The galaxy far, far away has a lot more stories than those that made it to the screen. For those of us who have been fans of the franchise for most of our lives, a lot of those stories happened in print. And Star Wars: Legacy by author Madeleine Roux showcases not just one of the most interesting time periods, but two of the most interesting characters in Star Wars lore, if we do say so ourselves.
Set between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, the book gives us a long-awaited spotlight for the relationship between Rey and Leia. As the synopsis reads, “Leia Organa tries her best to train Rey in the ways of the Force as Luke did for her so many years ago, but Leia’s knowledge is limited, Rey’s lightsaber is broken, and the specter of Kylo Ren and regrets from the past haunt them both. How can Leia pass the torch when she herself is unsure of the way?”
Whatever the answer is, we want to read it now. Give me all the Leia Organa content. Inject it into my veins. And if you add Rey to that? This might be my favorite Star Wars book already, and I read The Courtship of Princess Leia as an impressionable teen.
The book will be available on July 28, and to prepare you for the release, we have an exclusive excerpt right here for you. So buckle up and get ready to return to a galaxy far, far away.
On the mysterious and powerful planet of Tython, Leia navigates dreams of a jedi path she chose not to walk…
Excerpt:
That unbearable weight came again, pressing down, settling like a stone blanket covering her from head to toe. Smothering. It was harder to fight this time. The ventilation system droned in her ear. The strange weight of the blanket crushed down until she gasped for air. More. More. She just had to breathe.
“General Organa? General? We’re about to arrive.”
Where was she? Not aboard the Falcon, that much was certain. She had been gazing out a viewport at the cool silver streamers of stars as they unspooled from lightspeed travel. And who was addressing her? Leia tore her attention away from the stars and gave it instead to the young soldier squirming at the end of the corridor. She knew her—young, eager, shining with that early-career glow. Kaydel Ko Connix. Two lobes of yellow hair hung off the sides of her head, and she wore a crisp vest, quilted and closed at every toggle.
“Arrive?” Leia asked, still confused. Where had she gone? How had she gotten here?
“Yes, General, we . . . set these coordinates at your insistence. I’m sure you remember.”
“I’m sure I do.” Leia smiled and joined Connix, following her the rest of the way down the corridor and through doors that swished open at their approach. A familiar scene played out, one of disciplined chaos, the rehearsed call and response of a star cruiser’s bridge. She recognized the rounded, bulbous interior of an MC85 Mon Calamari flagship. And she recognized the cadence of orders given, orders carried out. Admiral Ackbar, Vice Admiral Holdo, Connix beside her: She knew these people. Other familiar faces populated the rows of monitoring stations banded around the front of the bridge. The fear and confusion softened at the edges. This was a sort of home, wasn’t it? Ackbar was as wrinkled and perplexed as ever, and her old friend Amilyn wouldn’t look out of place at a three-hundred-credit-a-plate benefit on Hosnian Prime. Leia’s shoulders eased down from her ears as she found her footing. Her body felt stronger, surer, and when she raised her hands to study them, her left wrist brushed something dangling from her belt. A lightsaber. Pristine. Gold and silver and copper, just like the Alderaanian sword presented to her by her mother.
Something fit for a princess.
Her stomach flipped and jerked against her spine as the Raddus dropped out of hyperspace. The vista out the wide, curved viewports rearranged itself, though nothing could have prepared her for what awaited them. She strode forward without thinking, coming to plant herself between Ackbar and Holdo, reaching them in time to hear Amilyn’s strangled gasp.
Leia felt her own sobering twinge of fear. Their information had been correct: The Imperial remnant had limped to the Unknown Regions and, like a feral beast, licked its wounds and bided its time, recovering, seething, until it was strong enough to brave battle again. Beyond the smattering of Star Destroyers lay an even eerier sight: a planet, icy white, scarred and excavated and cored, belted with the blackened towers of industry and war.
“Stars,” her old friend breathed, her hand fluttering to her throat. “What am I looking at?”
A row of technicians seated before them were hard at work. One to her and Holdo’s right sat up straighter. “Scan completed,” he said. “The results are . . .” The engineer trailed off, shaken. “I’m afraid it’s not just a shipyard. It’s some sort of planet-sized armament.”
Leia’s blood chilled; she heard an echo of the future, of what awaited the galaxy if this weapon was utilized. The pain came in waves and from the past, a familiar cry of extinction from her home. “A weapon,” she murmured. “Annihilation.”
Ackbar looked at her askance. “We’ve seen this before.”
“Yes,” Leia said. “We have. Take us closer to that Star Destroyer,” she added, pointing.
The admiral sputtered with nervous laughter. “But, General—”
“She knows what she can handle,” Holdo added from Leia’s other side. “She’s a Jedi.”
That ought to have given her pause, but it didn’t. The problem in front of them was what mattered. Ackbar stroked the pale barbels dangling from his chin and urged the bridge captain to do as Leia commanded. The fleet of Destroyers grew larger, a foreboding, black wedge suspended before the bone-white of the ice planet’s wounded surface.
The Raddus didn’t get far before a communication fizzled up from the monitoring station near Ackbar.
“This is General Hux of the Finalizer, and you, presumably, are what the New Republic deems sufficient to stop the First Order.” Hux. Of course. So that intel had been right, too. She shared a look with Amilyn.
