And I agree that the set up for the state of the galaxy in the sequel trilogy was poorly set up . It should have been explained in the movies , but there is a book that came out in 2016 called Bloodline by Claudia Gray that does a good job explaining it . It’s set about 6 years before TFA and grew out of an animated short film that was intended to be shown as a prologue to TFA . Man , I’d still like to see that animated short ! Thd book was Really good though. Probably the best book in the new Canon that I have read.