The Fallen Star

Fallen star is a great conclusion to the first phase of the High Republic that mostly sticks the landing (pun intended). It’s a powder keg of dramatic irony as well all know how it will end and we’re forced to just sit and watch the disaster unfold.

No one feels safe at any point, characters are getting death flags left, right, and centre and not just the ones who do die so none are too predictable by the end and the characters that do die are all done effectively and really gives it this larger than life feeling. I do have some issues with how the fall of Starlight has been handled in books/comics after this but none of that is the fault of Fallen Star.

The fact that pretty much the entire book takes place in this one location with very little happening outside the station gives the book great flow and a focused sense of direction that results in time flying by when reading.

Even with all the disaster and tension, Fallen Star does still manage to make room for levity at times though. New jedi, Regald Coll was a great introduction who’s attitude had me laughing quite a bit and of course the return of the Vessel crew, especially Geode, continue to be expertly written by Claudia Gray to deliver the funniest, most brilliant character in all of Star Wars. I will genuinely never tire of Geode based humour i think.

tl;dr; Just not for me.

I've read most of the adult focused High Republic and whatever the prequels were called, books. They're just not that engaging and rely way too much on the reader having read the comics, and the YA books.

I knew going in they'd do that so, so that's not part of my rating, just a general gripe. :)

My rating is because the story just took forever to not get very far.

(Audiobook note: Listening to this book directly after The Rising Storm was jarring, as Disney/TPTB/the narrator mysteriously decided to change the pronunciation of both Marchion AND Nihil. Does pronouncing it like part of “annihilation” make sense? Yes, of course. Do I think they should have just chosen one pronunciation and stuck to it? YES. This might just be my brain being difficult, but every single time I heard either one, it was like hearing someone play the wrong chord in a song. I actually switched to the ebook for the majority of the time.)

And LMFAO at Gray's heavy-handed attempts to get me shipping Elzar/Avar. Maybe it's because it's been so long since I read Light of the Fallen, but I felt absolutely Nothing for them??

As for the book as a whole, though: while I think it needed another editing pass (there were at least two chapters that contained nearly identical lines at different points, which is the kind of thing that should happen in first and second drafts, not published works), it was very good. It really sucked me in, and I wasn't bored for a second. I felt a myriad of emotions throughout the story, and I thought Gray juggled the various POVs very well.

Unfortunately, I was a bit spoiled on the ending coming into this book, so I was not surprised by the end result. It took some of the emotion I would have had throughout the story out. That being said, this is perhaps the biggest struggle our Jedi heroes have faced so far in the series. From this story comes the question, who am I when my greatest strength is exploited as my greatest weakness? Perhaps a better way to say it is, who am I without my strength? 

While this is the end of Phase I of The High Republic adult novels, and Phase II goes to a time before Phase I, it is not a triumphant ending like Return of the Jedi. Instead, I would liken this to the feeling I would have had if The Empire Strikes Back was the end of the trilogy and the prequels were coming next. There are a lot of questions as to what will happen next. 

The Fallen Star was a satisfying conclusion to an electrifying trilogy that introduced some of my new favorite characters in Star Wars lore as well as some innovate concepts in the Universe.

I'm a fan of The High Republic, but not necessarily the way they intertwined the adult, YA, and middle-grade novels. Having characters move in and out of the various trilogies makes in difficult to care about certain characters or follow the arcs of other characters. The series would have been stronger as a whole of they hadn't thrown people into and out of the separate trilogies. Biggest example of this, after the first novel I would have loved to have seen more of Avar Kriss, but her character arc moved into other novels.

Overall, I enjoyed the whole series, but think future trilogies should be more self-contained. Unfortunately, I think that's the opposite of what they are trying to do, but one can hope!