Star Wars: The Last Order
New York Times best-selling author Kwame Mbalia makes his Star Wars debut with this exciting YA novel!
Following the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the Resistance rescues a ship full of young passengers who had been kidnapped by the First Order.
As Finn and Jannah set out to find the First Order officer responsible before he can endanger any more children, the two former stormtroopers must wrestle with their own complicated pasts as soldiers of the oppressive regime.
Take a deep dive into the pasts of popular characters Finn and Jannah in this richly-drawn, action-packed story that fans have been asking for.
Author: Kwame Mbalia
Cover Artist: Kim Thompson and Jason Wojtowicz
Release date: October 21, 2025
Page Count: 464 pages
ISBN: 9781368065610
While we learned some of the history of First Order Stormtrooper FN-2187 a decade ago in the Journey To The Force Awakens book Before the Awakening, we’ve learned surprisingly little about Finn’s past since, which means The Last Order by author Kwame Mbalia is a welcome arrival as we prepare to head into the post-sequel trilogy era with Starfighter, New Jedi Order (and whatever The Hunt For Ben Solo might have been). Married with the past of Jannah, the former TZ-1719 who deserted from the First Order to become a freedom fighter on Kef Bir, and we have an interesting YA novel that spends the majority of its time in the past informing us of the decisions and the pathway to the characters we first met in Episodes VII and IX respectively.
That said, there’s plenty of action taking place in the post-The Rise of Skywalker present as Finn, Jannah, youngster Coy Tria (eager for adventure before settling into the family freighter business, working around his disability and a respirator he needs to breathe) and Lando Calrissian prepare to deal with the potential return of Major Chetachi Gohl, the First Order security bureau propagandist whose videos informed so much of what FN-2187 and TZ-1719 knew of the regime. Misinformation, obsfucation, hyperbole and untruths fuel and fill the minds of the youngsters initiated into the First Order (with interesting moments involving Captain Phasma and Captain Cardinal), something Finn and Jannah begin to see through, and we follow as Jannah and Finn – who never meet during these flashback scenes – are forced to take part in horrendous actions, to the point that deserting is their only option (Jannah in this book, Finn later in The Force Awakens). Finn leads, but Jannah is a leader, and we see why she’s the one who others follow on Kef Bir.
There are also nods and hints to Jannah’s latent Force sensitivity, something we might expect more from Finn, and we’re right in the middle of the fateful mission to Ansett Island she mentions in The Rise of Skywalker, but the thrust of the book is very much the pre-The Force Awakens past and how these two young people became the people we last saw in 2019. It’s well written, Mbalia taking the characters he has and delivering an engrossing 464 pages while keeping the plot tight and contained. We could certainly stand to learn more about Coy, the young man that loves tea and who didn’t manage to fire a single shot while he was a member of the Citizen’s Fleet over Exegol, but who comes into his own here. He’s nervous, almost homesick, tentative but brave, and he’s right there with Finn and Jannah like he belongs. Of course there’s always room for more Lando.
The era may well be about to explode as we move past the Skywalker Saga, and as such this is hamstrung to a degree, but even with such a small amount of real estate in the ‘now’, Mbalia has put down a marker in the era, and hopefully that means we’ll be getting more going forward. Well worth a read, or a listen to the audiobook narrated by Torian Brackett.
