Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars

By: Sam Maggs

Narrated by: Sean Kenin Elias-Reyes

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Cal Kestis leads the Stinger Mantis crew on an adventure set between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Cal Kestis has built a new life for himself with the crew of the Stinger Mantis. Together, Cal’s crew has brought down bounty hunters, defeated Inquisitors, and even evaded Darth Vader himself. More important, Merrin, Cere, Greez, and faithful droid BD-1 are the closest thing Cal has had to a family since the fall of the Jedi Order. Even as the galaxy’s future grows more uncertain by the day, with each blow struck against the Empire the Mantis crew grows more daring.

On what should be a routine mission, they meet a stormtrooper determined to chart her own course with the help of Cal and the crew. In exchange for help starting a new life, the Imperial deserter brings word of a powerful, potentially invaluable tool for their fight against the Empire. And even better, she can help them get to it. The only catch—pursuing it will bring them into the path of one of the Empire’s most dangerous servants, the Inquisitor known as the Fifth Brother.

Can the Imperial deserter truly be trusted? And while Cal and his friends have survived run-ins with the Inquisitors before, how many times can they evade the Empire before their luck runs out?

©2023 Ballantine (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Author Sam Maggs has managed to turn a tie-in novel that bridges the gap between two video games into one of the most romantic and riveting Star Wars books of all time. Jedi: Battle Scars blows every expectation out of the water for a thrilling and intimate tale of messy found family and finding your fire and purpose in the galaxy.” —Dork Side of the Force

“Maggs is a strong writer and the story is incredibly compelling.” —SlashFilm

“A perfect bridge from Fallen Order to Survivor . . . Battle Scars provides a fun and exciting new adventure for Cal & Co.” —That Hashtag Show

A bitter taste and eye roller till the very end

The sound and narration were as great as all modern Star Wars audio books, and it started off strong. But that's where the praises end. From the moment Fret was introduced, every scene that included her was saturated with eye-rolling moments and internal monologs that made me groan. And to top off this sappy story, the plot's MacGuffin was just casually revealed to be useless at the very end, and nobody is upset by this despite ending in a worse position as a team than they started off.

Spoilers from here:

I loved Merrin and Fallen Order, and I'm all for LGBT relationships as long as they're well written... but this one was far from well written. It felt like an author's original character was shoehorned into a forced and unconvincing romance with an established character with no proper buildup or chemistry. As a reader, I had no reason to feel any investment in the sudden 0 to 100 accelerated lust that was injected so suddenly into the story, and it was such a whiplash every time it came up that I absolutely detested any interaction between the two of them. Merrin was well written in just about every other situation in the story, but her romance with Fret left such a bad taste that it spoiled the rest of the book. Doesn't help that the romance takes up half the story.

Was the Author just horny?

I honestly had to put this down. It felt a little poorly written, and I personally didn't see the comparison with the original Mantis crew to the one in this book. It reads like the authors personal erotic fanfic. I couldn't make it past 3 hours, just really disappointing.

If I wanted to listen to a romance novel, I would have got one.

Listened to all starwars novels both canon and legends. This book is the reason why Disney is loosing its supporters. The voice actor was amazing. The characters from Fallen Order are great. But the love story between the 3 woman is absolutely too much and not warranted. Wanted Star Wars. Got disappointment. Wanted to turn off so many times but as a die hard, had to see what was actually storyline. Terrible written, forced language. 9/10 on the booo meter.

doesn't fulfill its purpose

the book doesn't actually explain why the crew splits up it just gives reasons for why they would split up if they wanted to in the future. also it has a stupid gay love triangle and they don't kill of any of the new characters making the fifth brother look extra weak and bad at his job.

Wish it added more to the story of Cal

This story is about Merrin. Very sparse involvement from Cal Kestis which is what I wanted. It has some good moments with Cere that I like and some action but not nearly enough.

I don’t know if I learned anything about the characters that actually matter. The exploration of Merrin is valuable but only if it changes the way I view her character. Maybe my opinion will change when I play the game and It’s probably hard for Sam Maggs to write this given certain parameters from the game developers. But all in this book fell short of expectation.

Desperate Closeted Housewife Fan-Fiction

What a mess.

First, nothing happens. A lot of things go on but nothing substantial actually happens. This book is 10 hours of filler and 28 minutes of story. A cliff notes version (or even a 3-part comic book) would suffice.

Next, if you've played Fallen Order (and I assume you must have if you're thinking about listening to this book) everything you loved about each character has changed. Cal now sounds like a plucky kid straight out of an after-school special. He's practically reduced to Beaver Cleaver. Greez complains a lot more and comes off more annoying; but at least the narrator's performance of his voice is probably the closest. Cere is probably the closest to her in-game character except far less interesting. And then there's Merrin. Where do we even start to describe the disservice this author (and narrator) did to Merrin?

Think about every bad movie you've ever seen that contains a Russian villain. Borris from Rocky and Bullwinkle for example. That's Merrin's voice now. Now recall how interesting and conflicted Merrin's character was in the game. Remember how strong and challenging and mature she was. That's all been replaced by some vapid female from a cheap dime-store romance novel. No joke. One third of this book is devoted to googly-eyed amorous expressions, not-so-veiled lovemaking, pillow talk, hot tub scenes, and sophomoric descriptions of her new love interest. At no point in ANY book that I'm reading or listening to should I ever come across a sentence like, "the hot, buff, purple mulleted, alien". That laughably bad writing and gross overuse of descriptors cheapens the story and slows down the pace of the narrative. It also makes us question everything we know about the last Nightsister. "Excuse me, Merrin is suddenly smitten by what?"

While we're talking about horrible writing I feel it's worth mentioning that, at one point, Merrin is fighting a Stormtrooper Commander - a singular person that we never learn the name of - that the author feels compelled to use they/them/their pronouns. This nameless Commander with hardly a word of dialogue, whom Merrin handily dispatches within less than a chapter, is written in a way that infers the gender this unnamed person identified as is was well know. Absurd. Unnecessary. Does an actual disservice to those who are not cis-gender.

I could go on but, in the interest of leaving you with a TL:DR version of this review, just don't buy this book. It's horrible,

Star Wars or erotica?

Half way through and there’s been more of two night sisters hitting on each other than there has been any story of the events that took place between the games. Dont waste your money or credit on this book!

Fun adventure, nothing more

More Cal action is always appreciated, however when the book wasn’t focusing on him I wasn’t vibing as much.

A peek into life on the Mantis

If you’re looking for tons of action, this isn’t your book. If you’re looking for insight into the lives and inner workings of the Mantis Crew, then this is your book!
Merrin was the star of the show and I’m really happy she was. I wanted to see more from her after Fallen Order.

If you usually like Star Wars books, you’ll love it. If you loved the game, you’ll love it even more.

Enjoyable

Marc Thompson is a hard act to follow, but I think this narrator did a decent job. I also loved that all of the characters had some development, not just Cal.