Claudia Gray’s first novel for Del Rey in the Star Wars: The High Republic series threatens to darken the light of the Jedi. Read Chris’s review of the climactic end of the first Phase of the era!
To start out this review – this is a SPOILER-FREE review. Of course, I trust that most people who would rather experience the book on it’s own are not reading this review ahead of time, but it’s worth saying this explicitly: try and read the book on its own terms! The excerpts are good to tide us over until a book release, as are reviews, but I think this book has a lot to offer going in blind. But if you’ve already read it, or want to read this review anyway, I’m going to do my best to talk about aspects that I can without any spoilers. This necessarily leaves some stuff on the table, but I think this book will give us more than enough to discuss for a looooong time anyway.
If you were to ask me who my favorite authors in the current Star Wars canon were, Claudia Gray would easily be one of the top choices on that list. From her first book in the franchise, Lost Stars, following star-crossed lovers on different sides of the Galactic Civil War, to stunning Jedi epics (Master and Apprentice, Into the Dark), and a personal story about Leia (Leia: Princess of Alderaan and Bloodline), Gray has been a top-notch writer across the board. Her ability to dig deeply into characters’ mindsets and romantic lives has been a huge boon to the franchise. (Seriously – I am not an Obi-Wan Kenobi fan, but her take on the character in Master and Apprentice almost convinced me otherwise.) This made me really excited to have her finish out the first phase of THR, especially hoping to see some in-depth looks at some characters’ motivations and, maybe, just maybe, a look into the romantic light of some Jedi (Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann, anyone??).
In light of this, I was surprised by the novel we got. Instead of being a romance (which, granted, only account for two of her novels in total), The Fallen Star is more of a disaster movie. And boy howdy are our characters in for a disaster. The nefarious Nihil, marauders from the Outer Rim who have caused probably hundreds of thousands of deaths by now, have set their sights on the image of the High Republic: Starlight Beacon itself. And, as you might have guessed from the title of the novel and the amazing Out of Print cover, their plan is to bring the entire station to the ground. Lots of twists and turns, along with some plot points brought to their natural conclusions, make this event fall into motion. I really appreciated seeing how many threads were pulled together to make this plot (both the Nihil plot and the plot of the book) happen.
This brings me to one of the things I wanted to talk about with this book: the pacing. With the first Del Rey novel in the series, Light of the Jedi, the book really feels like it’s front loaded with action, putting the Great Hyperspace Disaster and the Emergences over Hetzal in the first third of the book. The third part does feature the Battle of Kur, but it’s not as long. The second novel, The Rising Storm, puts the greatest amount of action, the attack on the Republic Fair, right about in the middle, with a lot of rising action in the beginning and a lot of the fall-out in the last 20%. The Fallen Star, though, puts the action throughout almost the entirety of the book. The build up to the climax starts right at the beginning of the book, bringing in a sense of doom right away. This sense of doom grows throughout the entire book, making it extremely hard to put the book down. For example: I got the book on a Wednesday evening, around 7 PM, and was finished the next day by noon. And it’s not really a short book: it clocks in around 350 pages.
That being said, the pacing and size of the book sometimes work against the reactions I had to the book. When the real marketing for the book kicked off, we were treated to a delightfully scary poster showing the THR cast with the question: “When the light of the Jedi goes dark, who will survive?” As you might imagine, this book delivers on the question, and not every character makes it out alive. But due to the extremely quick pacing of the book, I don’t feel like we get a lot of time to react to certain deaths. I would have loved if this book had another 50 pages, giving us a little time to reflect on the characters’ reaction to all of the events going on.
Now, that’s not to say that there are NO moments that we expect from Claudia. She still finds time to write in some of her extremely emotional gut punches. One page in particular was so beautiful I put the book down for a moment and took a walk to give myself some time to process that moment. There are some unexpected characters that really carry the emotional core of the book – people we know, but people I won’t spoil – that serve as our audience proxies. These characters were much appreciated as it does give us some time to process the destruction. You can tell that Claudia has spent time thinking about which relationships carry the most emotional weight and baggage in the franchise, and she capitalizes on most of them. I am thankful that, despite my wish to slow down a bit, Claudia still finds some moments to build some really emotional lines into the novel.
