Entertainment Weekly has released the first excerpt from the upcoming novel Star Wars Aftermath: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig. The novel is a sequel to last year's Star Wars: Aftermath, which debuted at #4 on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Life Debt is set following the events of Return of the Jedi and hits shelves on July 19th. A third novel in the Aftermath series, titled Empire's End, is slated for a 2017 release. Check out the excerpt from Life Debt below,
The galaxy is changing, and with peace now a possibility, some
dare to imagine new beginnings and new destinies. For Han Solo, that
means settling his last outstanding debt, by helping Chewbacca liberate
the Wookiee’s home world of Kashyyyk.
Meanwhile, Norra Wexley and her band of rebels pursue Admiral Rae
Sloane and the remaining Imperial leadership across the galaxy. Sloane,
increasingly wary of the mysterious fleet admiral, desperately searches
for a means to save the crumbling Empire from oblivion. Even as
Imperial forces fight to regain lost ground, Princess Leia and the New
Republic seek to broker a lasting peace.
But the rebel’s hunt for Admiral Sloane is cut short after the
disappearance of Han Solo and Chewbacca. Desperate to save them, Leia
conscripts Norra, Sinjir, Jas, and the rest of their team to find the
missing smugglers and help them in their fight for freedom.
***
The grass swishes and shakes as Sinjir crawls up on his belly. “Ow!”
he says, flexing his hand and popping the knuckle of his thumb in his
mouth. “This grass is slicing me to bits.”
“It drinks your blood,” Jas says, easing closer. “Thirstgrass
sustains itself on the creatures who walk through it. Little sips from
little cuts.”
He frowns. “Lovely. I’m here for my hourly update. And my hourly update is: I am bored. Bored out of my skull.”
“That’s always your hourly update,” Norra says.
“Because it’s true every hour.”
“It’s my update, too,” Temmin says, crawling up next to them.
“Seriously, this is awful. I want to burn all this grass. And the thorny
bushes. And the flies.” As if to demonstrate, he swats at the back of
his hand. “See? Ugh. I should’ve stayed on Chandrila.”
“Can’t we just go back to Kai Pompos?” Sinjir asks. “We’d make it by
nightfall. There’s a little drinkery around the back of the town, they
have a still where they ferment this root, this korva root, so we go back, we tip back a few under the Irudiru moons, we reformulate our strategy—”
“This is a fact-finding mission,” Norra says, feeling like a Mom
commanding a child to stay put. “We stay here until all the facts are
found.”
“Facts are,” Temmin says, “the guy isn’t coming out. He’s dug in like
a blood-bug.” They’d heard rumors that their target, Golas Aram, was a
big game hunter, and thought maybe that would afford them an opportunity
to get close to him. But so far, no go. Nor has he gone out for
supplies. Or even a breath of fresh air. They’ve seen neither hide nor
hair of the man. Just droids. “Here’s what we do. We take Mister Bones—”
Bones, whose skeletal body sits crumpled up behind them, compressed
down with his head bowed and his arms enclosing his knees. “And we let
Bones march down there, find the guy, drag him up here onto the plateau,
and we question him. Simple.”
One issue that was raised following the release of Aftermath was its lack of main characters from the Original Trilogy films, with the exception of one interlude featuring Han and Chewie that set up this book. It seems like this is something that will be addressed in Life Debt, where it appears Han, Chewie, and Leia will have larger roles (still no mention of Luke, though). I look forward to seeing some of the new characters we were introduced to in Aftermath interact with the classic characters (specifically I would love to see some interaction between Temmin Wexley, who was portrayed by Greg Grunberg in The Force Awakens, and the Legacy characters).
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