Rejoice! 27 years after its initial release, Aaron Allston’s novel X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar is finally getting an unabridged audiobook by Marc Thompson!
The audiobook is now out from Random House Audio. We had the opportunity to listen to the unabridged audiobook before its official release. Here are our impressions.
Read by the go-to Star Wars audiobook narrator, voice actor Marc Thompson, this long-awaited premiere will surely please many fans of the cult X-Wing book series and might draw a few cadets to the flock!
For well over a decade, Starfighters of Adumar was considered the culmination of the pilot-centered series, and despite the subsequently published Mercy Kill (2012), the ninth volume remains a well-engineered, impactful conclusion.
A sceptic on board…
I’m not a huge audiobook person, at least not for fiction. My mind drifts, I get carried away by my own thoughts, and then I’m rewinding to find where I lost the thread.
When the dialogue gets tangled, I tend to lose track of who is speaking. Plenty of narrators are so slow that the gap between reading time and listening time becomes enormous, some mispronounce names in sci-fi series, and others attempt voice impressions that make me wince.
So I generally stick to non-fiction, where an audiobook feels like an informative podcast on a topic I care about, or like being back in the university halls, privileged to hear a guest lecturer. My one fiction exception is the full-cast audio drama, which is basically a movie for your ears. Those rare occasions I genuinely enjoy.
…and then there is Marc Thompson.
Marc Thompson, however, is another ballgame. He is a household name among Star Wars fans and a fan himself, and that enthusiasm comes through in almost everything he records.
He has been narrating Star Wars books for two decades now and did the audiobook for the above-mentioned final installment of the X-wing series, Mercy Kill, upon its release back in 2012.
In 2021 he went back to the beginnings and read X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, followed by Wedge’s Gamble a year later… and all the way up to Starfighters of Adumar, with which…
The circle is now complete!
Not only is Thompson a true audiobook veteran, but he has already narrated all of Allston’s previous Wraith Squadron novels, so by now the actor is fully in sync with Allston’s humor and rhythm.
Getting into the many roles of iconic pilots feels effortless, although I do not doubt for a second that it requires hard work and much preparation.
I do appreciate Thompson’s professionalism and talent. But what I appreciate most is that he sounds like someone who genuinely loves the material.
Fans can tell the difference between a narrator reading a Star Wars book and one who grew up with it.
That matters a lot to me. Especially given how often sci-fi names get butchered or how many audiobooks are well-produced but still, as a listener, you often feel no actual passion from the people involved.
First time flying with Wraith Squadron?
If you’re new to the series, here’s the setup. Aaron Allston, who passed away in 2014, wrote this ninth X-Wing novel in 1999, and it takes Wedge Antilles, Tycho Celchu, Wes Janson, and Hobbie Klivian out of their usual role.
Instead of flying a campaign, they’re sent as diplomats to Adumar, a world obsessed with duels, capes and personal honor. It’s essentially The Three Musketeers with starfighters (with Adumar being a nod to Alexandre Dumas).
The cast includes the slippery Tomer Darpen and the Adumari pilot Cheriss ke Hanadi, and Wedge’s quieter storyline with Iella Wessiri gives the book its heart.
It’s also a book that lives or dies on timing. Wes puncturing every tense moment with a joke, Hobbie answering with dry cynicism, and the pilots trading banter all depend on delivery, and that’s exactly where a weak narrator would sink it.
A final instalment done right
The Starfighters of Adumar audiobook is meticulously crafted, with real artistry and tension. The sound engineering and effects boost the intensity and impact of the story instead of competing with it, and that counts for a lot when your attention tends to wander. Everything serves an immersive experience we have come to expect from Star Wars audiobooks.
Like previous X-wing audiobooks, you don’t simply get Thompson’s masterful reading with all emotional nuances, tonal changes, accents, and the rest of the “tools of his trade”, but something of a one-man audiodrama, with tweaks and effects that elevate the narration – static noise on comm channels, echo in hangar bays, you name it.
Punch it!
It isn’t flawless, though. At 10 hours 52 minutes (652 minutes), it’s not a particularly long commitment, but still, occasionally Thompson lingers on longer than I’d like.
For someone who already finds audiobooks slow, that stretches things a little too far for my taste. I like things snappy.
Maybe that’s why I tend to enjoy middle-grade Star Wars adventures more than most of the adult novels! Even so, I count that as a fair price for a recording this carefully made.
Abridged vs Unabridged
The alternative makes the length easier to forgive. The original audio release was an abridged version read by Anthony Heald, running about three hours on two cassettes.
Truth be told, I don’t have any recollections of the old version, but that’s less than a third of the length of this recording.
I can’t imagine a story that leans so heavily on banter, timing and diplomatic tension surviving that kind of compression, so even with my complaint about the pace, I’d choose the full version without hesitation.
Also, with Starfighters of Adumar being the latest Star Wars Legends title to get a full unabridged re-recording, readers who grew up on the Bantam-era books can be confident that these stories still matter and continue to receive well-deserved attention.
Review Card
Star Wars: X-wing #9 – starfighters of adumar
Format
Audio Book
ERA:
New Republic, Legends
Publisher:
Random House Audio
RELEASED:
November 10, 2026
volume:
9 of 10
LENGTH:
320 pages
10h 52min
WRITER:
Aaron Allston
narrator:
Marc Thompson
For:
Fans of X-Wing
Similar:
The rest of the X-Wing book series, Alphabet Squadron
Strengths
Strong story with beloved pilots
Masterfully read by a passionate voice actor
Enhanced with sound effects, immersive and atmospheric
Weaknesses
I would still prefer full-cast recording over a single narrator
A bit slow at times
Ratings
This is an Amazon Affiliate link. Learn what this means.
