Star Wars Legends Fan Group discussion

March 2021 Legends Group Read

Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole (Star Wars: X-Wing #1)



The Group read starts on March 1st.


- Book 1 of the X-Wing series
- First published in January 1996
- Set in the era of the New Republic - 6 ABY (after Battle of Yavin)

They are sleek, swift, and deadly. They are the X-wing fighters. And as the struggle rages across the vastness of space, the fearless men and women who pilot them risk both their lives and their machines. Their mission: to defend the Rebel Alliance against a still-powerful and battle-hardened Imperial foe in a last-ditch effort to control the stars!

Its very name strikes fear into enemy hearts. So when Rebel hero Wedge Antilles rebuilds the legendary Rogue Squadron, he seeks out only the best -- the most skilled, the most daring X-wing pilots. Through arduous training and dangerous missions, he weeds out the weak from the strong, assembling a group of hard-bitten warriors willing to fight, ready to die. Antilles knows the grim truth: that even with the best X-wing jockeys in the galaxy, many will not survive their near-suicidal missions. But when Rogue Squadron is ordered to assist in the assault on the heavily fortified Imperial stronghold of Black Moon, even the bravest must wonder if any at all will survive. . . .

Discussion Rules & Schedule:

Read at your own pace. Post your thoughts in this thread. If you're ahead of the schedule bellow, USE SPOILER TAGS FOR MAJOR PLOT POINTS AND TWISTS. Have fun!

Week 1: Chapters 1-10
Week 2: Chapters 11-20
Week 3: Chapters 21-30
Week 4: Chapters 31-40

Note: For discussion within schedule you don't need to use spoiler tags.


How to use spoiler tags
<*spoiler>your spoilery text<*/spoiler> - without asterisk *

how do you get it to count your vote?

never mind. I figured it out.

The poll is over and Rogue Squadron won by a landslide.

The Group Read starts on March 1st. So get your books ready by then. :)

Zuzana wrote: "The Group Read starts on March 1st. So get your books ready by then. :)"

Count me in, too! I just ordered my copy :)

I’m going to try to find time 4 it!

count me in!

I'm in as well!

That's great. The more, the merrier.

I posted the reading schedule.

There's 40 chapters. So it's 10 chapters a week.

Just a reminder: Read at your own pace - if you're a faster reader, it's fine - the schedule is to prevent spoiling major plotpoints to slower readers. So post your thoughts here, but if you're ahead of the schedule above, please use spoiler tags for major spoilers. (general observations are fine and don't have to be under tags)

I hope it's clear. :)

Happy reading!

As usual, I'd like to start by giving credit to the cover artist.

This wonderful battle scene was created by a British artist and illustrator Paul Youll. He made the cover illustrations for the rest of the X-Wing series as well.



You can check out other Paul Youll's SW art here on his website: http://www.paulyoull.com/paulyoull.co...

Hailey wrote: "I just started reading it!"
I'm two chapters in. Wedge is a bit too cheeky. I'm detecting one General who definitely is not a fan. ;)

Peter wrote: "Already read it long ago. Not a great book, and don't want to read it again any time soon."

Peter, do you remember what you didn't like about the book? I'm only four chapters in - so don't have an opinion about the quality yet. I only know that lots of fans like the series.
Have you read other X-Wing books, did you like them better?

I read this so long ago that I sort of remember the basic story but not many details. It's almost like I'm reading it for the first time and I'm loving it! Now I'm going to have to re-read the rest of them just so I can experience them again.

Update: It is unlikely I will have time for it now, but maybe later.

So who's reading the book?

BTW Is silly name requirement to be a resident of Tatooine?
I'm looking at you, Gavin Darklighter!

I just started it, but am still trying to finish Heir to the Empire. Haven't had as much reading time the past few weeks.

Don't worry about it. RL comes first. And if you find some time with our reading schedule - less than 100 pages a week - you'd be able to catch up easily.

Anyway, all group read threads remain open after the alloted month is over. :)

TAMRA wrote: "I read this so long ago that I sort of remember the basic story but not many details. It's almost like I'm reading it for the first time and I'm loving it! Now I'm going to have to re-read the rest..."

Tamra, I am currently doing a re-read of the X-Wing series (and I will probably throw in Heir to the Empire and the other two, because of timeline reasons) for exactly the same reason! :D I'm halfway through The Bacta War by now.

I'm about 35% through and so far Wedge seems a bit Gary Stu-ish to me. I wonder if it's gonna change later on in the book.

I'm still in the first half too! It might be fun to do a canon read of Alphabet Squadron after this at some point since they're similar? I guess Hera from Rebels is in it.

I'm 55% in and I won't lie I'm not much impressed by the book. The space battles are a bit boring to me. I enjoyed the night commando operation though.

Maybe my expectations were too high. I know that lots of fans love this series very much. Lets see whether the book gets better in the second half.

I'm done.

The first half dragged. I couldn't get into the story and surprisigly the dogfights didn't work for me at all. I found the aerial battles quite boring. I enjoyed the second half a bit more. Corran Horn is a promissing character I hope they won't make him too OP in the following books. I don't enjoy too much melodrama in my SW reading (unless it's done really well) so I wonder what the author plans to do with the love triangle he set up between Corran and (view spoiler)[Mirax and Erisi (hide spoiler)].

The way Wedge was written he was a cardboard cutout of a character. So flat. He was there just to be a perfect leader and to remind us about Biggs and Luke and the death stars every time he opened his mouth.

I expected better. Although I will read book 2 to see if the series improves.

Kim, have you finished yet? What are your thoughts?

Zuzana wrote: "Kim, have you finished yet? What are your thoughts?"

