Star Wars The High Republic: Light of the Jedi- A Disney Nerds Book Club Review
This month for our Disney Nerds Book Club Review, we’re heading back to the Star Wars galaxy! In fact, we’re going 200 years BEFORE Episode I: The Phantom Menace. We’re starting the journey into The High Republic. This month we read the first book released of this time period called “Star Wars: Light of the Jedi” by Charles Soule.
As I mentioned, this takes 200 years before anything we’ve read, watched, or heard of from Star Wars Canon. This means new characters (but Yoda is mentioned a couple times)! This alone makes it interesting for any Star Wars fan.
Spoilers Ahead…
An “impossible” accident occurs in the beginning of the book. A starship has broken up while in hyperspace. No one knows why or how this has happened or even understands what’s going on at first. The republic doesn’t even know about the accident until several “emergencies” are falling out of hyperspace. These emergencies are about to collide with planets in the Hetzal system. The residents of these planets are at risk and have to evacuate. Several Jedi and other ships of the Republic come to their aid. They begin by just trying to destroy the emergencies until one Jedi senses through the Force that there are people inside the emergencies! They then have to scramble and try to figure out how to save the people in the emergencies as well as save the people living on the planets those emergencies are about to collide with.
This accident is how we are introduced into this time period of the Jedis and the Republic. We follow along as they investigate what happened and why. They try to figure out if it could happen again and if so how to do they prevent that. They also discover that a group called The Nihil are causing problems to The Outer Rim where the Republic has just built a new space called the Starlight Beacon in hopes to help the people living in The Outer Rim. The Jedi and the Republic start to realize that The Nihil are a problem that they have to take care of for the good of the Republic. How do they do that, do you ask? Well, you’re going to have to read the book to find out!
This book is the introduction to The High Republic.
Because of that we are introduced to A LOT of characters in one book. I found that a bit confusing. Even though I enjoyed the story and plot of this book, I wish that they would have focused on fewer characters in this book and maybe introduced the rest in other books.
There were times that I felt like I needed to create a cheat sheet to help keep everything straight in the book. Each chapters switched to a different aspect of the story and different characters. For example, one chapter I was reading along with the events of the story with Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh of the Republic and how she was directing the investigation of the accident. The next chapter I was following along Jedi Master Loden Greatstorm and his Padawan Bell Zettifar who were some of the first Jedis to assist during the aftermath of the accident and the emergencies that came out of hyperspace. It added to the confusion, for me, to jump from one character group to another each chapter and not know when I’d get back to those characters I left behind.
Did I Like It…. Yes and No.
That being said, I would still recommend this book to anyone of our big Star Wars Nerds. This book starts The High Republic and I think you’d be lost reading other books or even the comics based in The High Republic timeline if you skipped this book. If you are one of our Nerds who like Star Wars but is not a die hard fan, I might recommend that you skip this part of the Star Wars galaxy for now.
Personally, I’m going to keep reading books from this time period so hopefully that means that I will get to dive deeper into these character’s lives that I was introduced to in this book. So stay tuned for more Disney Nerds Book Club Reviews on more books based during The High Republic and more!
