Star Wars: X-Wing: The Bacta War (1997) Book Review

 Hey everyone. Surprise! I'm back with another blog post. I ended up finishing the next book in the X-Wing series, The Bacta War, while I was outside after lunch. So, I'm here to review it, because I'm still not sure when my review of the first five episodes of the new Goosebumps TV show is gonna come out since I don't know how long the episodes will end up being. And since I wrote about Star Trek comics earlier, I figured now would be a good time to talk about a Star Wars book. So, let's get into it.

 While The Bacta War is the weakest book of Stackpole's first four X-Wing books, it's actually my favourite of the four. Not only is the politics of the last two books absent, but it's the funniest of the book. Especially with the interactions between Booster Terrik, and Talon Karrde. There's also more of a sense of family in this book than there was in the first three books. Not only do we meet Gavin's family, particularly his father, Jula, his mother, Silya, his aunt, Lanal, and his uncle, Huff, but we meet Mirax's father, Booster, who was mentioned in the first three books, as well. 

We visit alot of different places in this book. Including Tatooine, because, surprisingly, we haven't been there a whole lot in Legends up to this point. Unlike the movies and TV shows where we end up on Tatooine all the time. We also go to Thyferra, which was mentioned in the previous books, being that Erisi Dlarit and Bror Jace were from there.

Speaking of Erisi, we get more with her than we have in the previous books. She's on Isard's side of things, but we get alot more here than we got even in Wedge's Gamble. We're also reintroduced to Bror Jace because, surprise, he didn't die when his X-Wing was ambushed by the Black Asp at the end of Rogue Squadron. He was secretly part of the Ashern Rebels on Thyferra, and arranged things so it would appear that he was killed, but he actually transferred to a shuttle and returned to Thyferra that way. Of course, he was stupid enough to tell Erisi of the flight plan he'd logged with Wedge and Tycho before he left Noquivzor, which is why his X-Wing got ambushed. Luckily he was smart enough to fly the fighter in by remote.

One of the things about this book, that was absent from the previous three, were more direct connections to the X-Wing Rogue Squadron comic book series that Stackpole was writing concurrently with the X-Wing novels. While characters like Tycho, Ysanne Isard, and a few others were in the previous books, here we have actual references to events that happened in the comics. And we have a new character, Elscol Loro, who originally appeared in the first twelve issues of the comic, before appearing in this book, and then having one more mention in the fourth book in the The New Jedi Order series, before never being seen or heard from again in either Legends or Canon. Also, more mentions of events from the comics are included here, just giving enough details for readers to know something happened previously, but not enough to make the comics required reading in order for this book to make sense. 

As with the previous three books in the series, I first read The Bacta War in the fall of 1998, when I was in grade six. Garrett lent it to me, of course, and, just like now, it was my favourite of the first four X-Wing books that I read at that time. Even though Wedge and Rogue Squadron are on their own, in a desperate fight to liberate Thyferra from Ysanne Isard, it's a much lighter book in terms of the tone of it than the previous books in the series were. It's still a Stackpole book, so it's not as funny as the next three books are, but it's much funnier than the previous three were. 

The books to come out prior to this one in early 1997 were the first two books in the young reader Goosebumps inspired series, Galaxy of Fear, Eaten Alive and City of the Dead, and the seventh book in the Young Jedi Knights series, Shards of Alderaan. And then a ton of books came out between The Bacta War and Wraith Squadron, including more books in the Galaxy of Fear series, and the Young Jedi Knights series, the final three books in the Junior Jedi Knights series, the next two major hardcovers, Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly, and the first book in the Hand of Thrawn duology, Specter of the Past, by Timothy Zahn, and the first two books in the Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin, The Paradise Snare and The Hutt Gambit.

Like the rest of the X-Wing series, The Bacta War was re-released by Del Rey Books sometime between 2014 and 2017 with the Legends banner across the top. And like the other ones, Wookieepedia has no date for this re-release. Only that it was sometime during the period where Del Rey was re-releasing most of the Legends novels, from 2014 until at least 2017. While I have the original printing from the '90s, I do have some Legends banner editions of other books, and like those I'm assuming that The Bacta War retains its original interior design.

Then in 2022, Del Rey re-released The Bacta War as part of the Essential Legends Collection trade paperback line. Unlike the Legends banner editions, there's an actual release date for this edition. It was released on November 1st, 2022. Also, I'm assuming that the TIE Fighter pilot on the cover is supposed to be Erisi Dlarit, but it's hard to tell because they have the full TIE Fighter helmet on. 

Overall The Bacta War is still a pretty decent book. I don't know for sure, but I think Stackpole left the novels so he could focus on the X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics that were still going when this book came out. He wouldn't return to the X-Wing novels until the eighth X-Wing book, Isard's Revenge, which was published in 1999. Though he would write a hardcover Star Wars novel for Bantam called I, Jedi, which featured Corran Horn as the first person POV character during the events of the previously published Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson, and was published in mid-1998. For the next three books the Rogues would take a backseat for a new group of hotshot X-Wing pilots, known as Wraith Squadron. I am really excited to talk about the Wraith Squadron books. 

And I promise that this is actually it for me for today. I wasn't expecting to finish reading The Bacta War this afternoon. But I'm glad I did, because the next couple of days are going to be interesting with the reviews I have planned. So until next time, have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.