Now that it’s been out for a couple weeks, you’d think I would feel more comfortable dropping a couple spoilers for Claudia Gray’s adult-targeted novel Star Wars: The High Republic – The Fallen Star. Yet even though Lucasfilm Publishing’s marketing for the final wave of The High Republic’s initial phase leaned heavily on the imagery of the disaster, I still find myself hesitant to write that Starlight Beacon– headquarters for the Republic and the Jedi in the galaxy’s Outer Rim– has been destroyed.
And at first I thought author Daniel José Older’s (Star Wars: Last Shot) follow-up young-adult entry Star Wars: The High Republic – Midnight Horizon was going to sidestep that calamity entirely by rewinding time a bit and sending its protagonists to the industrial planet of Corellia– most famously Han Solo’s homeworld later on in the timeline– and away from the impending tragedy.
However, the attack on Starlight Beacon does end up factoring into the otherwise so-so Midnight Horizon in a somewhat satisfying way, though not until its third act. Prior to that, a delegation of Jedi Knights and their Padawan learners are sent to Corellia’s Coronet City (where the Millennium Falcon will eventually be built and where legendary Anzellan engineer Shug Drabor has already constructed the Halcyon of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser fame) to investigate an apparent incursion by the band of cutthroat marauders known as the Nihil. There, Padawans Reath Silas and Ram Jomaram make friends with a young bodyguard named Alys “Crash” Ongwa, who runs her retired mother’s private security firm, while their masters Cohmac Vitus and Kantam Sy hunt around the city for evidence of the Nihil’s presence. The middle section of the book involves an almost farcical scheme to dress up Reath and Ram’s non-Jedi (but Force-sensitive) Mikkian friend Zeen Mrala as a heretofore undiscovered pop singing sensation, which often feels more like the plot of a Disney Channel Original Movie than a Star Wars adventure. Speaking of which, Older writes his Padawans and their associates as chummy, flirty, touchy-feely teenagers– a far cry from the stoic, detached Jedi Order I’ve grown used to over the decades. Obviously this is a young-adult book, and I know the whole idea of the Jedi being distanced from their feelings is kind of a rule that’s made to be broken, but these hyper-emotional characters sometimes come across as something from another franchise.
I’m also admittedly still a little disconcerted by the author’s fairly regular use of contemporary slang in his Star Wars prose– at one point he describes a Jedi as feeling “pressed,” which I’m embarrassed to say I had to Google the definition for, since I’m definitely not cool enough to have already known. That sort of thing immediately takes me out of the story ostensibly set A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away (sort of like if Luke Skywalker had said “Far out!” when he first saw Mos Eisley Spaceport in 1977’s timeless– haircuts notwithstanding– original Star Wars film). By the end of the novel, though, Older has partly redeemed Midnight Horizon by crafting a relatively exciting, action-heavy climactic battle sequence and a genuinely tantalizing tease of things to come for The High Republic. There’s also a series of flashbacks involving Kantam Sy’s brief time away from the Jedi Order that has an enormously gratifying resolution, especially if you’ve been paying attention to these books and have come to know and care about their dozens of characters. I think it’s accurate to say that I had a mixed reaction to Star Wars: The High Republic – Midnight Horizon, and while I honestly did enjoy big parts of its narrative (most notably the inclusion of the worm-like Grindalid species from Solo: A Star Wars Story), I almost wish Lucasfilm’s editorial team would be a tad more strict about reining in the occasional vernacular and characterization choices that don’t quite gel with this particular universe.
Star Wars: The High Republic – Midnight Horizon will be released on Tuesday, February 1 wherever books are sold, but is available now for pre-order.