Lost Stars

Lost Stars is a young adult novel written by Claudia Gray. It is part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens book series. It was released on September 4, 2015.

Description
''The reign of the Galactic Empire has reached the Outer Rim planet of Jelucan, where aristocratic Thane Kyrell and rural villager Ciena Ree bond over their love of flying. Enrolling at the Imperial Academy together to become fighter pilots for the glorious Empire is nothing less than a dream come true for the both of them. But Thane sours on the dream when he sees firsthand the horrific tactics the Empire uses to maintain its ironclad rule.''

Bitter and disillusioned, Thane joins the fledgling Rebellion&mdash;putting Ciena in an unbearable position to choose between her loyalty to the Empire and her love for the man she's known since childhood.

Now on opposite sides of the war, will these friends turned foes find a way to be together, or will duty tear them&mdash;and the galaxy&mdash;apart?

Plot summary
The story begins on the outer rim planet of Jelucan. It has recently been annexed by the Empire and many of the planet’s inhabitants are making their way to the capitol for an Imperial ceremony celebrating this event.

Two children, Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree are travelling to the ceremony with their families. Ciena’s family live out in the valleys with a group known as the valley kindred who are a simple, hardworking people who are descended from the original colonists of the planet. They have a very strong code of honor and use very little in the way of technology. Thane’s family are a part of the second wave of colonists who tend to be more affluent and live in the cities. Second Wavers and Valley Kindred tend to be at odds with each other and don’t get along well.

Despite their different backgrounds, both children are fascinated with ships and flying. They both notice the same Lambda class shuttle flying toward the ceremony grounds.

it turns out this shuttle is carrying Grand Moff Tarkin, who officiates the ceremony. While the people of Jelucan look on, both Thane and Ciena sneak away to check out ships. They separately come upon the shuttle behind a security cordon. They are not alone, a group of older second wave boys see Ciena and begin berating her for being from the valley. Thane, despite being a second waver himself, defends Ciena, engaging the older boys in a fight. Ciena joins him. Before things get out of hand, the fight is interrupted by Tarkin and his entourage.

The boys take off but THane and Ciena remain behind. Instead of punishing them, Tarkin questions them. Finding out they were merely interested in the ship, he quizzes them and comes to realize the children are bright. he invites them into the shuttle where they continue to impress by identifying the controls.

Takrin gives them a speech about the glory of serving the empire and the possibility that one day they themselves could pilot a shuttle or even command a star destroyer for the empire. This sets the two children on a new life’s mission, to attend an Imperial academy and become officers in the Imperial Navy.

5 years pass, Thane and Ciena have become good friends and flight partners despite their families disliking each other. They train on Thane’s brother’s ship which sits unused since he went off to the academy himself.

Over the next few years the two train together whenever they can, helping one another and continuing to become an inseparable team. When Thane hits his physical limits, Ciena is there to encourage him. When Ciena struggles in her studies, Thane works with her.

All this work pays off and the two of them are assigned to the most prestigious school, the Imperial Academy on Coruscant.

They arrive together but are soon separated during indoc. They are assigned rooms and quickly make friends with their new roommates. They soon reunite at a reception for new cadets.

Along with their new friends, Thane and Ciena excel at the Academy, often competing for first in their classes. As time passes, they continue to be close friends. However, they also begin to notice their feelings for each other are developing into more. Thane notices the grubby valley girl he grew up with has become a very attractive young woman. Ciena has her  own feelings for Thane but is confused and conflicted by them.

They continue to lead their cohort in performance until a few years into their academy careers. The group is partaking in an exercise where they build laser cannons from spare parts. Ciena’s works well but Thane’s fails to power on. The instructor soon discovers it has been sabotaged. Inexplicably, the evidence points to Ciena as the culprit. Ciena’s roommate Jude does her own independent investigation and concludes that Thane sabotaged his own cannon. With insufficient evidence either way, no one is expelled but both of them fail the assignment. This drops them from their top spots in the class.

They both approach Jude to continue her investigation into who sabotaged Thane’s cannon. She concludes it was the Academy itself. Politics and corruption in the ranks are to blame.

Thane and Ciena get into a huge fight about whether or not they should do anything about it. Thane insists they do, but Ciena’s sense of honor and loyalty gets in the way. Thane storms off.

Two and a half years pass and the two continue competing, climbing the ranks again to the top of the cohort. However their competition is no longer friendly. They no longer interact socially and drift apart in many ways. Thane begins to become somewhat disenfranchised with the Empire while Ciena becomes even more loyal.

