A Disney Nerds Book Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi Cobalt Squadron

A new Read(listen)

I had the pleasure to listen to this book over the last couple of days of lawn work.  Star Wars: The Last Jedi Cobalt Squadron caught my eye because of the cover art.  Rose Tico, from The Last Jedi # VIII with a couple of crewmen.  What caught my eye the most were the MG-100 Star Fortresses.  These were the bombers from the Last Jedi that basically bought the farm very early on in the movie while taking down the Siege Dreadnaught.  My first thought was this has to be a book about those Bomber crews from before their fateful attack.  And of course the tie in with Rose.  I was right, but WOW, did I get a lot more than that.

This was a superior audio recording written by Elizabeth Wein. The background sound effects were very immersive.  Also, as a major bonus, this story is read by none other than Rose Tico herself, Kelly Marie Tran.

These smaller Star Wars stories fill in a lot of the details or plot holes that arise in the movies whether from bad writing or editing for time.  For this small book, I was surprised at how many revelations that were revealed to me.  I also went back and watched The Last Jedi for reference in this review and I am glad I did to help explain some items.

The Story

Cobalt Squadron is a gritty look into the workings of a  group of resistance fighters.  Which brings up revelation # 1.  The Resistance was not openly at war with the First Order until after the attack on the Starkiller Base.  As we meet Rose and her sister Paige, they are two crewmen on a Star Fortress in Cobalt Squadron.  They are refugees and now resistance fighters.  The sisters escaped from their homeworld that had been destroyed by the First Order.  Revelation # 2, the First Order does this all the time.  They arrived on Rose’s world, mined the planet to exhaustion, used the people on the planet as slave labor and weapons test subjects and basically destroyed their world.  We’re hearing that a lot.  Vi and Leia were afraid of that at Black Spire Outpost on Battu.  Also, the storyline of the TV Series Star Wars Resistance is kinda based on the habits of the First Order squeezing their way onto a planet to stay.  Leia takes the sisters into the Resistance and gives them jobs.

This story is based on another planet that the First Order is trying to take over.  At about the same time Rey and Finn were meeting for the first time, Rose and her sister Paige and their crewmates were flying against Tie Fighters.  Their mission was to not drop bombs but survival supplies to resistance fighters in the Atterra system.  The First Order was choking the life out of this system and a plea to Leia was approved.  Cobalt Squadron would be dispatched to help.

These bombers are very versatile.  A quick look in the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary, tells us the Star-Fortress was originally called a T-Wing.  Rose is the Tech on the Bomber and Paige is the bottom ball turret gunner.  Revelation # 3, Paige is the ball turret gunner in the last bomber that bombed the Dreadnaught, but went down in flames in the process in the Last Jedi.  We see Paige’s medallion before she dies.  We meet Rose in the movie for the first time crying for some unknown reason when she catches Finn trying to leave the ship.  We now know, she was mourning Paige who had just died.  The girl’s matching medallions are mentioned often in this book and play a big role in the Last Jedi movie.

This book is realistic as it follows the lives of people other than the Leia’s or Finn’s or Rey’s of the SW galaxy.  This book lets you see the grunts of the Star Wars universe that you rarely see other than in passing. We see this perfectly in the evacuation of the Resistance base.  In the movie, we only got a small camera pan of who these crews were and what their capable ships can do…as they were destroyed.  Revelation # 4, In Cobalt Squadron, as the sisters finish their last mission, a strange light appears as they travel through hyper-space.  A bright light or Space Lightning was seen by a lot of crews while returning to base.  Even in real space, they discuss what it could be, Super Nova or a new weapon.  Unfortunately for them, it was a new weapon.  A new weapon that had already destroyed the Hosnian system, been found, and then destroyed while they had been on their mission.  A lot of time was spent on this in the book from the lights in hyper-space to the description of events when they got back to base.  I had thought the Bomber was what tied this book into the larger Star Wars story, I was wrong.  Books of this timeframe seem to be keying off the use of that weapon.  Either actually like Rose and her crew seeing it in hyper-space, or attacking it like Poe and his pilots did or just conversation around the Galaxy about what the First Order has done now.

The Verdict

The book finished up with Rose Tico and her sister being split up for the first time during a mission.  Paige stayed on her bomber and Rose was promoted up as a Tech on the Cruiser to fill an empty slot. Watch or read Star Wars: The Last Jedi to find out what happens next.  Star Wars: The Last Jedi cobalt Squadron was a well-written book and I highly recommend it.  The only criticism is that I wish it had been longer.  That it had spent a little more time on the Ice mining that the bombers used as a cover while in the Atterra system.  I would have also liked a little more time with the crews.  While doing some background research I did come across another book that might do just that.  Bomber Command is the compilation of the pages from Paige Tico’s personal Journal.  Stay tuned for that review real soon.

Thanks for reading guys.  What are your favorite Star Wars books?  Let us know in the comments below or send me an email to ed@thedisneynerdspodcast.com