– Slight Spoiler Review –
Jedi Ram Jomaram discovers a secret plot in the lead up to the illustrious and galaxy-spanning Republic Fair! As he races to solve the latest problem, other Jedi discover an even deeper threat. Read Chris’s review of Race to Crashpoint Tower!
If you’re anything like me, you might not know what exactly to expect from this book. From the sample chapter, and from my desire to not read excerpts out of context, I only expected this book to follow the adventures of young Jedi Ram Jomaram, a mechanic on Valo. Well, Ram and his alien sidekicks and his droid, at least. Turns out, the book has a lot more going for it than that, including a starring role for some other fun Jedi!
In terms of Ram alone, I found him to be a lot of fun. He’s a unique type of Jedi – one that we’re seeing more of in the era – in that his focus as a Jedi is not on adventures or on fighting. Instead, Ram is a mechanic who would prefer to spend most of his time in his garage, fixing things instead of taking things apart. He also carries the moral lesson of the book when duty calls and he’s forced into the field to stop the Nihil’s machinations in a different part of the Republic Fair.
He’s joined by a side cast that really makes this type of book a young readers book with V-18 and the Bonbraks. V-18 is an obstinate droid, somewhere in the middle of C-3PO’s worst tendencies toward protocol and HK’s lip. The Bonbraks are a fun little species of sentient mechanics who also join in the fun, their humor a bit more slapstick than the rest of the book. Thankfully, Older knows when to put some characters in the lead and move some to the side when the tone calls for it. This is one of my biggest concern with the books for a younger audience, where comic relief characters serve as distractions from the growing action and sometimes throw off the tone. (Trust me – the tone of the climax is extraordinarily dark, and even in a younger readers’ book, Older respects this.)
But maybe more excitingly, sorry Ram, is the second group of characters that join him, as revealed by the excerpts: Lula Talisola and Zeen Mrala from The High Republic Adventures, alongside Vernestra Rwoh from the first wave! These characters do, as you might imagine, completely steal the show. It might be that Older is the author of the IDW series, so we see the continuity for the characters from the comic series carry into this book, coupled with the fact that they get some of the more interesting stories in the book. For example, a conversation between Lula and Vern at about the half-way point will probably be one of the highlights of this wave, if not of the entire series. I think Older knows that these are the characters we already know, rightfully spending more time developing them than Ram. (Though I can’t wait to see Ram again!)
The characters make this book worthwhile as is. This is good, because I had a bit of a hard time connecting with the story. The biggest reason? We start right at the beginning of Ram’s story, so all that we know of him is learned “on the field,” so to speak. It’s also clearly heavily dependent on The Rising Storm, to an extent that I’d say the novel is required reading before this book. Lula and Zeen’s story follows up on the comic series, but that story is dropped when the events at Valo start to explode. Literally. This, in my mind, makes the book a perfect companion book to The Rising Storm, but hard to sell as a standalone novel.
One minor thing, in a way, that I want to highlight with this novel is how great it is to have illustrations. A purely non-film/TV driven series is in need of visual depictions, and I was happy to see illustrations of the Jedi, Zeen, and some of the wild animals that we meet in the story. (As a friend showed me the illustration of the hragscythe, which I so wish I had before reading the books! It is a spoiler, though, so don’t open right to it!)
All in all, as a companion to The Rising Storm, Race to Crashpoint Tower is a fun side adventure, one that comes strongly recommended. If anything else, you get to spend some time with wonderful characters like Ram, Lula, Zeen, and Vernestra.
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