Although I like Quell and Chass in the first book, I absolutely loathed Wyl and Nath. This helped tremendously for me as a reader to get behind the characters. Shadow Fall is much more evenly divided among Quell, Chass, Wyl, and Nath (still leaving out Kairos for large chunks of the story). While the first book focused on many of the pilots’ backstories, the story was mainly focused on Quell, which was deserving for that particular story but it left the other pilots high and dry without enough depth to really like them. This allows us, the reader, to get much better acquainted with Alphabet Squadron than we ever were able to in the first book. The story of Shadow Fall bounces around, giving the reader all of the pilots’ perspectives within Alphabet Squadron. The principle Imperial within Shadow Wing is Soran Keize, and he is the only one within the story whose point of view we get. Shadow Fall, on the other hand, is made up of a series of TIE Fighter pilots, who often go unnamed or barely make impressions upon the story.

The makeup of Alphabet Squadron covers the gamut of starfighter letters, with all the Rebellion fighters accounted for with Yrica Quell flying the X-wing, Chass na Chadic in the B-wing, Kairos in the U-wing, Wyl Lark in the A-wing, and Nath Tensent in the Y-wing. There has been no trace of Shadow Wing since the horrible events of Pandem Nai, and Alphabet Squadron is itchin’ for a fight. Shadow Fall takes place about a month or two after the first Alphabet Squadron book, with the Alphabet Squadron still on the hunt for the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing, better known as Shadow Wing. Listen to the latest episode of our Star Wars podcast, Talkin' Tauntauns!

Star wars shadowfall