STAR WARS: THE HIGH REPUBLIC: LIGHT OF THE JEDI
RANDOM HOUSE/Del Rey
[This review was originally posted on Patreon, and visit the "Star Wars Central" review page here.]
AUTHOR: Charles Soule
COVER: Joseph Meehan
ISBN: 978-0-593-15771-8; hardcover (January 5, 2021)
400pp, B&W, $28.99 U.S., $38.99 CAN
Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi is a 2021 Star Wars novel from author Charles Soule. Star Wars: The High Republic is an all-new storytelling initiative set in the world of Star Wars. This publishing program will feature interconnected stories that will be told across multiple publishers, including book and comic book publishers, and that will be targeted at multiple age groups of readers.
Star Wars: The High Republic's saga takes place 200 years prior to the events depicted in the film, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), in an all-new time period. The High Republic is set in an era when both the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order are at the height of their power, serving and protecting the galaxy. This is a hopeful and optimistic time, and the Republic and the Jedi are noble and respected.
Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi opens in a golden age. Intrepid hyperspace scouts have expanded the reach of the Republic to the furthest stars and into the Outer Rim. Worlds flourish under the benevolent leadership of the Senate on the Core world of Coruscant and its leader, Chancellor Lina Soh. Peace reigns, enforced by the wisdom and strength of the order of Force users known as the Jedi Knights, who are at the height of their power. The light of the Jedi spreads across the Republic, and every citizen knows that “We are all Republic.”
The Republic has a new project, “the Starlight Beacon,” which will connect the inhabitants and new settlers of the worlds of the Outer Rim to the Mid Rim and Core worlds. In fact, the “Legacy Run,” a Kaniff Yards Class 4 modular freight transport, is traveling through hyperspace with a full contingent of new setters to the Outer Rim. Then, a shocking catastrophe in hyperspace tears the Legacy Run apart, and multiple pieces and sections of the ship emerge from hyperspace like a flurry of shrapnel.
These “Emergences” from hyperspace into real space threaten disaster and total destruction for the entire Hetzal System, an Outer Rim system of mostly agricultural worlds. The Jedi quickly race to the scene, but the scope of what will be called “The Great Disaster” pushes even the Jedi to their limit. A single mistake on their part could cost billions of lives.
Behind this emergency is a new enemy, a band of marauding and mysterious “space vikings” known as “the Nihil.” The threat of the Nihil has largely stayed beyond the boundary of the Republic, but this hyperspace disaster is part of a new sinister plan that just might strike fear into this golden age of the Republic.
THE LOWDOWN: Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi is the first Star Wars novel that I have read in about eight and a half years. The last one I read was author James Luceno's Star Wars: Darth Plagueis (2012), which was part of the defunct “Star Wars Expanded Universe.” Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi is the perfect book to welcome a returning Star Wars novel reader to the franchise.
Charles Soule is a novelist and attorney, but I know him as one of Marvel Comics' very best Star Wars comic book writers … ever. I was surprised to see that he would write one of the novels that would launch Star Wars: The High Republic, but Soule turns out to be one of those perfect choices.
Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi works because Soule's prose and storytelling slowly draws the readers into the narrative. Then, he forces readers to race through this book that roils like a summer potboiler novel. The chapters are relatively short; there are 44 of them, plus a prologue, an epilogue, and a few interludes, but almost everyone of them packs a wallop. Anytime is the right time for a book that you, dear readers, can't put down.
Soule gives readers a good taste of the characters: Jedi, non-Jedi, and adversaries in Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi, but character writing isn't what Soule does best in this book. In a way, the characters' personalities, conflicts, histories, relationships, doubts, goals, motivations, etc. seem somewhat allusive. I think that is partly because these characters are still in a state of development so early in this publishing program.
Still, Jedi like Avar Kriss, Loden Greatstorm, Bell Zettifer, and Elzar Mann promise to be quite interesting and fun. What is the highest recommendation that I can give Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi? By the time I reached the end of this book, I really wanted there to be more.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of Star Wars novels will certainly want to give Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi a try.
8.5 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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