This book has nothing to do with The Force Awakens. To explain it simply, when Disney decided to make a new movie, they wanted everything about it to be a secret. For that reason, they took all the books from the expanded universe and placed them under a completely separate timeline, called Legends. This way, not even the die-hard fans (like me), would know what would happen until the movie came out. I cannot say whether Legends or the new timeline is better until the rest of the trilogy is shown. Until that time (at least two years from now), I am only using characters I know from Legends. (Also, Legends does offer a wider variety of characters, from 25,000 years before the Phantom Menace to 40 years after Return of the Jedi)