I haven't yet, I'm about halfway through, I got a little behind! After the first chapter I was a bit worried I wasn't going to be able to get into it, but so far it has improved for me. I haven't read anything in this era before so I'm finding the background stuff to be pretty interesting and holding my attention. I agree with you about Wedge though, he is pretty blah so far. The other guy, Tycho, seems much more interesting.

One thing that struck me so far, and I'm still puzzled by it, is the part where Corran loses control of his ship during their first real assignment and the control stick keeps hitting him in the collarbone. I was like...how giant is this stick or how tiny is he?! I had a hard time visualizing it. I guess I need to consult Wookieepedia for internal cockpit pictures haha

Kim wrote: "Zuzana wrote: "The other guy, Tycho, seems much more interesting."

I couldn't agree with you more. And Wedge's lack of personality doesn't improve in the second half of the book. It might change later on though. There are 9 more books in the series.

Kim wrote: "Zuzana wrote: "One thing that struck me so far, and I'm still puzzled by it, is the part where Corran loses control of his ship during their first real assignment and the control stick keeps hitting him in the collarbone. I was like...how giant is this stick or how tiny is he?! I had a hard time visualizing it."

The way it's described doesn't sound probable. Maybe stomach, but chest?

What do you think of the upcoming movie now you've read the book?

More excited, less excited?

I think that it could provide some spectacular visuals. I just hope they'll do better with the plot outside of the battles. I trust Patty Jenkins to come up with something interesting and relatable.

An iteresting tidbit from Stackpole's interview.

You wrote your first official Star Wars book in the mid 90’s; X-Wing: Rogue Squadron. How did you get this dream job?

MS: "Bantam Books had great success with the Timothy Zahn novels, and wanted to expand the line, but Lucasfilm didn’t want to extend the original deal because it was early days yet. So Bantam hit on the idea of taking a license out on the X-wing computer game. When Bantam looked through their stable of authors for someone who could write military Science Fiction, who understood computer gaming, who worked fast, who had done tie-in work and who could actually do a good job, I was pretty much the only author that checked all of the boxes. Bantam suggested me to Lucasfilm, Lucasfilm called Kevin J. Anderson to ask him if I could do the job. He said yes, so Bantam got to offer me the series. So, in short, I was VERY lucky."

I didn't know that the books were based on a PC game. The fact that Stackpole understood gaming was one of the reasons he got the job is hilarious.


Stackpole on creating the character of Corran Horn:

"Because I was writing about pilots, I did research. The best pilots are shorter than average, with light colored eyes. So Corran is about 5’7” and has green eyes. I knew having him be a Corellian would immediately give him a link to Wedge, so that made sense. But Wedge and Han both had smuggling backgrounds, so I made Corran someone from the Law enforcement side of things, to provide contrast and some tension between him and Wedge. That also let me use Wedge’s smuggling background to bring Booster and Mirax in. As for the name, well, at the time for Corellian last names we had Antilles and Solo, both nouns. So I picked Horn for no particular reason I can remember. Corran came because I wanted that hard K sound, which is good for characters. Makes them seem more heroic.

And, tangentially, I gave Whistler his name because it’s kinda obvious for an R2 unit."

And this has to be my favorite quote.

Stackpole on Corran Horn:
" If I met the younger Corran I'd think he was an egotistical fruitcake."

From what i read and remember, this book is great!

I'm glad you loved it, Akindle. It just didn't work for me. The first half I was bored, thankfully it got better towards the end.

I thought the author could do better with the characters (other than Corran Horn).

Zuzana that interview tidbit you found is interesting! That's funny that he got the job because of his involvement with the video game. I didn't know the books came about because of the games!

I finally finished it and I agree that the second half of the book is much better, I flew through it. I went into this book with low expectations because I've heard that it isn't that great, but overall I would say I enjoyed it. I have questions though - what was going on with the protocol droid? Seems like they left us with an unresolved plot because it seemed like someone (the empire maybe?!) was controlling him! The first four books in this series are written by Stackpole and seem to have the same story line, so I just ordered the second book in the series. Maybe the spy will be revealed! And maybe this one will be a little better?

At the very least, at least all of us who read the book will be up to speed when the movie comes out! I wonder if these same characters will be in it. I also think Patty Jenkins will do an awesome job. She sounds so excited to be a part of this project since her dad was a fighter pilot so I think she's a perfect pick for it!

Kim wrote: "I have questions though - what was going on with the protocol droid? Seems like they left us with an unresolved plot because it seemed like someone (the empire maybe?!) was controlling him! The first four books in this series are written by Stackpole and seem to have the same story line, so I just ordered the second book in the series. Maybe the spy will be revealed! And maybe this one will be a little better?"

Kim, I believe we're supposed to have these questions. And to answer them we have to read the next book in the series. XD

As for the movie, I wonder what the Lucasfilm will do about the characters because they changed the setting to after the sequel trilogy. I doubt there will be Wedge and if so then probably as a General? The logical thing to do would be to involve Poe in some capacity but I don't think that any of the sequel main cast want to have anything to do with SW franchise anymore - Boyega and Ridley were quite vocal about it, not sure about Oscar Isaac.

It occured to me that the "Modern" EU started with Zahn's Trilogy published 1992-1993 set in 9 ABY. That makes the first 8 X-Wing books, published 1996-1999 set 6-7 ABY, technically prequels.

They are much better than The Phantom Menace

That’s okay!

The threads stay open forever.

It's o.k., Hailey. There are so many interesting books out there and only 24 hours a day. :D

BTW The movie is supposed to be released at the end of 2023, so you have plenty of time to catch up.