Star Wars: Sanctuary: A Bad Batch Novel
Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, and Omega gamble on a mission to help rebuild Pabu in this thrilling adventure for The Bad Batch.
A good soldier knows that life is all about change – whether it’s on or off the battlefield. Surviving, living, means adaptation. Hunter is well acquainted with this lesson. He’s on the run from the Empire, Echo’s off on a mission with Captain Rex, and Crosshair is . . . still Crosshair, but amidst all the change, Hunter still has Tech, Wrecker, and Omega.
And it seems that his small family might have finally found a safe place to land, far from the increasingly vigilant eyes of the Empire: Pabu. But their potential new island home is in desperate need of resources if there is any hope for the fledgling community to recover from a devastating sea wave. That’s where Phee Goena, self-proclaimed liberator of treasures, comes in, with a couple of jobs she swears will get them the funds they need. Despite Hunter’s concern with Phee’s precarious plans, the rest of the crew is fine following her lead.
Things go wrong almost immediately, as Phee’s droid blows the crew’s cover at a high-stakes auction, and they barely make it out with the relic they’d been paid to acquire. Hunter insists they finish their first mission and deliver the relic before taking on more work, but Phee and the others push forward with a second job: ferrying a couple on the run, one of whom is due to give birth at any moment. Hunter worries what they’re risking, especially when their mysterious new passengers cling to lies and secrets that trace back to an Imperial Security Bureau officer hot on their trail.
As Hunter tries to get the crew back on a stable, safe path far, far away from anything to do with the Empire’s watchdogs, their overlapping missions only invite more danger and chaos. On the verge of failing both their desperate passengers and their community on Pabu, the Batch must remember that the only way they succeed, the only way they survive to fight another day, is by trusting each other.
Author: Lamar Giles
Cover Artist: Marie Bergeron
Release date: August 5, 2025
Length: 707 minutes
ISBN: 9781804955710
As with the recently concluded The Bad Batch: Ghost Agents series from Dark Horse Comics, there’s a very welcome familiarity in returning to the family dynamics of the Bad Batch, and here in Lamar Giles debut Star Wars novel (his first full novel after his “Twenty and Out” entry in the 2023 From A Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi anthology), we’re right back into the thick of it as we join the story 18 years before the Battle of Yavin and a year after the fall of the Jedi. Taking place near the end of the second season of the Disney Plus show, this deeper investigation of Clone Force 99 allows for character investigations that add extra layers to a ‘kids’ TV show that detailed these flawed aspects of an original clone (Jango Fett) to such wonderful effect.
We’re near the end of the second season, before the death of Tech and Cid’s betrayal, and after the events of ‘Pabu’, which saw the city devasted by a tsunami. That means no Crosshair and no Echo (off on his clone-liberating mission with Rex), but as the book begins mid-adventure (dwarf Gundarks joining the John Hammond-esque dwaft Nuna’s from The Phantom Menace) we’re soon racing into the plot as the Batch try their best to raise funds for the renovation of Pabu, a place they’re very clearly set on making their new home after their restful sojourn. However, that plan is soon stymied by the arrival of our books villains, ISB Supervisor Crane and the menacing Celia Moten, a personal friend of Sheev Palpatine with deep resources, a drive to do whatever is necessary and ambitions of becoming a regional governor. She also has her sights set on Phee, so our clone heroes are up against it from the start. Add the mysterious Keshiri Sohi (wanted by the Empire, who speaks of the Delegation of the 2000) and the scarred, masked Kuuto and you have all the ingredients for a thrilling adventure. We may focus on our family of clones, but their part in the broader story of the galaxy is never forgotten.
However, while the plot of a Bad Batch story is important, the interpersonal relationships almost always takes precedence, something that makes following these characters easy to invest in. Season three of the show saw Hunter take a back seat compared to his unquestioned leadership in the first season and a half, and with the absence of Crosshair a gaping hole in the fabric of Sanctuary, he’s not the focused arrowhead of the team he used to be. As the teams resident ‘Dad’, he seems to struggle with the quickly maturing Omega’s desire to be independent and see more of the world, and with Echo away and Crosshair beyond his influence after Kamino, Hunter is somewhat out of sorts.
Wrecker and Omega often take the lead in the show (Omega arguably being the ‘star’ of the series, and Wrecker the most popular) and here, while they’re used sparringly the charm, insight and honesty of Omega is the light in the dark that keeps the rest of the team on the right track. Wrecker gets some humorous monents while still being a sounding post for Hunter, and just as on the TV show, Tech grows and grows in the eyes of the audience. Here, the gentle relationship between Phee and Tech develops, and there’s a note of sadness as we the reader know his time is running out; this is a relationship that will soon be cut short. Tech’s neurodivergence is dealt with well, a potentially tricky subject if tackled clumsily, but here the analytical processes of Tech married to his growing awareness of his own differences are charmingly counterbalanced by Phee’s world-weary, galaxy-spanning view of the world. They speak often, looking to the future and where it might take them, Pabu very much the goal for all of them. Giles deals with all of it well, and without telegraphing what’s to come for those who might not know his destiny.
It would be easy to say too much and spoil the undoubted pleasure of listening to this story, here portrayed with vim and vigour as always by Marc Thompson, who not only does a very decent Tom Kane at the top of the audiobook but gives us some excellent portrayals of Clone Force 99. 707 minutes is not short listen, but just like this engaging story, it’s very much worth your time. Lamar Giles has really nailed the voices of the Batch and Phee, so let’s hope this is the first of many adventures from Giles featuring our much-missed clone heroes.
