V confident pacing, strong core cast, and a good mix of humor and intrigue. The knight stuff is as Auraful as you'd expect, but the author gets that the real appeal of knight houses is how they're all self important weirdos who love to feud against each other for no reason. An incredibly fun listen!

Also if i ever dm a 40k game I will shamelessly steal the plot and characters from it. The book has real "sourcebook got popular so now heres a novel about it" vibes lol

Pretty unimpressed tbh! I was really hoping that having an unexplored setting would lead to a bunch of weird risky ideas with varying quality like NJO, but instead I got a very safe by-the-numbers novel. Really strong “disaster movie” first act, but the second and third seriously dawdle

Really wish they did more with the “historical” premise by making it feel meaningfully different from “modern Star Wars” but I just didn’t get the sense that there was a meaningful difference beyond vaguely high medieval aesthetics. The Jedi Order is already solidified, Coruscant is already the unquestioned center of government, and even glup shitto planets like Serenno are already important! it gives the impression that everything is already established and nothing is up for grabs. I realize that it’s Star Wars and not a serious historical account of the Black Prince, but I do think that having more historical parallels would give the setting a defined and unique feel, and thus give the novel a meaningful identity.

Granted, most readers probably aren’t listening to this and a history of the War of The Roses at the same time, but even so as someone who is both interested in medieval history and a big Star Wars nerd, what wasted potential.

Anyway the novel introduce so many different characters, but most of the cast have really similar values and end up feeling like standard archetypes, so it’s fairly stale when alls said and done. Really wish they focused in on a strong core cast and went for depth and nuance instead of quantity

Also? Way too many PoV characters. My rough count was over 20 in a book with 48 chapters. That’s just untenable. Shoutout Libby because I’d be a bit ticked off if paid full price for this