "COMMENTARY: I SAY WE BLAST THE MEATBAG AND SAVE YOU THE TROUBLE, MASTER." Just let Bones be Bones. He was cool as is, he doesn't need to channel another droid.

- On that note, hands down the most contrived bullshit scene in the entire book is when a skittermouse takes the resister bolt off of Bones to add to its nest (oh yes, that seems likely) and then Bones SOMEHOW HAS A SELF-REPAIR PROTOCOL EVEN AFTER HAVING BEEN SHOT TO PIECES. No, just no. Not even remotely believable and just the laziest, most infuriating deus ex machina moment.

- I expected so much more from Palpatine's plan. I thought it'd be something cool and threatening to the galaxy. Apparently he stopped dreaming big after the first death star was destroyed. I did like the idea that he would want to destroy everything if he wasn't the one running it.


Also, I had to read a chapter in which Jar Jar was featured as a character and that's basically a capital offense.

Empire's End wraps up the Aftermath trilogy and finally brings most of the loose threads together. I still have no idea what the point of the Acolytes was but I didn't really care by the end anyway. I cared about the characters that Wendig created but I was constantly frustrated and infuriated by his lazy writing style and inability to avoid contrived scenarios. At least now I can say that I know what happened in the space between the original trilogy and the newest one but I can't say I particularly enjoyed the ride.