The latest Star Wars novel written by author Delilah S. Dawson centers around Vi Moradi a resistance spy and First Order Captain Cardinal, revealing the origins of Captain Phasma.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a little over three months away so why not fill the long wait then by learning about Captain Phasma’s desolate home world of Parnassos and her first encounter with the First Order.

I’ve begun reading the book myself and so far it is excellent. Check out the excerpt from the audio book and two more excerpts you can read as well. If your a Star Wars fan and wanting to learn more about Captain Phasma then you should give this newest novel a try.

Star Wars: Phasma Synopsis
One of the most cunning and merciless officers of the First Order, Captain Phasma commands the favor of her superiors, the respect of her peers, and the terror of her enemies. But for all her renown, Phasma remains as virtually unknown as the impassive expression on her gleaming chrome helmet. Now, an adversary is bent on unearthing her mysterious origins—and exposing a secret she guards as zealously and ruthlessly as she serves her masters.

Deep inside the Battlecruiser Absolution, a captured Resistance spy endures brutal interrogation at the hands of a crimson-armored stormtrooper—Cardinal. But the information he desires has nothing to do with the Resistance or its covert operations against the First Order.

What the mysterious stormtrooper wants is Phasma’s past—and with it whatever long-buried scandal, treachery, or private demons he can wield against the hated rival who threatens his own power and privilege in the ranks of the First Order. His prisoner has what Cardinal so desperately seeks, but she won’t surrender it easily. As she wages a painstaking war of wills with her captor, bargaining for her life in exchange for every precious revelation, the spellbinding chronicle of the inscrutable Phasma unfolds. But this knowledge may prove more than just dangerous once Cardinal possesses it—and once his adversary unleashes the full measure of her fury.

Publisher: Del Rey
Author: Delilah S. Dawson
Pages: 400
Timeline: Prior to Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens

Excerpt #1

Phasma and her warriors began making preparations the moment they saw the explosion high overhead. As the ship’s remains streaked across the sky, Phasma tracked it with her quadnocs, taking careful note of the direction in which it fell. At the very least, ships like this could be pillaged; at most, there was always a hope that they could be salvaged and used to get offplanet. No one alive had seen such ships do anything but fall and crash, but they were evidence of the larger galaxy beyond Parnassos, of a future that had been denied them. It was painful, living on such a treacherous planet with so many re­minders of the ease and technology that had once been taken for granted. At the very least, there would be metal, tech, clothes, medi­cines, food, and possibly working blasters scattered around what was left of the ship. These were the greatest riches in Phasma’s world.

But they had to hurry. Other groups in other territories would also be watching and preparing for the journey. Falling stars, as they called them, were rare, and this ship was the shiniest thing the Scyre had ever seen—so bright that they had to shield their eyes as it ar­rowed down toward the planet. Part of the ship popped off and floated down separately, headed for the area where the Scyre lands bordered the enemy Claw clan’s, which made it all the more impor­tant to hurry.

The journey was not easy, for no journeys on Parnassos are. The Scyre territory was mostly spires of black rock, jagged cliffs, ledges, caves, and occasional tide pools when the ocean was at its lowest. Within their accustomed living area, they maintained a series of ziplines, rope bridges, tethers, nets, and hammocks, and even the least nimble Scyre member could get from place to place without too much trouble. But beyond their nesting place, along their border with the Claw, the terrain grew even more dangerous. The bridges weren’t sturdy, and one never knew when a support spike might be rusted through or a stone spire crumbling away to nothing. Phasma’s warriors were lucky that the ship had crashed during a time of low tides, so they were able to traverse the terrain far more easily than if the tides had been high, not to mention that during high tide, the ship might’ve been swallowed by the sea—or a monster in it.

When they reached the line of flags delineating the borderlands between the Scyre and the Claw, Phasma called a halt and pulled out her quadnocs. Five figures were being pulled up onto the plateau from the land below. Using the lenses, Phasma followed the foot­prints and drag marks back to where a metal machine waited, half submerged in the sand and beside a huge, crumpled piece of fabric. It was the part of the ship that had popped off and gently floated down. The Scyre had never seen so much fabric in one piece in all their lives, and it was clear why several Claw members were down there, busily cutting the long lines that held the fabric to the machine so that they might claim it for their own. The downed ship was nowhere in sight, but far, far away, across the sands and yet more rocks. Phasma tracked the thin line of white smoke that feathered up into the sky, marking the path to true riches.

A cheer went up from the gathered Claw as the first strange figure was dragged to standing on top of the plateau. It was a man, and for Parnassos, he wore very little, just finely woven clothes of a smooth, uniform black and tall, shiny boots speckled with sand. He was the oldest person the Scyre folk had ever seen, with pale-white skin and red hair going gray at the edges. Although his limbs were slender enough, his belly was big, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He smiled blandly at the whoops and whistles of the Claw folk but was clearly not celebrating, personally.

Without a word, Phasma urged her people forward, motioning for them to be quiet and quick. When they stood on the edge of the pla­teau, behind the crowd of Claw folk so mesmerized that they hadn’t even noticed the interlopers, Phasma and her people finally saw the miracle occurring.

The Claw’s leader had pushed the man gently aside and reached for the next figure, a warrior wearing white armor streaked with gray sand over a thin suit of black. A gasp went over the Claw folk, and Phasma’s warriors, too—such armor would’ve given anyone on Parnassos a huge advantage over the elements, and the solid helmet seemed an improvement over their light leather masks. Two more white-armored soldiers fol­lowed, and lastly came a droid. It was shaped vaguely like a human and made of matte-black metal, and it took the longest to haul up, due, most likely, to its weight and its inability to climb. The people of Parnassos had seen the component parts of hundreds of droids and even used droid metal for their weapons, but no one living had seen a droid stand of its own volition and hold up an indignant hand, as this black droid did when the Claw attempted to touch it.

