Star Wars Aftermath — My Spoilers And Yours

Holy shit, it’s out!

It’s midnight.

It’s Force Friday.

Which means…

The first of the Aftermath trilogy lands on bookshelves (and ideally into your little robot hands) today. It’s been awesome writing this book and getting it out into the world. I think it’s going to be a book people either love or hate — you know, it’s a book with a heaping helping of HOT EXPECTATION GRAVY slathered over its many pages, so, any time that happens you run the risk of the hype becoming a monster to which the book could never really compare. But this is the book that lived inside my head and it’s what fell out when I turned my head upside down.

I recognize that a lot of people are likely going to read the book with an eye toward spoilers — this is a book that offers up the first tentative steps on the narrative bridge toward The Force Awakens, and so PLOT HUNTERS are going to be combing through the sand and dust of this story, hoping to come away with a few gems of shiny What-May-Come.

So, I thought I’d get ahead of that and list ten whopper spoilers from this book, just to get them out of the way. Just to clear the slate, so you don’t have to do picking through the story like a mother monkey plucking ticks from her baby monkey’s fur. Consider it a favor from me.

I’m aces like that.

Here, then, are ten BIG-ASS SPOILERS in the book. You can thank me later.

1. Three words: Emperor Elan Sleazebaggano. And his cousin, Darth Jerkturd. They rule the Deathsticks trade on seven worlds. And you thought the Empire was dead.

2. Not just one Death Star. But a hundred Death Stars. A WHOLE DEATH GALAXY. And they’re all shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet. And the son of Luke Skywalker, Dave Skywalker (who is played by Simon Pegg in the new movie, FYI), has to OMG figure out how to blow up like, every new Death Star at the same time? He can only do it with his friends — an unlikely assortment of wacky deviants and miscreants: Dan Individual, Chorgbacon the Schnook, the Duchess LeeLee Sobieski, Mando Kardashian, and the two droids: See-Poo-Pee-You, and RU-DTF.

3. HAN SOLO HAS BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME. AND HE’S ALSO YOUR REAL DAD. And he’s very disappointed in you. Not mad, just disappointed. Now hold still while he lightsabers your hand off to teach you about responsibility, young padawan.

4. Jar-Jar gives a buffoonish speech in Space Congress and his vote helps form the First Order, whatever the heck that is? Then Jar-Jar is brutally torn apart by a pack of Lothcats for 56 pages. The lesson here? You win some, you lose some.

5. YODA’S BACK, MOTHERFUCKERS. He’s young and he’s handsome and he’s on the hunt for the ladies. “When a hundred years you reach, look as hella sexy, you will not.” *plays sexy techno music, dances with tiny lightsabers like they’re glowsticks at a rave*

6. I forgot where I was in the middle of the book so I instead started a new book about the wacky fun-time adventures of Drunken Jedi Master Wig Chudneck. He has a lightsaber made of bees. (A “beesaber.”) His beard is made of hyper-intelligent cilia — basically, like, fuzzy midichlorians? He has a duck under his arm. The duck will figure in very prominently in Episode VII, so keep your eye out. Basically Wig just sorta runs around, screwing stuff up and then fixing it for people? Like the A-Team, if the A-Team did that and was only one Jedi Master riding a raggedy old tauntaun instead of five semi-competent mercs in a van.

7. Speaking of awesome lightsabers, in this book you will find a Jedi made entirely of lightsabers. And he carries a cannon that shoots little lightsaber bullets. And each of those little lightsaber bullets have the Force. True story.

8. The entire book, when read backward, is a ROT13 cipher. When you solve the puzzle, it reveals the entire backstory of Kylo Ren and the order of Knights to which he belongs. It also has a mean guacamole recipe that uses bacon.

9. The real spoiler is, you’re adopted. You’ll find out on page 147.

10. LUKE SKYWALKER IS REALLY DARTH VADER WHICH MEANS HE’S REALLY HIS OWN DAD AND ALSO HE’S IN MANDALORIAN BATTLE ARMOR NOW AND ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS REALLY KYLO REN AND KYLO REN IS REALLY DARTH JERKTURD AND SECRETLY DARTH JERKTURD HAS BEEN ADMIRAL ACKBAR THE WHOLE TIME AND THE REBELLION IS REALLY THE EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE IS REALLY JUST A FLOATING EWOK VILLAGE inside a snow globe held in the hands of a young Keyzer Soze, who turns around and sees his father, Bob Newhart, sleeping on the bed next to Tyler Durden, who he also is, and then he whispers, Rooooosebuuuuud, which is the name of his lightsaber, and then we pan out the window only to see that the Death Star was the Statue of Liberty this whole time OMG IT’S AN AMERICAN METAPHOR THE EMPIRE IS AMERICA AND WE’RE ALL MINDLESS STORMTROOPERS boom! Mic dropped! Here comes Episode VII! Woooo! *barfs in your lap and on your book*

Ahem.

Now, it’s your turn.

I’ll be foregoing a flash fiction challenge today in place of this.

Your task, should you choose to accept it?

Pop in the comments and put in a TOTALLY TRUE* SPOILER from AFTERMATH.

* ahem meaning totally fake

Just one. Not two. And keep it fairly short. (Despite #10 on the list, try to keep it under 100 words.)

You can also tweet the fake spoilers using the hashtag: #fakeaftermathspoilers

I’ll be traveling this weekend (by the time this posts, I will be literally at the launch event for Aftermath), so I won’t have a chance to really look at these until Monday. (Which also means some comments may go unapproved by then if I am unable to curate and check the posts due to being firmly ensconced in the chaos of Dragoncon and Decatur Book Fest.)

You have till Monday, noon EST.

I’ll pick a single favorite out of the bunch.

And that single favorite will get from me:

A signed copy of Star Wars: Aftermath. Hardcover.

And I’ll also throw in a signed copy of Zer0es, too.

Available only to participants in the United States — those outside the USA can still participate, but if you win, know that you’ll be paying the shipping.

Again, you get one entry, and keep it short.

(art at the top of the post by @oncomingspork)