This guest review is from Crystal Anne! Crystal Anne with An E comes to us from a sunny clime, but prefers to remain a pale indoor cat. She enjoys reading, cross-stitching something nerdy, going to see live music, and playing video games. She works as an autism consultant by day, got a degree in information science for fun, and currently serves on her local library advisory board, which she’s written about twice for SBTB .
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Me, when someone says the words “Star Wars romance novel:”
Yes? Yes!
Well, it’s happened again. Someone remembered that the intrigue and adventure aspects of the Star Wars Universe lend themselves very well to young love, especially when that young love is on the run.
Ashley Poston, who is a star in the romance genre, was given the opportunity to play around in the Star Wars Universe, and clearly jumped in with both feet.
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The book opens with our heroine, Ardent, on a mission to find the final volume in a serial that she reads. It’s hard to locate, she needs to know what happened in the story (relatable), and it’s a way that she maintains a connection to her missing mother, who disappeared years ago.
That she opens on this mission tells us a lot about her: she’s a little nerd (again, relatable), and she’s got a rebellious streak a mile wide, because to find this book, she’s going into areas of Coruscant that she knows full well she should not be in. Things go awry, as they do when you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, and she ends up having to help a pretty young alien man with a broken lightsaber in his possession.
So let’s talk about the pretty young man, Sian. From the very beginning, even as they’re running from their lives, his interest in her is evident. He nicknames her Starlight, which she does not understand. She doesn’t consider herself conventionally pretty, and she’s possibly correct in her self-assessment.
However, due to his being a different (but still humanoid, it didn’t get into that kind of matching someone’s freak) species, he sees her differently. On the surface, this initially could feel a bit tropey, but it’s due to biological abilities as opposed to “not like other girls” -ness. He simply sees colors differently, and in his eyes, she looks like light. He’s also not nearly as rogueish as he might seem at the outset. For one thing, there’s trauma. For another, it turns out he’s also another huge nerd.
They are obviously very attracted to each other, and the constant tendency to be in danger and experiencing high adventure together enhances that. They challenge each other frequently, particularly Sian, who questions Ardent’s devotion to her father’s ship and business. Ardent’s father runs a tour ship that takes people through important locations in the relatively recent Galactic Civil War; places like Endor, Tatooine, and the dust field that is what remains of Alderaan.
Their relationship is sweet and makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Sian represents the life of adventure that Ardent could choose. Ardent represents the family and support system that he has now been without for a long time, and very clearly longs for. They also, and this is important, have fun together and enjoy introducing each other to things they enjoy.
That said, we all know why we’re here, right? We’re here because we enjoy Star Wars, and we enjoy the different ways stories can be told within that universe.
We love it here!
The, uh, star of a Star Wars book is always going to be the universe it’s written in. We read these books because we want to spend more time there. And that holds as true as ever with Eyes Like Stars. I was especially enamored with the idea of a tour company that allows travelers to experience different historical sites. Obviously we have those here on good ol’ Earth, but I am deeply into the idea of an immersive travel experience around the galaxy. I’d sign up faster than you could say “nerf herder.”
The one that I think made the most impact was the time spent in the empty black that used to be Alderaan. A couple of decades have gone by and the concept of what happened there has settled comfortably into history. However, there are still living people who were possibly off-planet when Alderaan was destroyed, or who had relatives that lived there. Those people have established a space station where it used to be, and are doing what they can to keep the history and culture of Alderaan alive, even as they live in what many consider a grave.
Sian challenges Ardent about the idea of touring and profiting off of a place like that; he initially considers it morbid and disrespectful, to say the least. Ardent counters that the money raised by their tours helps support the people of the station as they try to salvage artifacts and replicate plant species from the destroyed planet. It’s a complicated conversation about a complicated place.
In addition, this book is taking place at an equally complicated time within this story universe. The Galactic Civil War is now far enough in the past that it is considered historical, but recent enough that many of the veterans of that war are still wandering around, notable examples being Ardent’s father, a former Rebel pilot, and a certain General that was recently ousted from her senatorial seat due to some “political issues” (see Star Wars: Bloodline).
At the same time, there also is a growing movement among younger people, particularly men, that is beginning to romanticize the Empire, and wants to establish their own version of government that incorporates many aspects of it. A First Order, if you will. Ardent is more blunt in her descriptions of it; she refers to them as “fascists.”
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At this point in the overall story, the First Order is not being taken seriously. They are generally regarded as a bunch of crackpot zealots. However, they are causing enough trouble that tour ships like Ardent’s are having to re-route due to certain areas and planets becoming unsafe for their travelers, and a coalition is forming around two prominent young men within the Order. One is a tightly wound general that brooks no interference in his duties, and the other is an unstable Force user with a red lightsaber and a scary mask.
TFG.
I would love to think that it’s impossible for a society to forget its history in such a short time and take to romanticizing a corrupt government but :::laughs bleakly at current events:::. That is one thing about Star Wars: it always seems to have an unsettling relevance no matter when a new story takes place.
In addition, it is also apparent that the loss of knowledge of history and information caused by Darth Vader’s obliteration of the Jedi and their Temple has continued to perpetuate harm, as characters like Sian, an apprentice archaeologist, are tasked by both forces good and not-so-good with finding artifacts and historical sites related to that history.
You know what they say about a society that forgets its history. In this story, it is beginning to become apparent how Luke Skywalker so quickly repeated the mistakes of the Jedi Order. It is also clear that there are many Force users wandering around the galaxy, and the vast majority of them don’t even know they’re using it. One criticism of the recent movies was that they focused too much on Force users that came from known family dynasties with a legacy of that power. This story focused on a family with a history of that power, but most importantly, there is no relation to the Skywalkers whatsoever. That more egalitarian approach is, to me, more interesting storytelling.
I picked up this book because I wanted to hang out on places like Tatooine and Endor, and spend some time in worlds that I’ve known and loved for a long time. The bonus is that this story gave me some new characters to get to know and love within those worlds. All in all, nice solid B+, with a bonus for snarky droids. I do always love a snarky droid.
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