We never got over losing Clone Force 99 when we said goodbye with the series finale of Star Wars: The Bad Batch last year, but no one’s ever really gone. And today StarWars.com is pleased to announce that soon the Batch will be back in action in Star Wars: Sanctuary — A Bad Batch Novel, a new book from Lamar Giles, with an exclusive first look at the book's cover art by Marie Bergeron!
The story of Star Wars: Sanctuary, set during the events of Season 2 of the Disney+ series, centers on Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, and Omega as they work with treasure hunter Phee Genoa on a plan to help rebuild their island refuge after the devastating tsunami seen in the episode “Pabu.” Giles, whose young adult novels include Fake ID, SPIN, and Not So Pure and Simple among others is delighted by the chance to write his first Star Wars novel, having previously contributed the short story "Twenty and Out" to the From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi anthology.
“For my entire life the words ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ have represented the stepping off point from our dull everyday reality into a realm of wonder, action, adventure and joy,” Giles tells StarWars.com. “There’s nothing dull about the work I’ve been asked to do, and it’s certainly not everyday I get a chance to help continue such a rich storytelling tradition. I was a Star Wars fan well before I was a Star Wars writer, and I’m so very grateful for both roles.”
Read the full descriptive copy for the novel below, then get ready for a new mission when Star Wars: Sanctuary by Lamar Giles arrives on August 5, 2025, from Random House Worlds.
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 Genoa, 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.
Pre-order Star Wars: Sanctuary — A Bad Batch Novel before it arrives on August 5, 2025, from Random House Worlds.
