For those wondering just how the Republic allowed the First Order to rise to power by the time Star Wars: The Force Awakens started, a new novel set in the decadeslong gap between Return of the Jedi and last year’s big-screen return to a galaxy far, far away looks set to tease out some details.
USA Today talked to author Claudia Gray about the upcoming Star Wars: Bloodline, which centers on former-Princess Leia Organa’s experience as the galaxy attempts to recover from the reign of the Galactic Empire.
“This novel isn’t fundamentally about Leia as a wife, sister or mom,” she explained, although she admitted that family does play a “key role” in one of the book’s major moments, which has “pretty far-reaching repercussions for several characters.” Instead, she continued, Bloodline is “about the role she’s created for herself since the fall of the Empire, and the one she takes up by the time of [The Force Awakens].”
It will also reveal that Kylo Ren might not be the only youngster to believe in Imperial propaganda, with Gray teasing that one of the problems facing Leia will be that “a new generation doesn’t remember the lessons of the Rebellion or recognize the wrongs of the Empire” — something that might tie into the the Acolytes of the Beyond already introduced in last year’s Star Wars: Aftermath novel, in addition to the Knights of Ren that surrounded Kylo in The Force Awakens‘ brief flashback.
Details remain under wraps until Bloodline‘s May 3 release, but it is beginning to look a lot like the Republic’s dream of a peaceful, post-Empire galaxy is just like a villain’s plot from Scooby Doo: something that they would’ve gotten away with if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.
