– Minor Spoiler Review –
It’s a bit of a daunting task to review a book I’m fairly confident the majority of the readership of this website is already planning on reading. It’s funny, though, because there’s so many reasons we can bank on that. You already know Charles Soule: he’s a mega-talented writer, showing a lot of competency in writing both comics and prose novels; he’s a massive mover in the Star Wars galaxy; and he kicked off this initiative with a bang, so we can know he’ll want to end the initiative with a bang. You already know The High Republic: it’s the mega-popular publishing initiative that has now worked its way into movies and TV; it features a lot of new fan favorite characters (some of whom have found themselves on TV and trading card games); and it’s the fire that was lit under the franchise, and many fans, in terms of rekindling our love for the franchise. But even though I know you’re going to read this novel, the fun part of The High Republic is that we all love it so much we’re going to want to keep talking about it ad nauseum.
Really, I think that there are two major questions that we all had going into this final novel of the entire initiative: was Trials of the Jedi going to be able to hit every necessary character beat we were looking for and was it going to hit every story beat we were hoping for?
When it comes to hitting every character beat: it wasn’t going to be able to, but thankfully, it did a fairly massive job in covering quite a few of the bases. Of course, going into this, I think we all assumed that Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann were going to be the main characters. They were, of course, Soule’s focus in Light of the Jedi. They were separated in Phase I, but Avar remained a significant character in the comics and Elzar in the Penguin Random House World novels. Phase III saw the chemistry between the two characters, reuniting them for the Marvel series Shadows of Starlight and at the end of The Eye of Darkness. Of course, famously, Temptation of the Force really turned up the heat, and Trials adopts this and brings the characters to the conclusion of the story in a way that, I think, will satisfy readers of the series. For me, I think I had far fewer questions about these characters in terms of “will they end up together forever” or “what will their relationship look like” and more like: when the stakes of the conflict include the galaxy themselves, what are they willing to give up and sacrifice? What will they do to stay true to themselves as Jedi and the Force? I think this because well, one, I’m not much of a romance reader, and two, I think we knew their story would ask these questions. When Jedi are in relationships, they do have to consider what it means to them and they have to consider what they’re willing to give up (and how closely they can abide by a certain no attachments rule). I’m thankful to say Soule manages this well, in my opinion. He knows what it means for Jedi to be in love, and I think he writes these characters in believable ways. It’s hard to talk about these two without spoilers, as you can imagine!
The other character I think we were most curious to see is Marchion Ro. Overall, I think two characters have been missing from Phase III: Ro and Vernestra Rwoh. (What a weird coincidence their names sound so similar?) As Phase I progressed, we saw a bit of Marchion’s character development, but he always stood in the background as a somewhat shadowy leader, and novels seemed to focus more on what he did rather than what he wanted. It wasn’t until Marvel’s Eye of the Storm that we started to see his background and a little bit more of what makes him tick. Unfortunately, I personally don’t think Phase III has addressed much of what Ro wanted or why he was doing all of this. Again, we only saw what he was doing. To me, this felt like one of the main weaknesses of the initiative. The recent THR roundtable posted to StarWars.com argues there were many villains in THR: Marchion, the Nihil, the Drengir, and the Blight. Unfortunately, few of these could really have characterization, and in my opinion, none overshadowed Marchion as the “main” villain in the story anyway. All of this to say: Trials does come back to revisit him. We do get a very clear thesis statement of what Ro wants and why everything is happening. As thankful as I was to get that, I can’t help feeling like it was a little too late and little….too little? I would’ve loved to have this information earlier in the Phase. While it feels congruent with his actions earlier in the Phase, and retroactively sheds light on the Phase, I feel like it comes a little out of left field from where we last left him and I would’ve loved a bit more time to get to know him. But if you’re worried about how well they were going to handle his ultimate fate: don’t worry. I think his ultimate fate is handled really well, and even though it’s cliched to say it, it was an ending I certainly didn’t expect.
Of course, even in a novel this weighty, Soule wasn’t going to have time to develop every character with the same weight. Outside of these two, we hear about at least 16 other Jedi. Some get some pretty major character movement, like Burryaga and Bell Zettifar, while some, even on the Mission to Planet X, don’t get quite the same work, like Ty Yorrick. It’s a good rule of thumb to guess the major character work is given to characters with whom Soule has worked before. Now that’s not to say I’m dissatisfied with it: some characters may have seen the conclusion to their arcs earlier in the Phase and were almost just along for the ride. As it stands, I think this leaves space for other creatives to come in later and continue working with characters….even if we don’t know when that would be. I think this is a good case of Catch-22: I don’t think our expectations/hopes for the novel were ever going to be able to match the reality of what the novel would be. I think Soule really did a knock-out job capturing the characters that were super important to the story, and was able to give almost everybody else something meaningful to do in the novel if they weren’t the “main” focus. But I would still try and temper your hopes, letting the novel be the novel it is rather than the one you may have imagined in your mind.
