I guess I mentioned a new Star Wars series, right? I’ve read the first one, and even before I was pondering my review, I stumbled upon an enormous problem. See, between Return of the Jedi and this book, there are some 50 plus other novels, all directly contributing to the timeline in often meaningful ways. And the book assumes you know all of that stuff before you start reading it. (It assumed knowledge of events in the comic series from the 80s, for that matter.) Sure, I have a lot of this knowledge. But damn, it’s hard to write a useful review for people who probably don’t have it. Ultimately, I think, impossible. So expect the reviews of these books to be spoiler-cut early and often, even though my intention is to mostly only talk about spoilers for previous Extended Universe events.

As far as what I can talk about, wow, Betrayal is an intense book. After the resolution of the long war against the Empire and another war against an extra-galactic foe, stability should finally be the watchword. Instead, a civil war is looming as Corellia (famed for being the homeworld of Han Solo) and a coalition of other planets is agitating to not give up their personal defense fleets in favor of a unified army provided by the Galactic Alliance to which most inhabited worlds belong. And even as the schism threatens to tear families and friendships apart, one man is hearkening the overall situation as well as his personal one back to similar circumstances two generations previously, when Anakin Skywalker was balanced on the razor’s edge between the galaxy’s need for peace, order, and stability, and his own need to protect his loved ones. There’s a sense of ominous foreboding throughout the novel. History is doomed to repeat itself; the only unanswered question is, how bad can it get?

Upshot: I guess I could talk about it without more than vaguely referencing the events of the intervening 40 or so years. But expect future reviews in the series to have massive spoilers after all. Vagueness and handwavery can only carry me so far.