– Spoiler Review –
Long before he was a General in the Resistance, Poe Dameron was just…a teenager with attitude! Poe Dameron: Free Fall recounts Poe’s tumultuous teen years as he conflicts with authority and tries to carve out his own destiny…
Of the many shocks that came out of The Rise of Skywalker was the revelation that, at some point in his life, Resistance hero Poe Dameron was once a spice runner. Specifically, he worked with the Spice Runners of Kijimi. Now, it most certainly was not the most shocking revelation of the film, but it was not without it’s controversy. He was yet another Latino-coded character who turned out to be a spice runner, which copies a frighteningly frequent real-life trope. Thankfully, author Alex Segura seems aware of the tropes and the problems caused by this backstory, fraught with difficulties and racial issues, and tries to write a compelling novel out of these revelations.
Opening on the idyllic planet of Yavin IV, the planet that housed the Rebel Alliance during the events of Star Wars Rebels season 4, Rogue One, and A New Hope (featuring a fun cameo in Doctor Aphra), we find the Dameron family in some sort of disunity. Poe, an impetuous and, well, teenage-ry 16 year old is getting fed up with the peaceful life he is living on Yavin IV. Unfortunately his father, a former Rebel Pathfinder who fought in both the Battles of Hoth and Endor, is ready to retire and live a hard-won life of peace after the war. After the death of Shara Bey (mentioned in Greg Rucka’s Before the Awakening), a rift grew between the two, and their conflict is about to reach a boiling point. This conflict is drawn out in true young adult fashion, with yelling, slammed doors, and insults not entirely meant by the insulters. This tension is earned: both are coping (badly) with the loss of Shara Bey, and neither are in an emotional state that allows them to fully expand and explore what it means for them to deal with that loss.
Unfortunately, reading about a young, brash, and hot-headed Poe Dameron clashing with his father does not endear me much to the main character. Trying to remember that he is a young man dealing with loss, there are a lot of times that I would have been just as tempted as Kes to fight with the kid. I have been trying to think, as I review this book, how much of my feelings about the movie and this particular revelation have impacted the way that I’ve reviewed this book. I know, this is really early in the review to be wrestling with these concepts, but I think this is indicative of what you, as a reader, will have to go through: can I read this book apart from the movie? From the beginning, seeing this version of Poe that I was not entirely disposed to like from the beginning, made it hard to get into this book as quickly as I would’ve liked.
This conflict does reach its climax despite the best efforts of L’ulo L’ampar, a fan favorite character from Poe Dameron, Rebacca Roanhorse’s excellent Resistance Reborn, and Journey to The Force Awakens: Shattered Empire. After an impressively large and well-written atmospheric ship battle, and Poe being bailed out of Yavin prison again, Poe joins a crew in a local bar, thinking this crew would be his escape from the planet into a life of adventure. Unfortunately, this crew is made up of spice runners who are notorious across the galaxy. Since the fall of the Empire over ten years ago, gangs and criminal syndicates are raising hell across the galaxy, and this one in particular is known far and wide as extremely dangerous.
Comprising the crew are Zorii Wynn and mostly forgettable side characters, save for a few details on them. Viglitch, the head of this particular crew, is…an older boss who is mean to the new guy. Gen Tri, a non-binary Pau’an, is a bit more memorable, as they seem out of place for a smuggling crew with a more gentle disposition and more even-tempered attitudes. They are also a welcome addition to the small amount of non-binary representation we’ve had in the galaxy, with the most notable (to this author) example being Taka from Daniel José Older’s Last Shot. Zorii is, of course, the stand out of the novel, as she has the benefit of being a movie character. She and Poe develop a romance over the course of the novel, and this is where I started to appreciate Poe again. Zorii is a strong character in her own right: she believes in the cause of the spice runners, she is adaptable and willing to learn, and she is a no-nonsense woman who figures out what problems are around her and does everything she can to fix them. She also, fantastically, puts Poe in his place very often, and he grows a lot because of her.
On the side of the New Republic, and the heroes, is a New Republic officer, Trune, who is set on capturing the spice runners as revenge for what they did to her family and her home. (It would be nice, just once, to see a good member of the New Republic fighting for what’s right because it was right.) Trune makes for a good foil for Poe, challenging him to see how far he would go as a spice runner. This might also speak to some difficulties that some readers might have with the book: we’re really reading the book from the point-of-view of the villains. In any way that you shake it out, Poe has joined a criminal gang and is wanted by the good guys, making him a pretty bad guy at this point in his life.
If you ignored my spoiler warning above, this would be the time to duck out again.
My three biggest problems with the book follow. The first is that Poe never seems to get over wondering if he made the correct decision to leave Yavin IV. I didn’t count how many times Poe has this particular dialogue with himself, but I felt as if we were constantly reminded that Poe was conflicted about whether or not he made the right decision. This felt like a lot of telling, rather than showing, and I would have liked to see more of Poe’s tension rather than hear his inner monologue repeatedly. The major time that he is given the ability to make the decision, too, is taken away from him, removing a lot of his agency later in the novel.
The second is a bit harder to explain. In Rogue One, we were presented with two viewpoints that seem contradictory, yet were completely held together: the Rebel Alliance represents the side of good, but they work in a morally ambiguous grey area. I wonder if Segura was trying to recapture this feeling for the Spice Runners of Kijimi, in an effort to elevate them (remember, we’re reading from the perspective of the villains) and make Poe seem like a better guy who made a really dangerous and stupid mistake. I don’t recall an instance where they explicitly ran spice, but I do recall there were extended periods of Poe and Zorii freeing slaves. (Now, I am NOT saying that I would have preferred it if Poe delivered spice, because, like I said, that would work within dangerous tropes that harm real life people and influence dangerous and exclusive real life political policies.) I just don’t believe that Segura made me think that the Spice Runners were noble villains, and it left me feeling like an attempt at rehabbing Poe that didn’t quite stick. I am curious to see the discussions on this novel, and especially learning from those represented by the novel.
Finally, my third critique is that this is yet another novel in a long string of young adult novels that are intent on covering a large amount of time with few events. Similar books include Thrawn by Timothy Zahn or Rebel Rising (an incredible book, please read it) by Beth Reeves. This novel purports to cover almost the entire time that Poe was a spice runner, but we only hear about a handful of events. Sure, a comic could throw in an adventure here or there, or another novel can back-load a spice run into the space of this story, but I think it’s a mistake to continue covering entire timelines in a single book as these three examples did.
Overall, I would say that the book is a bit better than I expected, but it’s not one that I can recommend to everyone. As a story based on a retcon, it never quite found it’s footing as essential reading. If someone asked me more about Poe Dameron and his life, I would more quickly point them toward Greg Rucka’s Before the Awakening or Charles Soule’s Poe Dameron on-going series from Marvel comics. As Ryan will point out in his review, this book is a checklist, making sure to show us exactly how Poe learned how to do everything he did in The Rise of Skywalker, making a far less interesting read than it could have been.
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher at no charge in order to provide an early review. However, this did not affect the overall review content. All opinions are my own.