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I try my best to steer clear of the word “underrated,” because well…reasons. Particularly when it comes to Star Wars books, because…it’s Star Wars; can it really be underrated when it’s Star Wars?

But yeah, wow. FORCE COLLECTOR is a quirky gem of a Star Wars book, and one that I haven’t really seen a whole lot of people post about. For posterity, I found the “Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” at the top of the book to be very slightly misleading, as this book definitely takes place prior to The Force Awakens.

But, the book was released before TROS, and marketing is going to market.

ANYWAY.

This story follows Karr Nuq Sin, a seventeen-year-old boy from Merokia, a desert planet in the Outer Rim. Karr is a little directionless in the way a lot of seventeen-year-old kids are, and trouble has a way of finding him at school.

Additionally, Karr struggles with these intense visions/headaches when he touches certain objects that he collects. Under the guidance of his grandmother, Karr begins to understand that he’s Force-sensitive.

After a scuffle with a school bully, Karr makes a new friend, Maize Raynshi. She’s half Mirialan, and her father works for the First Order. The two kind of hit it off as friends after a rough start, and ultimately embark on the quintessential teenage road trip, Star Wars-style.

The book isn’t heavily plotted, but after some planet hopping & fun discoveries, a bit of a mystery begins to take shape. One that has a lot to do with Karr’s emerging Force abilities.

There are some really great surprises/unexpected cameos in this book that I won’t mention here, but yeah. This book had me geeking out pretty hard over certain characters & locales.

One of the things this book does well is illustrate how vast the galaxy far, far away truly is. We as Star Wars fans know a whole lot about Jedi, no? But in Karr’s little corner of the universe, the Jedi are truly a myth. Maybe they were real, maybe not. So Karr doesn’t have a lot of resources available to him to help him understand some of these visions he’s having.

Karr & Maize are an outstanding duo, and I liked the lack of romance in this one specifically. Karr has a couple little crushy moments when he first meets Maize, but that kind of quickly fades into the background as their friendship grows.

Karr also has a really fun droid companion, RZ-7. Karr sort’ve cobbled this droid together from various other kinds of droids, which gives RZ-7 something of an identity crisis. But RZ-7 is pretty great…funny, helpful, and loyal while still able to call Karr out on things from time to time.

This was just a really fun Star Wars book! Karr & Maize are both earnest, curious kids. Eager to learn more about the galaxy & their place within it. I really loved their adventures together!