New Star Wars Novel Inferno Squad Takes Place After Rogue One

Inferno Squad, a new Star Wars novel coming to bookstores this summer, takes place right after the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

In recent Star Wars canon, we met several of the Rebellion’s most elite fighting teams. For example, A New Hope gave us Luke, Han, and Leia. A few years ago, Star Wars Rebels introduced us to The Ghost crew. And most recently, Rogue One broke our hearts by making us love the Death Star plan thieves and then killing all of them off.

That’s great and all. But what about the Empire’s elite? Surely such a powerful regime has powerful fighting forces at its disposal.

Turns out it does. And that fighting force is called Inferno Squad.

Earlier today, the official Star Wars website announced a new Star Wars adult novel called Inferno Squad. Written by veteran Star Wars author Christie Golden (Dark Disciple), Inferno Squad takes place right after the events of Rogue One. It tells a tale about a very different team of military experts from our movie heroes. The Inferno Squad is “an elite team of [Imperial] soldiers” tasked to eradicate the remnants of Saw Gerrera’s fighters.

Image Credit: Del Rey Books

Read the official description for the novel below:

"The Rebellion may have heroes like Jyn Erso and Luke Skywalker. But the Empire has Inferno Squad. After the humiliating theft of the Death Star plans and the resulting destruction of the battle station, the Empire is on the defensive. In response to this stunning defeat, the Imperial Navy has authorized the formation of an elite team of soldiers, known as Inferno Squad. Their mission: infiltrate and eliminate the remnants of Saw Gerrera’s Partisans. Following the death of their leader, the Partisans have carried on his extremist legacy, determined to thwart the Empire — no matter what the cost. Now, Inferno Squad must prove their status as the best of the best and take down the Partisans from within. But as the danger intensifies and the threat of discovery grows, how far will Inferno Squad go to ensure the safety of the Empire?"

Based on the description, it doesn’t sound like Inferno Squad will be a cut-and-dry good vs. evil novel. As we learned from previous Star Wars stories like Lost Stars, many Imperials are good people. Some of them are just misguided, taken in by Emperor Palpatine’s lies. Others only serve the Empire on pain of death or the deaths of their family members. By the end of Inferno Squad, one or two members of the titular group may defect to the Rebellion.

With its title alone, Inferno Squad clearly parallels the concept of Rogue One, just with an Imperial perspective and lower stakes. Consequently, there may be more explicit parallels between the two stories. Perhaps all the members of the Imperial squad die at the end. In a way, the Imperials’ deaths would bring some closure to the deaths of the Rogue One heroes: a life for a life.

With the brief synopsis available to us, there is only one thing that is certain about Inferno Squad: Empire fans will love this novel.

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Star Wars: Inferno Squad releases in hardback and e-book formats on July 25th, 2017.

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