Review: Moving Target (Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens) by Cecil Castellucci & Jason Fry

This was an excellent Star Wars young adult novel that succeeds at showing realistic decisions that must be made in war, and how people involved in those wars end up making essential decisions regardless of how much power or authority they might have. I also appreciated that Princess Leia is given much authority and agency in this book, leading a mission she devises in order to give the Alliance a fighting chance against the second Death Star. 

To go along with the war-time era of this novel, there was some pretty heavy discussion of sacrifice in an early conversation between Leia and Mon Mothma. It could have come off as a lecture between a mentor and mentee, but I was impressed by the thematic follow-through that takes place later in the novel.

This was a lot of action packed into a short novel. The three planetary missions started to feel rushed by planet 2, and this might have worked better as a full-length novel. However, this serves as a great media tie-in adventure for a young reader looking for more time with the lone female hero of the original film trilogy.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) stars. Cross-posted to Amazon and Goodreads.