There’s a long history of Star Wars books filling in the gaps between the movies. As someone who grew up on the Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends), I’m very used to looking towards literature to help me make sense of some of the details in one of the Star Wars movies. And boy, no movie has ever needed that bridge quite as much as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Star Wars: Legacy by Madeleine Roux is the perfect companion book to the sequel trilogy. In fact, I’d go as far as to call it essential. There’s a lot in The Rise of Skywalker that feels like it came out of nowhere, including but not limited to Leia’s relationship with Rey, the explanation for the connection between Rey and Kylo Ren, and even Rey’s Jedi training. The book doesn’t just show us how we get from point A to point B with information; it also hits all the necessary emotional beats.
That’s the most important part. If The Rise of Skywalker needed something, it was for us to be able to understand the connection between the two women at the center of this saga. It was for us to believe in Rey’s connection to Kylo Ren—and to see that connection as not just a casual kinship, but a deliberate mirror. Rey sees in Ben Solo a possibility for herself, and as much as she doesn’t want to walk the same path, she cannot help but feel sympathy for someone who made those choices out of fear and anger.
If we understand all of these things, if we feel them, it’s because Roux’s prose is not just calculated and precise, but because it’s imbued with so much feeling and a deep understanding not just of who these characters are, but what they had to experience to become the people we saw in The Rise of Skywalker. The setting of the planet Tython (the planet seen in The Mandalorian) helps, as the force is so strong in that place that it makes Leia and Rey’s individual journeys so much deeper.
As a long-time Leia fan, this is perhaps one of my favorite things about the book. In some ways, it felt like the character the book needed to focus on more was Rey, particularly considering she’s the character that will go on, the one we might see again. And make no mistake, the book does that, giving her depth and conceptualizing not just her decisions but her feelings.
The book, however, also does a great job of doing that for Leia Organa, too, a character at this point we feel like we already know. It’s easier to do this for Rey, a newer character, than it is to do it for Leia, particularly when the reader like me has already consumed not just all the movies, but a great amount of books. But the Leia in Star Wars: Legacy is still someone with a story to tell, one that we haven’t heard before.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and all that aside, the book does a great job at exploring the feelings that sometimes might get handwaved away within the context of Jedi purity. It also utilizes an Old Republic temple in a way that makes us yearn for Star Wars to actually focus more on that time period. There are secrets there we have yet to explore, and still so many more stories to be told. The galaxy far, far away is vast.
Even if you’re not interested in the promise of more, from the past or the future, Star Wars: Legacy is a pretty good book for anyone who wants to understand the now. During the many years of the Expanded Universe, we read books to give us more information about the characters we knew and loved. This remains true, but unlike in those days, those details can now help shape the things we already saw.
Consider this: after reading the book, my first instinct was to rewatch not just The Rise of Skywalker, but the entire sequel trilogy. And when I did, I found myself enjoying everything a lot more. From Rey and Leia’s individual journeys, to their relationship, to even the relationship Kylo Ren had with his mother, and with Rey. A good book in this universe gives you an enjoyable story, a great book does that while conceptualizing what came before it, and even what may come after.
Star Wars: Legacy is a pretty great book, if I do say so myself. And it’s one of the few books outside of the Expanded Universe I will probably find myself re-reading.
Star Wars: Legacy will be available wherever books are sold on July 28, 2026.
