In my continuing run through the old Marvel Star Wars comic series, I felt a hankering to read about one of the endpoints in the Alliance versus Empire conflict.  I have held off on watching Return of the Jedi deliberately, saving it as a reward for reaching the end of the comics that are set between The Empire Strikes Back and RotJ.  It worked well enough when I was reading through the Marvel comics set between SW and RotJ.  Instead, as I had also been bouncing back and forth between X-wing comics and the Marvel series, I decided to tackle the second X-Wing novel. 

Let me just say at this point it is totally worth it to experience the stories of the X-wing comic, because they tie in and reward nicely for when going through the books (and vice versa).  I haven't come across anything direct in terms of reference yet, though I know those are in the future.  For the time being, it gives me some perspective on how the roster of the Rogue Squadron is ever in flux, always changes for each story; but slowly, a few people at a time.  So I am find that I am able to keep up with the changes, it's all very well done.

As for the second book, well, about a year ago or so I read the first book, so I was set up for the next book.  I figured that Wedge's Gamble would be a nice bookend to the Alliance and Empire conflict, being the point where the Rebellion storms the capital of the Galaxy, in an attempt to amplify their legitimacy as a governing body.  I figured it's all downhill for the Empire from here.

Mike Stackpole did something really clever with the book, though.  While he had the rebels figuring out how to take Coruscant, and then making their play for it, the villains present the appearance of counter-intelligence operations to stop them, while at the same time preparing their resources to make Coruscant a trap for the fledgling rebel government.  It's kind of neat how Stackpole takes the story telling strategy of The Empire Strikes Back one better.  TESB didn't follow up on SW by trying to outdo it's scale, there's no Death Star, the big climactic battle happens at the beginning of the movie, and the characters deal with the fall out from losing the battle and trying to successfully escape.  The Empire have a Super Star Destroyer to lead the other Destroyers, but the scale is still a bit smaller.  In Wedge's Gambit, we come across an Imperial villain who is not throwing big ships at the Rebellion, but is instead preparing to leverage economics, germ and psychological warfare as a weapon against them.

So, when I finished with the book, I got some fulfillment out of discovering the story of how the Rebellion made an effort to take Coruscant.  However, due to the structuring of his series, the second book has a lot of set up plot points which could only play out in the third novel.  It's really too bad to get the payoff for the lead in to the Rebellion's push to take Coruscant, yet not get payoff for a lot for the other threads that have been fiendishly prepared.  If even half of those story elements come into play in the third novel, then The Krytos Trap really branches out in terms of the variety of conflicts (and it does develop all of them, I peaked ahead).  In a sense, until I've read through TKT, I'm leaving the Rebels with a tenuous hold on their military/political situation.

So Wedge's Gamble, while entertaining enough, has a thankless job.  I look forward to finding out how much TKT fulfills the promise set up by WG.