After the Battle of Jedha, the Forever War between Eiram and E’ronoh continues to rage. The Jedi, believing the mysterious Path of the Open Hand is behind the war, travel to Dalna to get to the bottom of recent events. Join me as I review The High Republic: Cataclysm!
I say this with a lot of love in my heart, but I also know it’s a loaded sentence: The High Republic: Cataclysm feels like a Penguin Random House novel from THR Phase I. I’ll unpack this as the review goes on, but I couldn’t shake this thought as I continued to read it. In a lot of ways, Phase II has felt a lot different from Phase I, and not just because it has a (mostly) new crop of authors with only minimal contributions from the core Luminous writers. Phase II has been largely more intimate (Convergence, The Blade); it takes a lot more time in certain events (The Battle of Jedha, Marvel’s The High Republic {Vol. 2}, Dark Horse’s The High Republic Adventures); and it is shorter (two waves instead of three). Lydia Kang’s debut novel in Star Wars (but not her first writing ever, as she was featured in From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back) brings all of the scale of Phase I’s novels, at times foregoing character work in favor of events.
I’m sure people are curious, so let me go ahead and clear up some timeline stuff: this book is a sequel to both Zoraida Cordova’s Convergence and George Mann’s The Battle of Jedha. In a way that was unheard of in Phase I, this book directly ties into those two books and I would argue need to be read after those two. I know people like to say that you can start any where in The High Republic, but I genuinely feel like the authors are working to build this out as a full series, compared to Phase I’s loosely connected trilogy. This story builds on both the character dynamics introduced in Convergence and the events of The Battle of Jedha. What else do you need to read? Well, we’ll return to that question later.
I noted above Cataclysm is a bit grander in scale than the rest of Phase II has been, bringing in a larger cast of main characters than any previous Phase II book has so far. (You may quibble with the way I define a “main character” as you read both this review and the book itself, but I felt like more characters had a more centered role here than in previous books.) This feels like Phase I again: even though I’ve read all of Phase II, and I’ve read a lot of it at least twice, I still had a pen in hand to remember who was who and who was where. I think my own review will illustrate this a bit better, so I’ll continue. The main characters, following from Convergence, are Gella Nattai and Axel Greylark. Both are, essentially, where we left them from Convergence. Gella has become a Jedi Wayseeker, seeking to follow the Force wherever it leads her. Unfortunately(?) for her, the Force seems to continue to lead her back to Axel. Axel, after his betrayal and revelation in Convergence, finds himself locked away, hidden from the galaxy, but not from Gella. The two reconnect, and find themselves swept up into the larger conflict with the Path of the Open Hand. The pair really steal the book, and I enjoyed their interactions here so much more than I had in the original novel. Their dynamic was altered, but familiar. Their interactions really brought out the best (and worst) in each other and themselves, which I thought did some great character work for the two.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure many other characters had as much of a chance to develop in the novel due to “time”/page constraints. The novel also brings back Xiri A’lbaran and Phan-Tu Zenn, the Heirs of Eiram and E’ronoh who you’ve heard so much about. In a lot of ways, the romantic angle of Convergence didn’t work for me, and I didn’t like Axel very much, but I would’ve been happy if these four remained the core of the novel. But we also have a different story, featuring Enya Keen and Char-Ryl-Roy, Jedi sent to investigate the Path of the Open Hand. These two, I feel, serve more to move the plot along than as characters with full character arcs. While we’ve gotten to know them over the Phase, I don’t feel like, if their story ends here, I will remember a ton about them. Finally, there are villains and some surprising heroes (whom I won’t spoil here!) that continue to round out the cast, making the character list feel huge, reminiscent of early THR. I do think this book might’ve done well without so many characters, but I think they all felt necessary because of the plot of the book.
So, in light of that, let me talk about the plotting and pacing of the novel. The first wave of Phase II spent a lot of time leading up to the Battle of Jedha, with the Path of the Open Hand’s involvement in the Forever War occupying most of our thought process. But now, the Battle of Jedha is behind us, the Phase moves forward to investigate the Path of the Open Hand directly. There are, without spoiling specifics, a LOT of new developments in the Path since the Battle of Jedha. Some of these developments in the Path were very welcome, while a few maybe felt like they came from left field. (Or, from a different story. One you’ll have to read and purchase elsewhere. But we’ll return to that.) These developments turn into a climactic battle around the half-way point…and then battle becomes the second half of the book. I mentioned above there were a lot of characters to manage in the novel, so now pair that feeling with the thought half of this novel covers a single battle. To draw another Phase I comparison, this felt like The Rising Storm: a long battle in general, with many many many POVs, and not a lot of time to develop characters. At times, when I thought the battle was winding down so we could deal a little bit with the fallout of the battle, something would revive the battle, making it feel longer than usual again. I would have liked the battle to have been condensed and a few more pages be given to the main characters.
One last major point before a few odds and ends, I suppose. I think one major question, which I began to address above, might be: how much of Phase II do I need to read to understand this book? Like I said, at least the Penguin Random House novels. I don’t have a feeling either of Marvel’s series or THR Adventures will factor in much, but I do have a strong hunch we’ll see The Nameless Terror connect with this book in a pretty major way. When you read a THR novel, there are moments where, in my opinion, the book essentially screams for an editor’s asterisk, telling you: “this happened in [story].” In The Rising Storm, it was Ram restoring communications off-screen. In this novel, I didn’t feel as many of those points early on. It wasn’t until a little later that I felt a bunch of editor’s notes coming, telling me to check out a different story. These didn’t affect my enjoyment of the novel, thankfully, but I did feel a few scenes begged for further exposition, but were probably left for another book to cover.
As I move into the odds and ends here, I’m worried I’ve painted a picture of a bad book for you. I want to do away with that a little, but I don’t want to spoil the book for you. So let me spend some time on what I enjoyed. Gella and Axel’s character work was really well done, and I went from feeling either ambivalent or against them to actually enjoying them as characters. I still don’t like Axel, but I like not liking Axel now. I might even put them into a top ten list of favorite THR characters in general, now. I liked some of the changes to the Path of the Open Hand, and a lot were ones I was hoping to see a little bit sooner. Even though they (seemingly) came out of left field, I expect we’ll see some explanation for them soon. I liked some of the overall narrative moves this book makes, answering quite a few questions and filling in a lot of Phase I/III gaps we might’ve had. I liked some of the cameo characters, even if I’m not sure (yet) they are much more than cameos.
Overall, Cataclysm feels to me the same way Phase II has felt so far. On their own, each book has been mostly good. As a whole, this novel doesn’t elevate Phase II beyond “good.” This book, like the rest of Phase II, has some really enjoyable stuff, but I end up liking it mostly for what it contributes to Phases I/III. I look forward to the possibility of more stories featuring Axel and Gella at any point in their lives (like Gella as a Pathfinder or Axel with the Path), and I look forward to seeing how the final battle of this book is built out with the conclusion of Phase II.
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor!
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this novel 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.