Star Wars High Republic Reviews #2

Hi this is King Video, coming back with this after too long. Today I will be reviewing Wave 2 of the Star Wars High Republic book and comics. Thanks to Disney’s PR team for the review copies of the novels. Before I start my reviews, I want to mention a couple of things I want from the High Republic. We need more Yoda-focused stories in the High Republic. I’d also like to see the Sith Lords of the High Republic enter in a big and clever way, even if they don’t face any Jedi and stay hidden in darkness, it would be neat to see them. Now I’m gonna quickly get into the reviews.

The Rising Storm

Written by Cavan Scott, The Rising Storm is the second major High Republic novel and it is a follow-up to Light of the Jedi. I’m glad that there is a continuous story between these novels, despite the different authors. Although when we get another Charles Soule novel it may be a more proper sequel to some of the arcs he established.

I like that much of The Rising Storm is a personal mental journey for the starving brother, Elzar Mann and his friend Stellan Gios.

I also like the character of Bell Zettifar who has much grief for his dead master.

I think this book relies a bit too much on the reader remembering information from Light of the Jedi. That book was really fun but I absolutely forgot everything that happened in the intervening few months between reading these two books.

The structure of this story has characters converging to a point later in the at the republic fair. It can be confusing to keep up with the characters at the beginning. Whereas Light of the Jedi has everything fall out from an inciting incident at the beginning with the great disaster.

It may not be fair to compare everything to Light of the Jedi, but as a direct follow up, it’s impossible to avoid comparison. This book does achieve great action scenes at the republic fair when it gets going and also has fulfilling emotional moments in the aftermath of that. The end of the novel reaches a chaotic and masterful crescendo.

Overall Rising Storm is not as well written as The Light of the Jedi, it doesn’t have any scenes that meet the epicness of the great disaster but it is a more eventful book, with more action throughout, the beginning takes a second to get going, the extended middle is action-packed and the main event of the story. The very end is truly epic and is more action but is distinct from the rest of the book with an epic “heist”.

I did greatly enjoy this book for its own merits. It has a really fun story that it takes you that has motivational themes that offer a great outlook. 

Race to Crashpoint Tower

This Middle Grade novel by Daniel José Older stars a Gearhead named Ram Jomaram. It also has secondary protagonist, Lula who is deeply connected to Older’s High Republic Adventures comic. In my opinion book is clearly missing context from Adventures, which I read after reading this book. I think that the first collected volume of Adventures should have been released before this book. But that’s on Disney, not Daniel José Older. I do love the interconnectivity of the High Republic and I think it is better viewed as the whole collective than each individual book. Which goes into how they’re being written and why I’m reviewing them in sets. 

This book features wonderful illustrations by Petur Antonsson in between chapters.

The two storylines with Ram and Lula have feel distant at first but they contrast each other well and ultimately have a powerful team-up.

All of these books give great explanation to the mindset and philosophy of the Jedi exploring concepts like their balance and pacifism. This one has some especially motivational moments with the young Jedi.

The parts with the Adventures crew is fun and intriguing, you love to see all these stories about the Jedi and Nihil and how other people interact with them.

I like the inclusion of the Drengir when most stories focus only on the Nihil. I hope to see more of Avar Kriss and the fight against the Drengir in The Fallen Star.

For real, this was pretty good young readers book and I appreciate these characters and will like to see them carry on.

Out of the Shadows

Justina Ireland’s Young Adult book, Out of the Shadows released a bit after the others and is the longest of the set.

These books always have a smuggler character that gets undermined by the more interesting stuff when you get Jedi chapters. But in this case Syl becomes a good point of view character to roast the Jedi later on, when they interact.

The Jedi themselves are really interesting. Vernestra Rwoh is probably my favorite character of the entire High Republic. Young Jedi like her really are their future and I would love to see these characters live on for years to come, eventually becoming powerful masters.

Imiri is kind of annoying though. I like Reath but he’s kind of just a side character in this book.

I do really like how this branches all the connections from the other books, with a character dealing with the aftermath of the Byne Guild and Reath Silas from Into the Dark and Vernestra Rwoh from Justina Ireland’s A Test of Courage.

I like that it takes place after the story from The Rising Storm instead of going simultaneous to it. Since it was released afterwards, it makes sense for it to take place afterwords and we can move past it.

I like the more interesting perspective from the Nihil and continuation of the story from Into the Dark with Reath’s problematic Nihil squeeze.

Some conflict is slightly exaggerated and inflated by the perceptions of the characters, through their internal monologue vs the actual narrative which doesn’t seem reflective of their descriptions. The book slightly inflates the stakes in this way. 

I liked vibing with the characters in this book. There was interesting themes and mental dilemmas including questions about hyperspace that are still intriguing and carry broad consequences for the Star Wars galaxy.

Tempest Runner

This is an audio drama written by Cavan Scott. It tells the story of one of the top commanders of the Nihil, Lourna Dee.

There is some dialogue that sounds stilted, especially in responses and pronunciation. But overall I think they did a good job conveying the experience and the story.

It’s cool to see the first major vocalization of the era and characters beyond the audiobooks, which I haven’t listened to and aren’t as big of a production.

There are some neat framing devices for the story with audio and Cavan Scott’s other audio drama Dooku Jedi Lost showed this as well.

Cool Lourna Dee origin, I respect her killing 

I like the fighting within the Nihil and the drama and the politics between the tempest runners.

Some parts are better than others, some are more annoying than others. But overall this is a good listen that I would recommend. Keep your ear on an audiobook and you might learn something.

Marvel comic vol 1

I don’t really have much to say about the volumes of the comics I read. But there is cool stuff going on. The first volume of the Marvel comic by Cavan Scott just feels more like a side story than a super eventful piece of the era. I really do like to see visualizations of these characters that I’ve read about though. Sskeer & Keeve Trennis are cool Jedi.

Adventures vol 1

Daniel Jose Older’s comic for younger readers is still a fun adventure for all ages. It has really wonderfully cartoonish art.

It’s pretty cool and they center characters that are major players in the era like Yoda and Marchion Ro. I like the story with the silly little padawans.

I should also mentions the newly announced video game set in the High Republic, Star Wars Eclipse. It looks like an epic mixture of high fantasy, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dune. The trailer has the makings of a really important and eventful story. I hope this game is set close enough to the books to feature some of those characters and interlink well. I like that the High Republic is branching out in other media. I would love a movie or tv series with these Jedi. 

All of that being said, the game’s developer, Quantic Dream hugely sucks as a company. They are extremely bigoted and toxic, especially the big boss man. They really should fire him and Disney shouldn’t have worked with him. Own this guy by making all the cool diverse high republic characters be epic queer icons in his game. 😎 

I don’t think it would help boycotting this thing. Didn’t work for EA and really change within companies is much more likely to come from within, i.e. employees going on strike and organizing. Public pressure can mount and Disney should also tell this guy and other toxic losers at that company to rot.

But anyway thanks for reading, I’m fully excited for the 3rd wave coming soon. Looks like it is going down for real out there. Now I go get the e-begging bag. 

I will low-key come back sometime. OD.

 

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