– Spoiler Review –
Claudia Gray returns to The High Republic era one last time in the final young adult novel of Phase III, The High Republic: Into the Light! A delectable mirror of her first entry, Phase I’s Into the Dark, Gray returns to favorites new and old in a harrowing and emotional story of the battle against the Blight and how the Nihil conflict has affected everyone’s souls, leaving me wishing there’d been more from Gray before this all ended.
Set at the onset of the final wave of Phase III: Trials of the Jedi, prior to The Battle of Eriadu storyline unraveling in both Marvel and Dark Horse’s comics, Into the Light sees the galaxy growing weary of the Nihil conflict and itching for an ending, as the Stormwall remains entrenched and the Blight’s supposed cure rests in Marchion Ro’s hands while it spreads despair and disaster everywhere it touches. And by the galaxy growing weary, I don’t mean only the citizens, but the Republic, the Jedi, and even some of the Nihil too, yet when a crisis presents itself on Kashyyyk, it spurs all sides into action as the hopes for the future of the galaxy rests on the outcome.
Besides the Phase I ender The Fallen Star, a stellar one-shot comic in Phase II introducing us to Barnabas Vim and the Echo Stones, a key part of the era’s big mysteries, and a short story in Tales of Light and Life, Claudia Gray has been pretty quiet since her Phase I work. Into the Light’s reflective title to Into the Dark hints at how Gray’s big return uses its story, setting, and characters to bring her time in the era full circle, like how Gray trades the confinement of the Amaxine Station with the secretive and expansive forests of Kashyyyk, yet as the situation there escalates, the setting feels as claustrophobic due to the dangerous situation focusing on a small, yet vital part of the nature-filled planet. Gray also returns to a lot of characters she first introduced in the Phase I entry, developed by the other Luminous authors in other stories since, like Nan, Reath Silas, Cohmac Vitus, the Vessel crew, Dez Ryden, and even the meat-hungry Drengir, providing what ends up reading like the perfect final note in many of their stories. The inverse nature of Into the Dark and Into the Light‘s stories and the connective tissue Gray builds them, while there’s been a lot of developments across the era between them plus new characters to boot, you could probably still enjoy reading only these two books as their own series and feel satisfied with the journeys characters go on; plus, it’d leave readers eager to see how certain developments happened between stories and learn more about new characters and situations. It really speaks to Gray’s deft hand with prose, character building, and writing exciting yet important action sequences that these books feel so strongly together despite the vast gap between their releases. And while Gray does a lot of character switching in the middle of each chapter like she did in The Fallen Star (TFS), which doesn’t always work for me and made me wish we spent more time with each character, it really adds a great sense of perspective to events since we get to see each moment from so many different angles.
Despite everything that’s happened to many of these characters since Phase I, Gray steps back into their lives like a well-worn glove, not missing a beat and carrying them forward in exciting and intriguing ways. The biggest highlight here is Reath Silas and Cohmac Vitus, two characters who have been through the ringer since Gray last wrote them, and despite the work the two have done in mending their fractured friendship (featured heavily in Tears of the Nameless), Gray is able to dig deeper and get to the true center of their rupture and what it means going forward. Reath’s overall trajectory has been fascinating to watch, with much to overcome, and Gray strains him even more: from proving himself as the leader on the mission to Kashyyyk, handling volatile people like Azlin Rell, the reemergence of Nan Hague to dredge up old memories of who he was and who he is now, having Cohmac back in his life more, working with Avon Starros and her minor crush on him, and the surprise return of Dez Ryden from his time taking the Barash Vow, these all add up to some of Reath’s biggest tests yet. How he deals with it shouldn’t be a surprise, but Gray does a great job keeping us on our toes and will further fans’ feelings for the character.
While Gray makes these all aspects and characters Reath must overcome or work with, each character has their own wants, needs, and desires, so they share equal footing with him in the story as they insert their own actions into it. I’d say there are some clear leads alongside Reath, like Nan, Avon, and Affie Hollow, and given how much Gray switches POVs like I said earlier, the other characters get just enough of their due as well. Returning to Nan was my biggest highlight of characters outside of Reath, as she’s largely been underused since TFS and her ultimate, very personal goals, make her far more compelling and help sell us more on why citizens of the galaxy might’ve wanted to join with the Nihil in the first place, yet also how the Nihil never really had the chance for any lasting power regardless of what comes next. Because of the size of the cast, Nan bounces off more characters than ever, with mistrust from Affie due to the events of Into the Dark a highlight, and it tells us more about Nan and what she wants most in the galaxy, and I was delighted how her story ended here.
Affie’s new life as the leader of the Byne Guild, and the community she’s fostering alongside her understanding fellow members of the Vessel, Leox Gyasi and Geode, feel like the natural next step for her life and story. Despite her work, the length of the conflict has drained her, and watching her struggle through it with such accepting mates (Geode doesn’t even have to bother to say anything!) and in interactions with Reath and other characters, gives more weight to the struggle against the Nihil than I’ve felt for most of Phase III. Gray captures the Vessel crew the best, though many have done very well, and she pushes them in various ways throughout Into the Light, leading to a really big moment that, to my surprise, had me in tears and left me an even bigger fan of them than before. It also served as an emotional look at what might yet have to come to bring the conflict with the Nihil, Nameless, and Blight to an end. As for Avon Starros, one of my all-time favorites of the era, there’s some exceptional and juicy interactions between her and her mother, Ghirra Starros, and the flip between their POVs, so we see these encounters and the actions each one takes from their side, adds so much depth and emotion to their back and forth. It makes their dynamic and story one of the more interesting mother-daughter pairs in Star Wars and leaves me eager to see what happens next for them.
