Last week I re-read Phasma and boy was it a fun one to refresh my memory on. Phasma is as brutal as you'd expect a book about her to be, and it really puts everything about her into a new perspective as you really learn who she is and what she's done. At the same time, we spend time with the Resistance spy of Galaxy's Edge fame, Vi Moradi, which is always a pleasure. We also meet Cardinal, the First Order's red-clad captain and watch him transform through our very eyes. Phasma is a fascinating read and each character is so well thought out. Delilah Dawson has done it again!
Pick up your own copy of Phasma to learn all about the famed First Order captain, but also the incredible original characters the book has to offer!
Spoilers ahead for Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson!
So obviously the main focus of Phasma is Phasma herself. We learn the story of her whole life, albeit not through the perspective of Phasma herself. Rather, what we are reading is Vi Moradi retelling the story, which she heard from a once close friend (friend doing a lot of work here) of Phasma, named Siv. Phasma came from a brutal planet where every day was a fight to stay alive from the planet's rough elements, let alone other clans trying to kill you. Forged in this fire, we see the core of who she is- a fighter who will do anything survive. Phasma will betray anyone and do anything if it means she gets to live another day. That means she'll let her entire family die, she'll kill her tribe with her own hands, and she'll kill the man who saved her if she comes out on top. She's brutal in this book, unflinching in the face of death if it means its less dead weight to slow her down.
But it also re-contextualizes a lot of what we saw of her in the films. In The Force Awakens, she barely hesitates to shut down the shields of Starkiller Base. It's something that people criticize about the movie sometimes, believing that a strong warrior like her should have refused to betray her organization but the fleshing out of her character in the book makes it feel so natural. Of course she shut down the shields if it meant avoiding a blaster bolt to the neck. She doesn't care about the First Order! The ideals of it, the mission, they mean nothing to her. She doesn't care what happens to Starkiller Base or a single person in the First Order as long as she saves her own skin, as long as she comes out on top. Her own loyalty is with herself, and what's important to her is that she's on the winning side. If she had been born 30 years earlier, she would've enlisted with the Empire, then defected to the Rebellion/New Republic the second she felt the tide had turned sufficiently enough. Not out of principle or ideal, but because she's a survivor before anything else. She's a fascinating character, her brutality being the most honest thing about her.
Then of course we have our storyteller herself, Vi Moradi. We open the book with Vi, she's knitting and on her way back to the Resistance when she's captured by the First Order. Rather than being taken to a regular interrogation room though, she's brought to the bowels of the ship where the clearly amateur-interrogator Cardinal is interrogating her off-the-record. He wants to know all about Phasma and what she's done, and he knows Vi has visited her home planet gathering intel about Phasma for the Resistance. Vi tells Cardinal all about Phasma from Siv's stories, and we get chapters throughout the book where we come back to Vi and Cardinal, and we get to learn about Vi and what she gathers from the stories, how she feels about Phasma's selfishness and the true fear that the stories strike her with. While we know from the Black Spire book that Vi has a fun personality and can hit opponents with wit, and we see some of that here, we also see the tortured Vi being very vulnerable. She's a really fun character who pretends to be aloof and selfish while also being compassionate and caring deeply about others, so she's a great counter to the deeply selfish Phasma who pretends to be loyal to whoever she finds most convenient at the moment. She's constantly urging Cardinal, despite the fact that he's the one treating her so poorly, to think for himself, and she ultimately goes back to save him in the end.
Which brings us to Cardinal himself! Captain Cardinal, trainer of the young First Order recruits and shining red star of the First Order, the perfect example of a loyal soldier. Except for the tiny fact that he's shut out from the top conversations and overlooked in favor of Captain Phasma, who swooped in one day and captured the attention of Brendol Hux, the man Cardinal idolized ever since he was picked up as a child from Jakku. Cardinal's resentment for Phasma runs deep, and he's looking for something he can use to bring her down. While he normally lives and breathes what the First Order has told him, he breaks protocol for the first time to interrogate Vi in secret.
And what he learns infuriates him- Phasma assassinated Brendol Hux. Cardinal takes the story to Brendol's son, Armitage, finally ready to take his rival down. Only to be met with apathy. Not just that- amusement! Armitage finds it funny that Cardinal is so shocked and enraged, and it's revealed that Armitage was part of the plot to kill Brendol himself.
And that destroys Cardinal. The First Order he thought he knew, the machine he's given every part of himself to being a cog in, is a lie. He's bought fully in to the rhetoric of order, equality and honesty, only to find that even the top of the Order betrays that every day. Dawson wrote Cardinal's breakdown beautifully. While we get some of his thoughts working through it all, what he's learned conflicting with how he was programmed, what we mostly get is his reactions. Those physical, what is he doing, what can we observe actions. And they tell us so much! While Cardinal was always clean, strict, following every routine and procedure to the letter, now he's skipping trainings, drinking, shaving, throwing and smashing things. It was a transformation, and I loved reading the full break down of Cardinal, trying to reconcile too many conflicting ideas and figuring out not just what he thinks is right, but what he think he is. Who is he without the First Order? Is he even anything?
It all culminates when Cardinal faces Phasma himself. He sets Vi free, telling her to figure out her own way off the ship, and she presents him with Phasma's knife from her home planet, covered in poison. Cardinal goes to confront Phasma, because as far as he's concerned, she's the reason for all of this. If he can eliminate her, all can go back to normal and he can save the First Order he believes in. But he loses. Badly. And Phasma confirms for him- all he knows is a lie. She leaves him for dead- or so she thinks, because Vi Moradi, disguised in stormtrooper armor, drags him off to a ship they can escape in. And she kills two birds with one stone, as she promised Siv she'd go back to get her off that dangerous planet, and Siv just happens to live in an abandoned state-of-the-art medical bunker.
I adored Cardinal's arc in this book just as much as I enjoyed learning about Phasma herself. Though it's tinged with sadness, as we know where he ends up in Galaxy's Edge: Black Spire, but also pride. Cardinal, later going by his birth name Archex, came so far, and being reminded of the beginning of his journey was very bittersweet.
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