They are assigned to different specializations as they approach the end of their time at the Academy, Thane to Elite Flight and Ciena to Command. This causes them to see each other even less. Despite the distance though, they can’t shake the lifelong connection they have.

As graduation approached, the top students are invited to attend a ball at the Imperial palace. Naturally, Thane and Ciena are selected.

They reconnect at the ball and begin to reconcile. With their friendship re-established, Thane sees an opportunity to take things further, he holds back though, not wanting to risk their fragile relationship. They are simply glad to be friends again.

After graduation, Ciena is assigned to the Star Destroyer Devastator while Thane is assigned to a classified battle station as a TIE pilot. They go their separate ways but promise to see each other as soon as possible. They part with a kiss on the cheek.

A few weeks later, Ciena take part in the capture of the Tantive IV. She observes an empty escape pod launch from the ship toward the desert planet below. The Devastator’s next stop is the Death Star. When Ciena learns this she contacts Thane who is now stationed there. They are excited to see each other.

Before they can meet though, Alderaan is destroyed. They both watch it happen.

Thane’s TIE squadron is sent to Dantooine to investigate the Rebel base that is reportedly there. Upon seeing the abandoned base, he finally realizes the Alliance is not a disorganized rabble as he’s been told. They are organized and well equipped. His faith in the Empire continues to falter.

On the Devastator, Ciena sees the data feeds from the Death Star go dark. While her superiors deny it, she knows the station and all her academy friends aboard it are likely dead.

Thane’s squadron returns to the fleet from Dantooine where he meets Ciena. She thought he had died on the Death Star. They share their first kiss only to have Thane ship out to a garrison on a spice world. it is here that Thane has enough. He witnesses the worst of the Empire and realizes he needs to get out.

He calls Ciena and they have a serious talk. They can’t say what they really think due to monitoring by the ISB but they both leave the conversation knowing what they need to do. Thane believes they both agree to desert at the first opportunity whereas Ciena believe that they agree to stick to their oaths and serve, trying to fix the Empire from the inside.

Thane desserts and returns to Jelucan. Ciana volunteers to go find him. In the wake of the Death Star, the Empire will welcome him back without punishment. She finds him and their misunderstanding comes to light. Ciena pleads with him to return and he refuses. She realizes this is likely the last time she’ll see him and they finally have sex.

After the act, they finally profess their love for each other and realize they need to part ways. Ciena tells Thane to get off the planet as she will report him as AWOL after a week.

Despite this threat, she ends up returning to the Devastator and reporting Thane dead.

18 months ABY: Thane meets with Wedge Antilles on a supply run. After a long night of drinking and talking, Thane is convinced the Rebellion is his best way to fight the tyranny of the Empire. While he doesn’t believe in their high minded ideals, it seems like the best course of action.

At the same time, Ciena is transferred to the Executor when Vader transfers his flag to the new ship. She is aboard when the probe droid locates the rebel base on Hoth.

Thane, now a rebel, is stationed there freezing his choobies off. He flies a snowspeeder and escapes to the rendezvous point in his X-Wing. As he leaves Hoth, he sees the fleet and realizes that one day he might encounter Ciena in battle and unknowingly kill her.

After being ordered to coordinate the TIEs chasing the Falcon through the asteroid field, she goes off duty and studies the battle tapes from Hoth. Here she recognizes Thane’s flying and realizes that he has joined the rebellion.

As they chase the Falcon to Bespin, Ciena is charged with leading a team to sabotage the hyperdrive. She does so, but as we know, Artoo repairs it. Ciena is convinced she’ll be killed for her failure, but Vader simply walks off.

Back on jelucan, Ciena’s mother is accused of embezzling money from the mine at whcih she is a supervisor. ciena knows this is impossible and requests leave to stand with her mother in the tradition of her people.

She arrives to find no one standing in support of her mother except Thane. From his perspective, he returns to support her, but also in an effort to get over her. he feels meeting her again will prove to him the Empire has destroyed the good person she was.

This turns out not to be the case, though their reunion is strained. Thane convinces Ciena to go flying with her like they used to. They do and realize nothing has changed between them except they are on opposite sides of a war. They return to the fortress, their secret childhood hangout near Thane’s parents hangar. There they have a heated exchange and then have sex a second time.

Thane tires to recruit her into the rebellion and fails. Ciena believes that if all the good people leave the Empire then they will be worse off. Thane leaves jelucan while he can and to no one’s surprise, ciena’s mother is found guilty and sentenced to hard labour. Ciena returns to the fleet after realizing that she couldn’t defend her mother without giving up her career in the navy.