(I'd give this a 4.5 if I could).Wow. This one kind of came out of nowhere! I was so disappointed and let down with Aftermath that I didn't really think I had it in me to try another new Star Wars books so soon.Am I ever glad I did.What can I say? I loved everything about this book! The story has two points of view. We follow, and skip between, Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree. Both of who, by the end of the book, I adore just as much as any of the classic cast from the movies. The timeline covers eve...

Many of the major events of the original Star Wars trilogy are experienced through two childhood friends, Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell. Ciena and Thane are life long friends who find themselves on opposite sides of war.Lost Stars covers the lives of Ciena and Thane who happen to have been born the same time as the Empire. Their story starts at age 8 and continues on until after the end of Return of the Jedi. The story was good, but I was expecting more.The biggest surprise I experienced in this st...

On a cold, remote, seemingly backward planet with two distinct, isolationist cultures, a boy and a girl, he a settler and her a native, dream of being TIE pilots for the mighty Galactic Empire. Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree won’t let anything get in the way of their shared dream. But while they are strong together in the face of disapproval from their families and snobbery at their imperial piloting academy, they break apart when confronted with proof of the Empire’s evil. Thane, the firebrand, can...

This novel went down very smooth, with two well-drawn characters destined to be best friends, lovers, and eventually bitter enemies. What could make it better? Being in the Star Wars universe with cameo appearances of both iconic characters and situations.But, you ask, "But wouldn't that take away from the impact of a well-drawn adventure following these two children well into adulthood?" And I reply, "No, not really, unless you're a die-hard snob who believes that an entirely new worldbuilding

Oh wait there was a romance in this?I was distracted by the horrifying Life and Times of Nash Windrider

This is a great book. Very rarely do you get book that manages to tick every box. This is a love story, but this is not a fluffy story, both the characters are likeable, intelligent and principled. In fact all the characters are written very well, to the point that as a reader I was invested in each character, even the side characters. The book has great character development, and the story is set across the whole original trilogy and finishes a year after Return of the Jedi.Usually in stories l...

This IS the Star Wars book you're looking for!I had so much fun buddy reading this with Sophie! Chatting with her about Star Wars history and our theories about what would happen in the book really made this a wonderful reading adventure!This was my favorite Star Wars book of all time. And I'm saying this as a old curmudgeon who read a lot of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe books and was furious when Disney announced that those books were no longer considered canon. (Seriously, I shook my fi...

The Imperial training academy is an attractive place for naïve youngsters. For those that have never left their home-worlds, the magnificent space craft and disciplined soldiers look like a thing of wonder. They do not understand the harsh blood price the brutal Empire exacts; thus, Thane and Ciena are enamoured by the dreams of glory Tarkin gives them. They see the Empire as a machine, a mechanism of control, order and stability. And they want in. “He and the girl ran inside, where everything...

4.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/11/09/r...And to think, I almost gave this one a pass when I was compiling a list of books I wanted to read from the new Star Wars canon. What a mistake that would have been. Yes, this is categorized as Young Adult, but to be sure, this is not the kind of Star Wars YA from the old EU when the stories tended to lean more towards middle-grade audiences and few children’s series stood out strongly enough to make an impression. Lost S...

In a lot of ways, Lost Stars is perhaps the perfect Star Wars book. If nothing else it's easily my favorite book in the new Star Wars canon and perhaps my favorite Star Wars book in general. As someone who grew up on the old extended universe, that's saying a lot. But I mean every word of what I've said. Lost Stars is everything I ever wanted from a Star Wars book.The author does a fantastic job of inventing her own story while fitting it seamlessly into the Star Wars narrative. She creates two

This is the third of the canon books I have read, the other two being Rebel Rising and Leia: Princess of Alderaan (also by Claudia Gray), and I enjoyed it just as much as those previous two books. In Lost Stars I loved the overlap touching on events in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, and also the setup event the remnants of which make an appearance in The Force Awakens. I liked the story a lot: childhood friends Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell train and enter Imperial ser...

Wow, I just..... wow. What an experience. To see the original trilogy and even post ROTJ/Battle of Jakku (!!!!!! I YELLED !!!!!!) content through the eyes of this fated couple on the front lines was magical. Their dynamic reminded me of Mulder and Scully - their views on life and their beliefs couldn't be more different at times but their belief and trust in each other was more important than anything else. The character development in this novel was astounding; I felt like I grew with these cha...

WHAT! WHERE IS MY ENDING?! WHERE IS MY NEXT BOOK?! I only have MORE questions now. I loved absolutely every second of this. Literal and actual star crossed lovers. I don’t wanna give anything away, but this one is definitely worth the read to find out if Cienna and Thane will find a way to work it out. Lost Stars is filled with side characters we have never met before, alongside and participating actively in the events from the destruction of the Death Star, to the battle of Endor, and to the fo...

I was a little disgusted with this book.No, actually, I was very disgusted with this book.If I was presented with an action-adventure novel wherein the main character was an apologist for Hioroshima and Nagasaki and throughout that novel kept saying things like "well, the US were only trying to prevent further death and stop the war from escalating" I would probably take that book and rip out every single page individually before setting it on fire.Herein one of our two main characters is a Deat...

This is a super unpopular opinion oof but I just didn’t care about the characters at all (I actually hated one of them and could not see how the other character even liked them LOL).

STAR WARS + ROMEO AND JULIET + CLAUDIA GRAY = EPICWHY DIDN'T I KNOW OF THIS BOOK SOONER??!??!!???!!!!!EDIT 12/26/2015THIS BOOK IS AMAZING! I love how there are some snippets into The Force Awakens. This book is so smart and brilliantly written. I also highly recommend the audiobook. It features the iconic Star Wars scores and it was an amazing production. I am blown away.

So, this book basically came out of nowhere, right?I only heard about it a couple of months ago thanks to some GR friends, all of whom were also completely surprised by how good this book was. (Granted, I think a lot of them don't regularly read YA and might be unaware of some of the wonderful authors currently working in the genre.) But still. Even with all of those reviews, the book still managed to surprise me. Because what's so surprising about it isn't that it's good, but HOW it's good.The

I gave one star to Divergent and Hunger Games, and I consider the film Titanic as 194 minutes of my life wasted. In short: I am not the target audience for Claudia Gray's Lost Stars. I am, however, a big Star Wars fan, and have been since almost the beginning (I was 2 in 1977; I caught up as soon as I could, and I have no memories of life before Star Wars). I really want the fictional world of Star Wars to be as good as it can be, and I'm disappointed by books, movies, or other media that don't

Oh.my.gosh. This book was.so.tedious.And somehow still infuriating.Ciena's cultural beliefs were so stupid! Sooo, you think so highly of yourself that you are willing to sacrifice thousands of lives just to avoid breaking a promise you don't even believe in because you think it will make you look bad? Just kill me. And this was pretty much the basis of the whole book, Thane and Ciena not being able to be together because of their different values. I honestly don't know if that kind of love is ev...

This book was, simply put, astounding. I was so, so, so excited for THE VERY FIRST Star Wars YA book, and I could not be more impressed by the book Claudia Gray wrote.There were amazing parts of this book that took place far away from the well known plot-lines of the OT, and there were some that took place breathtakingly, heartbreakingly close. I can't even pick which I like more; I'm so glad we got to see both, and everything in between. That flash of recognition when a familiar character walks...