The droid spoke to the man in black with a mechanized voice. It was hard to hear on the plateau, surrounded by whispering and the sudden gusts of wind, but the language seemed both familiar and different. The man in black spoke back to the droid, and the droid spoke again, this time much louder, its voice projected by some sort of strange machinery.

“My name is Brendol Hux, and I’m afraid my starship was shot down by an automated defense system over your world. My language is a little different from yours, so this droid will translate to your more primitive dialect.

“My emergency pod has landed very far from my ship. I have lost several of my own people in this horrible tragedy. But if you are willing to help me, I can offer you the kind of technology and sup­plies that your world has lost. I come from a powerful band called the First Order that brings peace to the galaxy. I am tasked with scouring the stars for the greatest warriors, that they might join our cause. Our people are well cared for and well trained. Ask my soldiers, here. Troopers, is that not so?”

The three soldiers in white nodded and barked, “Yes, sir!”

“Each of these warriors was selected from a distant planet and trained to fight for the First Order. If your people help return us to our ship, I will take whoever wishes to join me back to our fleet. These soldiers will live in glory and wealth, never suffering for want again. Now, who will help me?”

The Claw people stood to cheer, but a new figure appeared beside Brendol Hux, a warrior wearing a fierce red mask.

“I am Phasma, and I am the greatest warrior of Parnassos.” Re­moving her mask, Phasma faced Brendol and waited for the robot to translate. “I will help you find your ship.”

Excerpt #2

Vi was trained to remember every detail when it counts, but even she can’t keep up with the labyrinthine twists and turns of the enormous Star Destroyer’s guts. Long hallways end and intersect, and turbolifts up and down make it impossible for her to recall their route. It’s one thing to see pictures of ships like this one, but it’s another thing to really understand the enormity of their enemy’s resources. As he guides her into another lift, the man in red stands in front of the panel so she can’t see which level they’re headed to.

“Your place or mine?” Vi asks, hoping to goad him into moving aside.

But the man in red is silent. When she slowly begins to take her hands down, he clicks his tongue at her.

“Tsk. Hands on head. You know how this works, scum.”

When the lift doors open, the lighting is dim and flickering, and there’s something dripping, maybe runoff from the vent system. They’re deep in the bowels of the Star Destroyer, then, in an area that’s generally off-limits or beneath notice. And that’s not good for Vi. Even the First Order has rules, and the red trooper is breaking them. If this guy kills her, he won’t even have to do datawork. She’ll just be another load of garbage sliding down toward the incinerator.

Great. The Resistance doesn’t know much about the enemy they’re facing, and the New Republic doesn’t consider them a threat, which means Vi hasn’t been briefed on the protocol these people generally follow. She doesn’t know what to expect. She’s been trained to resist interrogation, but she also doesn’t know what new toys this guy in red might have. A chill trickles down her spine. She might be in over her head.

The blaster doesn’t leave her spine. Her captor gives her directions—turn here, turn there—but doesn’t respond to her taunting. Finally, he presses a long code into a control panel on the wall, and a door slides open far less smoothly than Vi would expect in what’s obvi­ously a new ship.

The room isn’t large, maybe three meters by four, and it clearly has only one use: interrogation. Well, two uses, if you count torture. Three, if you include the inevitable death promised by the fact that she’s not going to give up any intel on the Resistance. The space is dominated by an interrogation chair, and the only other fur­nishings are a simple table and two rickety metal chairs, a place for the bad guys to sit down with a cup of caf and go over their notes while their victim bleeds out, probably.

After strapping her in, he checks the panel monitoring her vital signs, flicking it with a finger.

“Your heart rate is up,” he notes.

“Yeah, well, I’m strapped into a torture chair, standing on some­body else’s dried blood. Seems like a natural response.”

“You’ve got something to hide.”

“Who doesn’t?”

His red helmet tips, just a fraction, conceding the point. As she watches him, he moves around the edges of the room, double-checking the cam feeds his droid already shut off, as well as what she’d guess is the comm system. The droid hovers ominously beside his shoulder, and he makes the rounds slowly, as if giving a warning.

This is not official.

This is off the record.

No one else is watching.

There will be no interruptions, no reprieves.

This is not how the First Order does things.

“So this is personal,” Vi notes.

“We shall see. It’s up to you. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Vi wiggles, testing the strength of her bonds. “Letting me go would be really, really easy. Besides, you can search me all you want, but I don’t have anything useful. Let your boys tear my ship apart, decon­struct my droid, unravel my sweater, poke around in my brain all day. Whoever you think I am, you’re wrong. I’m just a harmless passerby.”

He stands before her now, legs spread and arms crossed. His blaster is clipped on his hip, red and gleaming. His red-gloved fingers tap against it, another reminder. It’s just the two of them and his droid. Anything could happen.

“You are Vi Moradi, code name Starling, known Resistance spy. And you have the very intel I need.”

“And you’re the Big Red Button. What happens if I poke you in the chest? Does a light turn on somewhere? Does something explode?”

“You don’t deny it?”

She would shrug if she weren’t manacled and strapped down. “You’re the one running the torture, so you’re the one who gets to decide what’s true and what’s not.”

“You were on Parnassos.”

Vi is too well trained to grin.

“Was I? And what’s so important about Parnassos?”

Her captor considers her. “Nothing. That’s the point. Now tell me what you know about Captain Phasma.”

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Tags: Del Rey, Delilah S. Dawson, Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Movies, Novel, Star Wars Novel, Star Wars: Phasma