“The First Order?” Amilyn muttered. “Corny name.” Leia let a wry smile spread as the general went on.
“It will not be sufficient. What you see before you, these ships, these works, are a mere fraction of our true strength. Our true, undeniable power . . .”
Holdo blew out a tense breath, speaking under him. “Boy, he likes the sound of his own voice.”
“They always do,” Leia replied. She nodded toward the communications officer, a middle-aged Mirialan man with startled eyebrows and a pattern of tattooed diamonds sprinkled over his nose. “Patch me through. I have a message for him.”
“Leia—”
She had always loved Amilyn’s warning tone. It was tipped with amusement, because nobody pulled a fast one like Holdo. Even if she felt honor bound to keep Leia’s temper in check, secretly she wanted to see the full fire of it unleashed.
“. . . and when our potential is reached”—the general was still talking—“you will know fear, you will know terror, and the New Republic will—”
“My, you’re an eager little ghoul, aren’t you?” Leia interrupted him, laughing.
The return message crackled with outrage. Most of it was lost, but she definitely heard the words Jedi filth in there somewhere.
“Nothing you have overcomes the light of the Force,” Leia assured him. “Nothing you have will overcome me.”
At that moment, several more warships exiting hyperspace to rein-force the Raddus punctuated her threat. The thunder of their arrival rippled through the sector and drummed deep in her chest.
“Surrender,” Leia told him, very still. “Last chance.”
Across the comm, General Ghoul shrieked with laughter. Beside her, Amilyn groaned, but Leia’s eyes were forward, unwavering, focused. “That weapon they’ve built into the planet isn’t finished. If it was, they’d already be powering it up.”
“Then we’re just in time,” Admiral Ackbar said, his yellow eyes gleaming with hope.
“Sir? They’ve scrambled TIE fighters,” the engineer called from his station. “Your orders?”
Leia raised her hand, letting it brush the lightsaber at her side, this time intentionally. “Let them come.”
A bold TIE screamed toward the Raddus, no doubt hoping to intimidate them, flying a risky maneuver that brought the ship soaring past their panoramic view. Leia’s hand was still in midair, and with it, she reached out, grabbing the TIE, holding it in place. A ripple of panic shimmered up her arm. She felt the pilot’s dread as she took control. A twist, a pop, and the solar panels on either side of the TIE separated from its orb body. She let them drift away into space. There was some-thing strangely intimate about this now, about the life and the thing she held through the Force, like the shockingly bare torso of a fly parted from its wings. It shouldn’t have looked like that, but it did, just a child’s ball, smooth and begging to be thrown.
So she did. She threw it, hurling the TIE’s cockpit across the narrow gulf between Raddus and Finalizer. It was a torpedo now, picking up speed and aimed right at the enemy bridge. A flurry of half-cocked threats came across the channel from the Finalizer, especially the rising voice of one irritating man in particular, who should have told his captain to surrender.
Jedi filth, was it? He would learn. Faster and faster, and soon: impact.
Leia felt the collision ringing in her ears, reverberating through her bones. It yanked her awake. Just a dream.
She sat up slowly and massaged her temples. Nothing real, simply warped fantasies conjured by a turbulent mind. She couldn’t remember the last time she had dreamed so vividly; it had to be the planet, its strange, simmering power. Her throat tightened again. Someone was watching her. No, something was missing.
How long had she been asleep? She lowered herself from the bunk, fishing for her shoes with cold toes. Pulling the blanket around her-self, she went quietly through the ship, taking inventory. R2-D2 had powered down in her room, Chewie was asleep in his usual spot, and C-3PO hadn’t moved, though he had been powered on at some point while she slept. But Rey . . . Leia felt her absence.
“I’m too tired for this,” she told herself, shucking the blanket and hanging it on a hook near the ramp, cringing against the hiss of the hydraulics that sliced clean through the tender night silence. Clanky tip-tap footsteps skittered across the metal walkway behind her.
“If you are experiencing extreme fatigue, General Organa, it is not advisable to leave the ship,” C-3PO helpfully explained. “At least proceed with caution!”
A rush of wintry air nipped at them as the ramp touched down. Leia pulled her hand off the controls and stared at the droid. “When have you ever known me to slow down?”
C-3PO’s eyes flashed. “I’ll do a thorough search of my memory banks. One moment, please—”
“Come on,” she said, motioning down the ramp.
The Falcon’s interior was snug and tempting, but she couldn’t leave Rey on her own; rubbing warmth into her arms, Leia pressed out into the dark to find her.
##
Even in the dim gloom of the mountain overhang, he saw her clearly. She burned so brightly in his memory, in his mind, that shadow was no impediment. She was dreaming and lost. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. Wisdom and experience didn’t always walk hand in hand with understanding.
“When have you ever known me to slow down?” she had asked. He lost track of her as she left the cavern and took the path curving around the base of the mountains. And he didn’t follow, not yet. Their journey here was misguided, but a wrong turn sometimes led to the right destination.
Not yet. He watched. He waited. Soon, he thought, but not yet.
Reprinted from Star Wars: Legacy by Madeleine Roux. © 2026 by Lucasfilm Ltd. Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Star Wars: Legacy will be available to buy on July 28.
