Star Wars: The High Republic; Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule

 Many many moons ago, I had read literally all but a few hard to find paperback Star Wars books. This was before the Dark Times.....before the Empire.....otherwise known as Disney. 

I'm joking! I don't hate the sequels by any stretch and I weirdly like The Last Jedi more each time I watch it. Rise of Skywalker I have issues with from a movie point of view as a film afficionado, which from some of the reporting I've seen online about the post and mid production edits the studio forced, I feel justified in my views. J.J., buddy, you're telling me you started the most anticipated sequel series of films arguably in all time and didn't have an ending planned out from the start? Or a middle? Tell me you learned nothing from LOST without telling me you learned nothing from LOST. But I digress. 

Point of the story, I was heavily emotionally invested in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe of books and, to a lesser extent, comics. I've had a hard time getting back into reading Star Wars books in the last ten years as a result. I read the first of the Aftermath series and didn't really warm up to it. I did get around to reading Master & Apprentice by Claudia Gray and really enjoyed it. 

When I saw the announcement for The High Republic, I was very exited. Here, a new period I can try to sink my teeth into without needing to deal with my EU mourning. A perfect place to start afresh in the series that literally got me to start reading as a child. (as you can tell from the title of my blog, I'm a librarian now, so that's a pretty big part of my entire life since then.)

All of which leads into this: It took me two tries to read Light of the Jedi. Not because it erased classic EU cannon. But because I got bored. The first third of this book deals with a hyperspace accident that has cataclysmic ramifications for millions of people. Cool, really interesting. BUT. The drawn out nature of the event got so tedious. It was like reading three filler episodes of 24 waiting for Jack Bauer to finally show up to find out who is the next target. I realize Soule was probably trying to build suspense and tension with a rapid fire, detailed unfolding of events around the calamity, and on my second attempt to read the book, once I got past my boredom spot, it does definitely pick up steam quickly and then keep the throttle fairly pushed down. 

My main criticism of the book is that it definitely dumps a lot of names for a lot of new characters quickly. This could've been because my second shot at reading the book was as an audiobook, and I didn't have as fixed of an idea of the cast of characters with listening. 

Otherwise, I really liked it once I got into it. The villains of the story definitely have more going on than at first glance, which I really enjoyed. This definitely feels like a prologue to a wider world and story, but still does have its own narrative and flow. The balance between this being its own book and setting up the rest of the series to come felt natural and unforced to me, which is remarkable in my opinion. I'll definitely be keeping up with this series as it progresses. 

Oh, ps: Just saying, I think using a lightsaber as a key to start your starfighter is dumb. 

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