Writing: a little clunky at times, and some of the character voices didn't match up (established characters, namely Leia felt off to me, pretty often.) Other established characters (actually, just Han, I think he's the only other one) were Spot On. OC's (lol) were delightful and also really playing into the star wars trope characters. Early Luke/Ezra in Joph Seastriker (oh, Joph Seastriker. young, stupid brave pilot, excitable, is a character in a star wars story? that is shocking! he's so out of place!).
Pretty average story over all, which is, I suppose, a challenge writing a Star Wars story: Bloodline is the Origin Story of the Resistance. Also, perhaps it's my disillusionment with the Overall Tone and Message of the ST but, I just have a problem with an underlying assumption this book makes: the political pettiness and discord of our current time is born out of malice, which I don't think is true, I think is ultimately harmful to think, and also, REFUSE to believe.
Secondly, Leia's political opinions are wrong. That's not...thinking that individual worlds deserve more control (hate to be controversial, but that's very Republican of her - very little l liberal of her - not that galactic politics are a direct analogy to the politics to the united states; in each political faction there's a right and a left and i SHUDDER to think of what the populist left is: oh no, i figured it out, it's communism. wait, actually, what i'm about to say makes a lot of sense). She's so against central power, she doesn't realize until the government has literally collapsed around her that there's no world in which they can gather THOUSANDS OF SYSTEMS (which is...a system of planets. If there's a 1-1 senator per planet, that's NOT a 1-1 senator to SYSTEM, or else, a senator representing the interests not only of their own planet (including multiple races, i.e. Representative Binks representing the gungans, or at least that's how i understand it), but representing the interests of potentially a dozen planets in their system (i'm thinking mandalore specifically, which was. as far as i can tell: a independent (neutral) system during tcw, then a part of the empire because of MAUL, and so what??? is a part of the New Republic, but either way a Bunch of Planets)) without some kind of central authority. Leia - who was like 24 when they started forming this government and was a) terrified of the Empire and Herself and b) an idealist and in her 20's - believed that less /central/ government was possible which led to the corruption of the senate (again, wow hi Nietzsche), and also worlds bein' mad as hell about their interests being neglected in the quagmire of the Galactic Senate. But like. obviously, 24 yo leia organa 2x war-orphaned, wasn't the only person in charge of the formation of their constitution, and so someone, maybe someone with political experience should have been like: oh, our idealist system of government is going to COLLAPSE without ?? a chancellor? is that what they had at the start of the book?? it's frustrating, because in spite of Leia seeing this aspect, she still doesn't...allow herself to sympathize with The Centrists At Large and the book paints them All as Complicit in corruption, which is an unhelpful narrative imo, and also, literally insane in a party of what I assume to be made up of THOUSANDS of planets.
On the other hand, I fully cried when Leia was outed as Darth Vader's daughter, and she didn't know how to tell Ben, which. like. we know how that turns out. Very tender reflections on our fave dad Bail Organa made me really miss Alderaan.