Star Wars: The High Republic is Another Disney Dud

 

Since taking over the Star Wars franchise in 2012, Disney's track record has been pretty hit-or-miss.  Not so much in terms of money, but quality.  Rebels was good while Resistance, the extension of Clone Wars, and The Bad Batch were pretty meh.  The sequel trilogy was a dumpster fire, Solo was blah, and Rogue One was mostly good for the ending.  The Mandalorian has been good while the Boba Fett show was meh. 

The comics have similarly been a mixed bag, though I haven't read anything close to all of them.  One of the primary writers, Charles Soule, was part of the group of writers tasked with creating a new series called The High Republic that focuses on the Old Republic in its heyday.  The series would feature regular books, kids books, comics, video games, and probably some other stuff too.

Soule wrote the opening novel Light of the Jedi, which I finally read in January of 2022, months after I got it on sale.  It was, as the title says, another dud for Disney Star Wars.  The book was painfully dull with a bunch of even duller Mary Sue characters I could not tell apart even if you put a lightsaber to my throat.

The biggest problem is something that reminded me of Star Trek TNG when Roddenberry first created it.  Roddenberry's directive was that the Federation should be totally at peace and everyone is good and happy and well-fed and there's nothing wrong whatsoever.  To which the writers were like, "So...what the fuck do we write about then?"  If you can't have conflict, how do you have any stories?

This High Republic era features a similar problem.  The Jedi have already defeated the Sith, so you don't have Sith Lords.  It's too early for the Empire since Palpatine hasn't even been born yet.  The Republic is totally at peace and everyone is good and happy and there's nothing wrong whatsoever.  So...what the fuck do you write about then?

The answer:  pirates.  Arr!  The bad guys are a bunch of pirates called the Nihil (as in nihilists, ugh, so obvious) who use an old lady in a bacta tank to find hidden paths through hyperspace to attack ships.  One ship they attack breaks up in hyperspace and the chunks come out of hyperspace at various times in various places.  The first third of the book pretty much focuses on one system as the first chunks start showing up.  As planets there face annihilation, the Jedi show up to help.

Jedi like, um, some chick who floats around listening to the Force as a song.  And some dude who likes to experiment with the Force so everyone thinks he's weird.  And some kid and his master who are like a less interesting Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.  And...probably some others I didn't care enough to remember even vaguely.

It got to the point where I wondered if maybe the whole freaking book might just be this disaster.  Unfortunately it wasn't.  The Jedi start trying to find the source of the problem while one of the Nihil tries to extort a planet for money and winds up killing a bunch of people.  And another group of Nihil takes some random family hostage just because.

At the heart of it all is some guy named something Ro who was a strategist for the Nihil but then starts to consolidate his power.  Ro is like a Wish version of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

I'm not sure that any writer could have polished this turd of a story, but the problem here is until this point, Soule has only done comics.  Early in the 2010s he did some work for DC and some indie work but then he got an exclusive contract with Marvel and along with Kieren Gillen has been a main writer of their Star Wars comics.  To launch a new series, maybe it would have been better to get someone more experienced at novels like Timothy Zahn or Michael Stackpole or Alan Dean Foster.  You have a story that isn't much of a story and then you have it written by someone probably doing his first real novel--it's not a winning combination.

Not that Soule's writing is bad.  It's adequate.  I'm just saying that someone more experienced might have been able to wring out some conflict and compelling characters.  But let's face it, the point here wasn't to make a great book.  It was just to set up all this other stuff.  Which is the problem with Disney Star Wars most of the time; just about all of it only exists to sell shit.  Having fucked up the sequels, I suppose this was a way to create a new series that wouldn't be affected by all their other poor decisions.

The question is:  why this era?  It's boring.  Maybe they want to sell it as this is where the Jedi start going downhill, but it's still centuries before anything else.  Why not focus on the beginning of the Republic or the Jedi war with the Sith?  That would actually have some excitement, even if we know the inevitable outcome.  I mean this isn't even really Star Wars; this is more like Star Skirmishes.  There's an OK space battle at the end but there's really not even the potential for any awesome lightsaber fights or anything like that.

So in the end I would definitely say not to waste time on this in any form.