At the beginning of January, we witnessed the destruction of Starlight Beacon in Claudia Gray’s adult-targeted novel Star Wars: The High Republic – The Fallen Star. But another book that was released digitally on the same day (and is finally being issued in a hardcover print edition two weeks from now) actually takes place just before those events: the middle-grade novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Mission to Disaster by Justina Ireland (author of last year’s young-adult offering Star Wars: The High Republic – Out of the Shadows).
Mission to Disaster focuses on the young inventor Avon Starros (ancestor of Sana Starros from Marvel’s current-canon run of Star Wars comic books), a brilliant, bright-eyed teenage girl– previously featured in Ireland’s Star Wars: The High Republic – A Test of Courage– who gets kidnapped by the ruthless band of marauders known as the Nihil when they attack the Port Haileap spaceport in their effort to enlist new recruits by force.
Soon, the Jedi Knights stationed aboard Starlight Beacon are made aware of the Nihil assault and of Avon’s disappearance, so her Force-sensitive friends Vernestra Rwoh and Imri Cantaros spring into action, following a series of clues to the planet of Dalna. The Jedi stationed there struggle to assist due to the local population’s mistrust of outsiders, but Vern and Imri are eventually able to deduce that Avon is being held by the Nihil on the other side of the relatively tiny, volcanic planet. Meanwhile, alternating chapters of Mission to Disaster check in on Avon’s situation in captivity, where her genius is discovered by long-lived future bounty hunter Deva Lompop (seen here chronologically a couple hundred years before the War of the Bounty Hunters comic crossover where she made her first appearance) and she is made to work alongside an amoral scientist who has been helping the pirates create their weaponry. Avon quickly realizes that the technological experiments being conducted on Dalna will likely lead to an intentional ecological catastrophe, so she puts a clever plan into motion to sabotage the scientist’s progress until the Jedi can come to the rescue.
This is Justina Ireland’s sixth novel in the Star Wars franchise (all of the junior or young-adult classification), and by now I think she has gone above and beyond proving herself worthy of telling stories in this universe. As an adult reader, I can definitely tell that her stories are by-and-large written with younger audiences in mind, but that doesn’t hurt their narratives almost at all. The prose is crisp and entertaining, and the characters are all well-defined and either likable or deliciously repugnant– depending on their affiliation, of course. I’d say fans of all ages will– as plenty already have– get a kick out of the Jedi protagonists’ efforts to save their friend in this book, chuckling at the amusingly prickly personality of the droid J-6 along the way. We also get to meet some new Jedi personalities like Yacek Sparkburn, pictured above, and even get a cameo appearance by the luxurious Halcyon starcruiser of Walt Disney World’s upcoming Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience. The one thing I would note is that if you’re trying to read all of The High Republic in sequential order, it’d probably be best to pick up Mission to Disaster before The Fallen Star, because the former pretty much directly leads into the latter. It’s a fairly quick read compared to some of the older-targeted books in this series, and Ireland has included some key character reveals and plot beats that will be spoiled if you jump ahead like I did. I think the ongoing supply-chain issues may have delayed the physical version’s release, but I believe it was intended to drop– like the digital edition– alongside The Fallen Star at the beginning of the year.
Star Wars: The High Republic – Mission to Disaster will become available in print form on Tuesday, March 1, but is available for pre-order right now.