YMMV / Star Wars: Aftermath

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• Ass Pull: Norra's survival after the TIE-fighter crash. She explicitly mentions that TIE-fighters don't have an ejector seat and her TIE is damaged in such a way she's stuck in a downward spiral, only having enough control to direct the ship towards the Imperials' transports in a Suicide Attack. However, while everyone is mourning Norra suddenly pops up, inexplicably unharmed save for some cuts and bruises. Her only explanation for her survival is that "It turns out TIE-fighters have an ejector seat after all." Besides coming across as something of a retcon, it's never explained how Norra was able to eject from the TIE in such a way she wasn't more seriously injured or killed, or that no one noticed her escape.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite the mixed reception of the book, many readers found Mister Bones the most fun character in the story, on account of his gleeful brutality and defying the inherent patheticness of being a B1 battle droid, albeit a heavily modified one.
  • Sinjir also has quite a fanbase, for being a slightly more nuanced take on an Imperial (or at least ex-Imperial) and cunning fighter; he's also liked for being one of the first prominent gay characters in the Star Wars EU (without being solely defined by his sexuality).
• Epileptic Trees: The identity of the Fleet Admiral; most had leaned towards him being the character who becomes Supreme Leader Snoke in The Force Awakens, others hold him to be the official introduction of Grand Admiral Thrawn in the new continuity. The Thrawn camp has been proven wrong with Aftermath: Life Debt, which reveals the Fleet Admiral to be a new character named Gallius Rax. However... Thrawn ended up debuting in Rebels not too long after Life Debt was released.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Norra's attempts to keep Temmin away from living the same life she did become disturbingly prophetic after The Rise of Skywalker, where Temmin dies during the Battle of Exegol just before his stepfather, Wedge, shows up with The Cavalry. Given that Norra's retired with Wedge during the events of Resistance Reborn, she not only experienced her first husband's death, she's outliving her own son too.
• He's Just Hiding: An interlude strongly suggests that Boba Fett made it out of the Sarlacc, but had to ditch his armor, which a new character named Cobb Vanth took. George Lucas did confirm that Boba Fett made it out of the Sarlacc in the new continuity, so this shouldn't be too surprising. The first episode of The Mandalorian Season 2 confirms this, even directly following up on Aftermath by featuring Vanth onscreen.
• Like You Would Really Do It: By the second time Norra appears to have died a fiery, explosive death, the reader is fully expecting the next chapter to explain how she survived. Which it does.
• Narm: Some of the dialogue can sound like this, such as "I've been doing this since before you were in space diapers."
  "A gross, mechanized chuckle erupts from his own ventilator, and both of his hands marry together into one hellacious megafist."
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Many of the interlude chapters have little-to-no connection to the main plot and the characters involved have no impact on the events; these sections could easily be removed from the novel without affecting anything. The only purpose they really serve is to set-up characters and plotlines for potential future works but they add nothing to this particular storyline. Ironically, some readers find the interlude chapters more interesting and better-written than the actual main plot.

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