Azlin Rell’s return has been a spooky and interesting path to chart, yet his POV has been rather limited, so Gray peeling back a few layers, putting us into his head, offers a unique view on his part of the era and his goals versus what we hear him say. His sections felt too similar towards the end during the big conflict, making we wish we’d visited his POV less at times, but overall it was nice to finally let him have a spotlight. Dr. Zadina Mkampa sticks her cybernetic eye into the story and the repercussions of her past and present actions puts her at odds with pretty much every other character, so her POV moments were a delight as Gray teased out the evil scientist’s plans. I’ve long been curious if we’ll get to focus on Sith once Phase III is over, maybe as the next big initiative, and how her actions bring us a taste of what that could be like only makes me more eager for the opportunity, but I’ll curious to learn what’s next regardless.
Mkampa is responsible for involving the newly resurgent Drengir* in events on Kashyyyk, as if the Jedi didn’t have enough to worry about with the Blight’s advance and searching for Mkampa! Gray gives the Drengir some scant POV sections as well, which helps explore the creatures a little, and how they are ultimately dealt with is a spellbinding moment of hope and light unlike anything we’ve seen. Lastly, I just want to touch on Kashyyyk’s part in the story, as while we’re still touching just the surface of this lovely planet full of wonderful Wookiees, the way Gray writes about the forest’s connection to the fabric of the world, how the Wookiee Jedi experience this and why/how they’re able to remain attached to fellow Wookiees and the planet, and the history and future of a secret location vital to the story, Kashyyyk feels alive like never before. I adore when we get such heavy sense of place for a location/planet, as it adds so much to the fabric of the Galaxy Far, Far Away and gives us even more reasons to care about how these events affect it.
Here are a few other things:
- *The Drengir’s return to the galaxy all plays out in two Audible Originals, written by George Mann and performed by Todd Haberkorn, named Seeds of Starlight and Haunted Starlight. I don’t blame the creatives, not is this a critique of this book, but for a publishing initiative which likes to say it’s very accessible, the choice to have these stories in an audio-only format, with no word on when/if there’ll be a script book, and put them on a platform like Audible, which might not be accessible to all and is from a corporation many are trying to avoid, tarnishes the image. There’s been a very vocal response to all the other audio dramas done over the past few years, how the script book should be released day off the audio or much sooner than it is these days (which can be 4-5 months!), and to have this shadow-dropped and no word if they’ll ever be accessible to more feels like wanton disregard for such feedback. Add in the fact one of the franchise’s few trans characters, Tep Tep, as well as Cam Lindon, who has a speech disability due to an accident, are then locked away and not all their fans can get further adventures with them cuts off even more accessibility, which in this current political climate, feels all the worse. I did listen to some of the first entry, but the voice for Tep Tep does not work for me at all, and one can only hope fans will get an opportunity to read these stories instead at one point.
- Given how some recent comics had the Stormwall finally coming down, without any explanation, I was assuming Into the Light was going to be the place to read how it happens, but it doesn’t happen here and this takes place prior to those events anyways. My last guess is Justina Ireland’s The High Republic: A Valiant Vow, the upcoming middle-grade book, as besides The Edge of Balance Vol. 4, the final manga entry out April 22 of a series which typically doesn’t directly get involved with the bigger events of the era, it’s just really the comics (already past the Stormwall’s destruction) and Trials of the Jedi to come. We’ll know May 6 when A Valiant Vow is out!
- Speaking of Ireland, she also has The Acolyte: Wayseeker arriving on May 6, which takes place prior to the start of the show and stars Vernestra Rwoh and Indara. I already have my review, with some minor spoilers, though since the book does reveal the fates of some of the Luminous Nine, a group of Jedi set to journey to Planet X of which the full group was revealed at Celebration Japan 2025, some are suggesting reading it after reading Trials of the Jedi, but I felt it wasn’t enough of an issue and you could read it now if you don’t mind.
- Catch an interview with Claudia Gray on Meg Dowell’s Now This Is Lit podcast!
- So what’s next for the High Republic in 2025? Here’s a list of some upcoming releases: April 30, 2025: The High Republic Adventures #17 – Phase III; The High Republic – Fear of the Jedi #3; The High Republic Adventures: The Battle of Eriadu; May 6, 2025: A Valiant Vow; May 13, 2025: Tempest Breaker (script book); May 21, 2025: The High Republic Adventures #18 – Phase III; The High Republic – Fear of the Jedi #4. Keep up to date with our release schedule on our High Republic page!
Claudia Grays’ The High Republic: Into the Light might throw us into the thick of the struggle and the hopelessness this conflict has brought to the galaxy, but this release’s inverse nature to her opening novel is our first real taste of a Saga mainstay as we near the end of the initiative: hope. What a way for Gray to end her time in the era!
+ Bringing hope back
+ Gray’s return to familiar places gives many a fantastic last hurrah
+ Sense of place with Kashyyyk
– POV switching could be a bit much
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him and the website on Bluesky.