One other thing that struck me about the book was how much it felt like a transitionary tale. It certainly served as a powerful climax to the first wave, drawing a lot of stuff together from across the franchise. But it also does a TON to set up the next round of stories – maybe even more than just the next round. Imagine if The Empire Strikes Back was only about Hoth. Not that it was a half-hour movie, but if the entire two hour movie was on Hoth. You get some character beats, but you feel like there’s something that this battle is building to, but the movie is over. That’s how I felt with this novel. I enjoyed it, but I was waiting to see where it went, but we’re waiting on other stories to see that full impact.
Now, though, I do have two critiques that aren’t as back-and-forth as the critique of the pacing and it’s role was. These are two that I think are critiques I’ve had of the Del Rey THR novels in general, and start to approach the entire franchise, really.
The first is that the main cast being so large continues to work against the books to an extent. In all three of the Del Rey THR titles, the main characters probably range from about 5-7 characters, including an entirely new cast of side and supporting characters as well. This is totally understandable in the context of a new era! Of course we don’t know everyone. But I think it would’ve helped to see more stories in the meantime that help us get to know characters more intimately if the books don’t have the space for it. For example, Ty Yorrick, from The Rising Storm, gets the spotlight in the IDW mini-series The Monster of Temple Peak. While some characters seem to get more screen time in other lines (like Keeve Trennis in Marvel’s series or Vernestra Rwoh in the Disney Press books), a lot of the Del Rey characters still need a bit more time for us to get to know them. As it stands, I felt like some characters have been a bit underdeveloped despite how far we are into the franchise.
One place I could compare this with is the Knight Errant series from the Legends novels. It’s a brand new era in a new time slot (that hasn’t really been touched in Legends or canon aside from that series), but we focus our attention on one Jedi, Kerra Holt. We are introduced to the era and to the galaxy (at the time) and the context through her eyes. This type of tight focus would’ve, in my mind, helped focus the series a bit and help us invest more in individual characters that we follow in this book. There were a few options that would’ve helped: maybe focusing on Bell Zettifar as a more central character sooner would’ve helped us, even if it made the scope a bit smaller.
The second critique is the way that this series is structured. Almost every book or comic with the THR logo has referenced other stories in the era, sometimes building their plot around other books. Most of the time, it’s hardly noticeable: Marvel’s Trail of Shadows and IDW’s The High Republic Adventures have a really cute tie-in that merely suggests that there’s another story happening concurrently with the one you’re reading. Del Rey’s The Rising Storm is a slightly different example, as it relies on the events of Race to Crashpoint Tower. Events from Crashpoint Tower impact the events of The Rising Storm, but you may not notice if you’re not reading super carefully. These seem to be okay ways to make the universe work together. Without going into spoilers, so forgive the vagueness, but I think The Fallen Star clearly outlines that another story is happening in a way that’s detrimental to the book you’re reading now. Again, I can’t say what this story is! But as I read the novel, I kept wishing to see that other story, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized I had to consign myself to not seeing that story, as it was clearly being told elsewhere. (Maybe the biggest problem is: where? With the Phase ending, which means we have at least two novels between this one and the next THR novel, IDW’s series shutting down with Dark Horse taking over…at some point, and the Disney Press series taking a break, we have no idea when this story can or will be told.) I’m all for connections, especially those that are super intertwined, but I felt like this book’s connections almost robbed the book of some of the emotional weight it could’ve carried.
To sum it up, I’d say that The Fallen Star was a great page-turner, but I wish it had slowed down just a bit for processing sake. As you can tell, I’m still processing a lot of my thoughts on the novel. I really enjoyed it! But it is definitely a product of the era, and thus showed some of the weaknesses of the era (that I love deeply). As the climax of a Phase, it builds interesting stories for the next wave of books (that are due…well, hopefully soon!), but serves more as a transition chapter than it does as a finale.
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher at no charge in order to provide a review. However, this did not affect the overall review content. All opinions are my own.
Chris’s The High Republic Reviews:
Phase 1, Wave 1 | The Rising Storm | Race to Crashpoint Tower | Out of the Shadows | Tempest Runner