– Spoiler-free Review –
The High Republic is back, and Tales of Light and Life is leading the charge into Phase III by bringing together the past, present, and future of the initiative into one bound volume. And what a volume it is. If you’re a frequent reader here at the Manor, you know I absolutely loved Phase I of THR: I bought every variant of the novels (so, uh, four editions of Light of the Jedi and The Rising Storm; three editions of The Fallen Star, Out of the Shadows, and Midnight Horizon, etc.) and a lot of the comic variants, but Phase II fell rather flat to me. Thankfully, Tales of Light and Life comes in blasters blazing, creating new, exciting possibilities for the initiative and getting me excited again for the future.
This review will mostly focus on the (unfortunately and unfairly) American-exclusive Barnes and Noble edition of the book. This edition marks the first time all ten Luminous authors are brought together and the first for the newest author, Alyssa Wong. Wong’s story, focusing on the aftermath of the Battle of Corellia, is an interesting character study in two characters we know and a very intriguing new character, one that I’m very curious to see in Phase III. Knowing this will exclude international readers, I will say this: if you have the choice between the two volumes, buy the exclusive one. For the same price (if that’s the only consideration), just get the extra story. But I do want to say: whether or not this edition was available internationally or not, a *story* should never be the exclusive. I bought many THR variant novels for the cover alone, no extra content needed. At worst, and what happened, is the majority markets for the book don’t get the extra story. At best, it’s a financial and logistical barrier that shouldn’t have affected Wong’s first THR contribution or the reader’s ability to read their story. This, though, does serve as the major critique I have of the work (which is both meta and shows my American-centric privilege!) Michael Siglain has mentioned that they are working on getting these stories available to international markets, which is good news. Hopefully this can be done quickly now, and more immediately in the future (if they go this way again).
But if you can’t gain access to Wong’s story in the (essentially) American exclusive edition? Thankfully, there’s still a ton to read. As you come across the Luminous authors’ stories, each are telling ones you would more or less expect them to tell. I won’t list them all, because some of the joy is in the discovery, you get Córdova writing Axel Greylark and Charles Soule writing Bell Zettifar, meaning the authors are firing on all cylinders, focusing (presumably) on their favorite characters and the stories they are most interested in telling. I think this really helps the stories sing, as you can tell how much the authors care for their characters and really *know* them inside and out. This really brings out some fantastic nuance on some characters, especially Marda Ro, Bell, and some new characters, as well. But it’s also a joy to see the original Luminous authors return to Phase I characters, and it helped reignite my excitement for the final third of the initiative as a whole.
One thing I really personally liked is every story not only told us more about the characters, but almost every story painted a new picture that helped contextualize the larger story. Even though I really liked the recently released From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, you could really excise most of these stories from canon and not a ton would change. Tales of Light and Life does not afford that option, as almost every story adds new information to the initiative and clues us in to what we can expect later, whether or not the story was set in Phase I, II, or III. (There is one story that arguably doesn’t do a lot to push the initiative forward, and may not add necessary context, but fans of the POV character will enjoy anyway.) Taking in this book as a whole, Phase III can start out of the gate running in the new contexts that were established here. I hope the authors use this book as a starting point, not worrying about re-establishing what they’ve already established here.
One thing that I will say as a unique-to-me strength of the book is it really helped me appreciate Phase II more. I noted in our Phase II retrospective I wasn’t sure whether or not Phase II was worth the detour, but now I’m leaning toward “it was.” The Marda Ro story is the strongest in terms of characterization and moving along some of the connective tissue we were looking for from Phase II, and it reminded me why she was such a fantastic character – and why now, she is a fantastic villain.
From a purely writing standpoint, I found almost every story to be well-paced, and used the short story format well. I’ve said before that short stories don’t always speak to me as they could be too short to really get anything moving, but I think almost everyone used their space well and had well-scaled stories for the format. All of the ones that were designed to make me want more from that storyline succeeded, and the few that were content to tell their own story were mostly fine. I also liked seeing some authors take on a new format, like Charles Soule writing his first YA story, or Tessa Gratton moving from middle grade to YA. For some of the authors, shifting the demographic of their stories helped me gain more confidence in them shifting mediums later, and some were just fun to get new stories from again. (I’m looking at you, single one-shot in Phase II author Claudia Gray!)
While we know Phase III won’t be the last we see of THR, I would love if we got more books like this from the Luminous authors, checking back in again and again.
Chris is Mynock Manor’s Sous Chef. You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.