Now to the second question: was the novel able to succeed as a climax to (for sure) Phase III, and (maybe) the entire initiative as a whole? This one may depend on what you were looking for from the initiative, but I am grateful in that I do not need to force myself to say it was a successful finale to me. While you objectively will not see all of your favorite characters in this novel, nor will you see an explicit ending to every single storyline, I would argue this does succeed as a finale to Phase III, the Penguin Random House Worlds novels, and the initiative as a whole. The reason this may be a good topic of discussion down the road is this: I really don’t believe it was intended to be a finale for all of it for two reasons. The first reason: it cannot focus on everything, so it immediately seems to focus on the stories set up in the prose novels. Almost every other medium has seen their own conclusions, so this novel didn’t need to serve as another conclusion to those stories. (As a caveat: it does continue some of those stories, as characters like Terec and Ceret or Kelnacca or Buckets of Blood primarily featured in other mediums.) The second reason is Soule wrote this as a spiritual successor to Light of the Jedi, so it was written explicitly for people who may be picking this up as their first or second book in the series. (Whether or not that was “the play”, as they say, is up for debate, as the series reached 25 novels and hundreds of comics, but we’ll have another article on that later.) Because this was written with more accessibility in mind, I don’t think it was ever Soule’s intention to get as much as he could into this.
All of this being said: by sharpening the focus of the book to the mission of the Nine (the Jedi selected to return the captured Nameless to Planet X) and the Battle of Eriadu, this book was successful in wrapping up what I thought needed to be wrapped up. I’ll touch on these in reverse order. As the Battle of Eriadu played out across the comics (both Dark Horse and Marvel), I found myself struggling on a few levels. I wasn’t exactly sure why this was the battle that we were being shown; I wasn’t sure the significance of the battle for the massive list of characters involved in it; and, because of the odd way in which it started (to me), I wasn’t really able to fully buy into the stakes. Thankfully, Trials explained why this battle was so important and really worked out a lot of the knots in the story for me. The novel gives us a few new angles on the battle, all of which serve to add to the parts of the battle that we’ve already seen, rather than repeating them (like the first 100 pages or so of Path of Vengeance did with the Battle of Jedha). This novel made me want to revisit the Battle of Eriadu we’ve already seen (and makes me wish that we had seen this sooner, which may have helped me buy into the battle even sooner.) This novel finally explains huge missing chunks of the story that we would’ve needed before, like the destruction of the Stormwall (first mentioned in many other stories), another aspect I wish wasn’t saved until the end. But the reason is surprising, which MAY justify keeping the reason a secret for so long.
The mission to Planet X also serves as a great capstone to the entire story of the Nameless. Across Phase III, a bunch of Jedi groups were able to capture Nameless creatures, and they’ve stayed in limbo for a while. This novel immediately starts with the mission: bring them back to Planet X and see if that stops the Blight. While this is a natural step, flowing from Yoda’s connection to a Nameless in The Edge of Balance: Premonition, and follows Reath’s research from Echoes of Fear, I wish we could’ve seen more about the Jedi putting every piece together. Some stories, like Vernestra’s Path, received from the late Mari San Tekka, simply find their conclusion and move on without much conversation, as if the conversation happened off-screen, when I would’ve loved to see it on-screen. But this may not be Trials’ fault as much as a concern of a far too busy Phase III (another discussion for another post). I won’t get into much details about the mission itself, but I will say: we probably all expected something similar. The Jedi would break through the protective barrier around the planet, return the Nameless, face Marchion, and everything would be wrapped up nicely. I am thankful to say: Soule probably did assume we’d think that and decided to make sure it was more exciting and much more layered than that.
Overall, I can’t help but say that my expectations for the novel were sky-high. Going into the novel, I knew I was asking too much of it, but I still couldn’t temper them. I trusted Soule to do the impossible and bring this home well. I am grateful and excited to say: he did. There were always going to be mixed feelings when reading a conclusion to such a well-loved story. Everything we wanted to see covered was never going to be. We were never going to get everything wrapped up in a way that made everyone happy. Reading with this in mind will help. I personally did have to work through some of my own feelings of “oh, where was X” or “I wish we had more time for Y”. I had to work through my own thoughts of “wait…did this do what I wanted? Did I actually like this?” But as time has gone on, I think these feelings were borne out of the weird mixed feelings of conclusions and finitude. I don’t know how I could have prepared for the end of this story that I have loved so much. I don’t think I could’ve. This book was always going to hit me in a really weird way. But as time has gone on, and I’ve come to accept this series is done,* I’ve really come to appreciate the monumental task Trials of the Jedi took on, and even more appreciate that it did it well. The love for the franchise, the love for the publishing initiative, the love for these characters, the love for this story all shine through in this novel, and for that, I am very thankful and happy.
*But the story tags at the end promise we’re not done here. We were never going to be. Every announcement that more stories will take place during the High Republic, to me, felt like….well, yeah, of course. But for the time being: this is a fantastic conclusion for the story we loved, and I’ll always love this part of the franchise where we learned to fight for light and life.
Chris is Mynock Manor’s Sous Chef. You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms and Bluesky. You can follow the website on Bluesky and Instagram @mynockmanor.
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher at no charge in order to provide an early review. However, this did not affect the overall review content. All opinions are my own.