When the remains of a Pathfinder droid are found with a garbled distress mission, two Jedi and a Pathfinder crew set out to save them. But the monsters of that planet’s myths may not be simply myths… Read my review of The High Republic: Quest for the Hidden City!
In Phase I of the excellent The High Republic initiative, most “waves” followed a fairly basic order: each wave started with the adult audience Del Rey novel, followed by (or usually released same day) the Disney-Press middle grade reader, capped off with the Disney-Press young adult novel. In Phase II, the order is swapped: the first wave started with Justina Ireland and Tessa Gratton’s Path of Deceit, followed by George Mann’s Quest for the Hidden City. Soon, the wave will include Zoraida Córdova’s Convergence, finished with George Mann’s audiodrama The Battle for Jedha. It’s funny to see the middle grade reader hasn’t found a new place in the release schedule, still sitting in the middle, but it speaks to the type of books these function as in the initiative.
I have a sneaking suspicion the first question a lot of readers will ask isn’t about the quality of the book, but about the necessity of reading the book. A lot of readers may scoff or ignore the book based on the intended audience of middle grade readers, wondering if this book plays into the major story of Phase II. I think we’ve already seen how this works in THR, but it may be worth repeating. In the first Phase, the middle grade readers were either separate stories (A Test of Courage, Mission to Disaster) or a complimentary story (Race to Crashpoint Tower). In a sense, that made them mostly required reading to get the entire story for the Phase, whether it was a story-within-a-story (like Ram restoring communications in the middle of The Rising Storm) or telling a story that has implications not totally felt (Vern on Dalna, for one…) Quest is more of a separate story…but it is much more related than it seems on the face of it. But since this is a non-spoiler review, I can’t tell you – you’ll have to enjoy the book to find out. I think it’ll take until Tessa Gratton’s follow up book, Quest for Planet X, to really see the impact this story has, but there’s already a ton of seeds in the book to begin to piece it together.
But now I do want to talk about the quality of the book, focusing on a few key things that helped me enjoy it a lot: the sense of adventure, the pacing, and the characters.
George Mann and Cavan Scott are, as I’ve found on online, pretty good friends online, sharing a lot of similar interests (one major one being horror) and sharing a lot of similar story-telling practices. One of the most significant, I think, is both imbue their stories with a sense of adventure and discovery and a lot of weird animals. Quest is an apt title for the book, as you really go on a journey with the characters as you read the book. You’ll discover, with the characters, a new alien species and discover a pretty-well developed culture, including architecture, history, myths, legends, zoology, and more. You’ll discover a new world, Gloam, and all of the dangers and surprises it holds in store. There’s more to discover as well, but it’s worth doing so with the characters, as Mann has written it.
As for the pacing, one of the most glowing reviews I can give in that direction is to simply say this: I read the first 180 pages in a single sitting. That says a lot, based on my internet-brained attention span. Because the book has a large cast, and I’ll get into that next, the pacing does start to slow at times when the chapters have to jump between almost too many groups, but I was interested in enough of the stories to not totally notice (That being said, there is one time I noticed, because one story had really piqued my interest and we didn’t return to it quickly enough for my tastes). Each storyline has enough going on to keep you entertained, even if some do turn out to be a bit more exciting than the others. In case you were wondering, I didn’t finish the remainder of the book in a single sitting, but I feel like I could’ve had real life not intervened.
Finally, the most mixed I am on the book comes down to the characters. The two main Jedi, Master Silandra Sho and Padawan Rooper Nitani, are an interesting pair. One of my favorite Jedi is Reath Silas, the Jedi who doesn’t want adventure and wants to stay in a library. Rooper is…the exact opposite: Yoda would chide her for how much she desires adventure and questing. But seeing her grow as a Jedi and as a person is really interesting because the book actually spends time exploring that idea. Is it wrong for a Jedi to seek adventure? Is it wrong that Rooper wants to see the galaxy? And for the most part, I think the book explores this well and provides some interesting answers in a way that, right now, only THR can. Silandra Sho is also interesting, and not just because of her lightsaber shield(!). She provides a fascinating new dynamic for Master-Padawan relationships, bringing in a new dimension that I think will provide a lot to talk about in the future. Silandra and Rooper pair with Kevmo Zink and Zallah Macri in exploring the Jedi in this time period. The Jedi dynamic is different in 380 BBY even from 232 BBY, and I hope we see more of it as the Phase continues.
That being said, I didn’t really resonate with most of the rest of the cast. This book simply doesn’t have the space to flesh everyone out, but I did learn about the cast. Thankfully, there’s no completely flat character, but I don’t think any stole the show in the way that characters like Geode had in the past. Which is fine! The middle grade audience can only probably really handle two or three major characters and a simple plot, so it’s not a knock on Mann. But if most of the non-Jedi didn’t return, I’m not sure I would notice.
I also want to include a quick note about the two full-page spreads from artist Nilah Magruder. Quest only contains two spreads compared to the other THR books’ three, but they’re still a treat. The first one is a really helpful visual to imagine the story. I highly recommend NOT skipping ahead to the second, though! As with the previous ones, the art is depicting a scene from that late in the book, and it would technically constitute a spoiler.
In the end, Quest for the Hidden City is one of my favorite middle grade novels of the initiative, maybe of the franchise. The pacing and adventure made this book really fun, and a strong main duo of Jedi brought a lot of fascinating dynamics to a book written for a really young audience. The book’s full importance to the canon hasn’t been fully established, I don’t think, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. In fact, it is great on its own right as something similar to The Monster of Temple Peak, being a book that introduces and fleshes out some characters more deeply than a lot of THR characters have been.
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor!