Starlight Beacon, one of Lina Soh’s great works, has launched – and the galaxy rejoices. Right? In Starlight Stories, five short stories take place on the famed space station itself, giving readers a chance to explore the station. But is it a collection you’ll want to check out? Read on to read my review!
When The High Republic launched, it was one of the most ambitious multi-media events of all of the franchise’s history. It’s hard to remember any other story reaching across as many mediums – adult novels, all-ages comics, manga, and more. One of the most underrated aspects of the multimedia event were the short stories featured in Star Wars Insider, published by Titan. There were five short stories set in Phase I in the magazine, written by the original Luminous crew, including Charles Soule, Justina Ireland, and Cavan Scott. Each short story was split between two issues, about 3-4 pages per issue. I figure a lot of people may have missed these for a few reasons, but the two primary reasons were probably simply not knowing about them or cost.
Thankfully, Starlight Stories comes in with a valiant effort to fix both of those problems. Starlight Stories is technically the third volume in a series of Titan publications collecting previous Insider short stories. The first two volumes collected both Legends and canon short stories, ranging from Darth Plagueis tie-ins from Legends to the underrated Blade Squadron short stories. Bringing these into a single collection brought a lot of new eyes on to those stories, including my own. There were quite a few stories in these publications that I simply had not heard of, which was a nice treat. Thankfully, this volume now brings that same boost to THR, bringing these short stories into a wider publication. I bet even more die-hard THR fans probably haven’t even had a chance to read these stories yet, so it’s a nice way to enjoy more time in Phase I.
I also noted that the cost might’ve been prohibitive for a lot of readers. Each copy of Insider is $10, so you would have ended up paying $100 for every part of the five stories. This cost is especially high if you weren’t really interested in the content of the magazine outside of the short stories. (And I’m not trying to knock Insider here – I do enjoy some of their work. But a lot of it seems very dated very quickly as the magazine simply cannot keep up with the Internet.) Although, thankfully, that $100 wasn’t the only option. If you had a subscription, you would’ve paid even less since subscribers get both a little discount and exclusive covers. (And generally get the issues early, too!) Local libraries also offered a chance to read the issues. The library is actually a great option on stuff like this, as it lets you read as much or as little of the issue as you’d like and not worry about how much you paid for it. Those options worked for a lot of people, so this is a nice new option to own the stories if you weren’t in one of those categories. Now, this 90-page volume has a nice hardcover volume for $20. It’s still only 90 pages, so the content to price ratio still feels a little off, at least to me. But this is a much much more friendly way to read these stories and add them to your collection.
All of that was a review of the volume itself as a concept, but are the stories worth reading? For the most part, I would say yes, now the pricing and accessibility issues have been alleviated.
One of the most important things these short stories do is make Starlight Beacon actually feel like a real place. If you had only read the “mainline” THR novels, you really wouldn’t have spent a lot of time on Starlight Beacon until The Fallen Star, which would, obviously, have been a little late. While a lot of the mediums did spend time there, I don’t think they really explored the station more than any of the other locations that we visited in the stories. Thankfully, most of these short stories are based in Starlight, exploring a lot more of its layout, character, and functions. We get to know the staff that, for a while, made the Beacon run smoothly and some of the problems the station encountered over its somewhat short life. (Or at least, short after opening.) I think reading these will give THR fans a great new look at the station and a new appreciation for what it accomplished – and bring a little weight to its eventual fall.
But the Beacon isn’t the most important thing to be found in the short stories. I also appreciated the characters, such as Velko Jahen and Ghal Tarpfen. These two bring a lot of character to a few short pages, and you can feel their impact in Tempest Runner and The Fallen Star, respectively. The initiative didn’t have as much time to slow down and look at individual characters as I think it might’ve wanted, but these short stories gave the authors time to slow down just a bit. You’ll also find stories featuring the Ardens and Manor favorite Avon Starros! Because they are short stories, the stories don’t have a ton of meat on their bones, so I won’t say much about the situations these characters find themselves in. But I will say that you will come away liking most of these characters a lot.
And, without spoilers again, the final short story in this collection, “Shadows Remain” by Justina Ireland, is one of the most substantial Insider short stories ever published. It’s almost required reading for Phase I’s story. I was shocked by the contents and the timing of its publication. I wonder what the experience of reading the story would be now, in the midst of Phase II.
All in all, Starlight Stories is a great deal for fans of THR. The newly accessible short stories are a lot of fun and bring a lot of flavor to Phase I. The price tag is a lot easier to stomach than buying individual copies of Insider, even if the $20 is still a lot for the page count. The short stories are well worth the time of any fan of THR, and I’m personally happy to see these stories get a new audience and fresh eyes.
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor!