McEvoy’s Reviews > Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire > Status Update

"Mon Calamari, Sullustans, and Wookies were all persecuted in different ways but could recognize in their own suffering the suffering of others. Such recognition bread sympathy and, eventually, cooperation... Cooperation, collaboration, and shared empathy are the antidote to a system designed to destroy and constrict... In many ways the alliance aspect may have existed before the rebel part."

Beaumont Kin is such an intriguing POV. A historian who joined the Resistance because he saw it as his duty and then sets up in Palpatine's abandoned temple perform further research. It's not great watching him deteriorate as the book continues but makes sense when he's trying to warn the galactic public that, yes, Palpatine was an evil space wizard but the true evil was everyone who enabled his rise to power.

"They embraced a society that had seemingly been designed expressly for them, without either realizing or caring that if they were not paying the price for it then somebody else was."

"There will always be those who are prepared to accelerate the death of democracy if they believe power is being given to someone worthy."

I knew this book was an in-universe retelling, but I was expecting a dry history textbook. This is a historian turned soldier turned historian who is trying to entreat readers *desperately* after two galactic wars that the true evil is not the evil wizard emperor but fascism. He wanted to create an empire, it was normal, everyday people that helped him create and maintain it.