Lost Stars: A Review That Won't Make You Lost
by Jack Holder
Lost Stars is a book by Claudia Gray that takes place in the Star Wars universe from a time before A New Hope all the way to a time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. It follows 2 main characters, Thane and Cienna, as they work towards their dream of serving in the Imperial Starfleet. They are both from the world of Jelucan, but Thane hails from an aristocratic background with an uncaring and often abusive family, while Cienna comes from a loving, honor-bound, and poor family in the valleys. As they become close friends, they spend time together studying so they can, one day, get in to Imperial Academy on Jelucan, which is seemingly the only way for them to escape their planet and use the most technologically advanced ship equipment in the galaxy.
*Spoilers* As the atrocities of the Empire begin to reveal themselves, Thane becomes disillusioned, deserts the fleet, and eventually joins the Rebel Alliance. Cienna also sees these atrocities, but from her upbringing, her word is sacred and cannot be broken, so she stays with the Empire, putting them on opposite sides of the war.
This book was very well-written and hard to put down because of all the suspense and cliffhanger chapter endings. There were some implicit parts of the book that I'm glad stopped where they did before it became too uncomfortable. Other than those, I really enjoyed the book as I'm a big fan of Star Wars (as you may have noticed from my blog posts) and it had easy to follow story arcs that were all given adequate attention. It's now my time to rip off Benji by giving it 4π bolognas out of 13.
Great post! I haven’t heard of Lost Stars before but I might consider reading it now. Based on your review, the basic plot description seems cliche, but Gray adds her own elements as well. I was wondering if the book includes more well-known characters as well such as Leia, Obi-Wan, Luke, etc. or if Gray focuses only on Thane and Cienna. Overall your review was really easy to read and summarized Lost Stars concisely.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you’ve kept this Star Wars theme going throughout your reviews. I have always been a fan of Star Wars, but I didn’t realize how much more there was in addition to the movies. I would be interested to hear more about the views of people sided with the Empire because the movies are extremely biased towards the Jedi. I have always thought that a lot of the Empire was brainwashed, underinformed, or had no choice. In my opinion, the only truly evil people were the ones at the top. The fact that you gave this book a 97% makes me even more interested in reading it.
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