Books The High Republic: The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray

Race to Crashpoint made me even more disappointed in how the Drengir got dealt with.

It can be good when it all interconnects, but also annoying.

They don't have a goal. If they had something and it was consistent it would be fine, but Ro seems to change his mind mid sentence.

 

I'd say that they have goals ("force the Republic to retreat from the Outer Rim" as declared goal, "destroy the Jedi and the Republic" as Ro's personal one), but the strategy to achive them is rather inconsistent.

 

Except Ro is the only one who seems to have a goal. The Gang itself, doesn't.

 

Goal does not need to be complicated. The Gang wants to get rich and live for pleasure without fear of law. The Republic and the Jedi are obstacles for these objectives. Ro's main role is that he managed to convince the Nihil to fight with a superior enemy, using charisma and superweapons.

 

Have been trying to read this book for 5 days. Only gotten to page 55 so far. So damn boring.

 

You should be near the point where things begin to…accelerate, so to speak.

 

My copy shipped yesterday. Hopefully the postie will bring it tomorrow or Thursday.

 

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I am almost done with my second listen of The Fallen Star and something is mystifying me. On the cover for The Fallen Star, who is the Jedi in the foreground with the yellow lightsaber? I recognize Stellan, Orla, Bell, and Burry. But not the person who the cover makes it seem like is the most important character. I can't think of any character in the book who this would be. It's very odd. I am hoping I am just being dumb and forgetting someone. Because I know they have generally put a lot of work into the art of the High Republic and it would be a little disappointing/confusing if they suddenly just started drawing random non-existent characters instead.

 

Indeera Stokes

 

OMG. I guess I don't remember seeing her depicted in any of the previous art so I never made the connection, especially given her limited role.
Thank you!!!

 

Phew only on pg 72. This book sucks and it may even become unreadable if a certain box check character makes their way into it. Just got their name dropped and now I’m terrified of what will come. Maybe this author could make a less annoying take on this person but considering how utterly dull this author has been so far I doubt it.

 

I'm on page 43 and the number of parentheticals makes me want to rip my hair out. That is one of the largest reasons why I initially abhorred Wendig's writing with the Aftermath trilogy and now this is making me hate THR when before I was ambivalent. I like her YA stuff but this is an adult book and there is no need for the number of parentheses in each damn chapter. One entire paragraph was even in parentheses.

I really like how it's tying together so many characters, but the writing style is seriously irking me. Probably the least-well-written book in THR regarding the three main audiences (adult, YA, MG). Shoot, all the MG books were my favorite especially since they didn't insult the intelligence of the reader.

 

Well we all have different things that irritate us with writing but the style of writing didn't bug me at all. I personally felt the fact that the book brings in so many characters that were not in the previous two Del Rey novels would be more irksome than the writing style.

 

See I was looking forward to reading Claudia here as I’ve heard for yrs now how good she is with these NUcanon books but this is a horrible 1st impression thus far. She’s just so meh…

 

How much have you been into the High Republic overall? If you haven't really been into it that much to begin with you might want to read her Bloodline book about Leia to judge how much you enjoy her storytelling.

 

I really enjoyed the 1st 1/3 of Light but it was garbage after that. I never got to her 1st book in HR. Really enjoyed the hell out of Scott’s book. Then there was Shadows…ugh I had to skim or skip anything Syl related after awhile. At current point now and struggling.

Light was my 1st SW book since the death of the EU with Crucible and I honestly have no interest in trying any other NU works. HR just sounded really interesting at the time. I have this book and the next but will likely bail on future HR if these don’t grab me. I’m trying though.

 

If I didn’t read all the books, I’d be terribly confused and annoyed. Because I did, I like that a bunch of characters are here and tied together.

It was like when some YJK & JJK characters showed up in the NJO. Because I read those books, I loved that they were all there

 

I don’t know what happened to Gray’s writing style, but she wasn’t doing this terrible parenthetical thing on Bloodline. I don’t understand how an editor didn’t take a red pen and write “Not Needed” right next to it.

 

Seriously.
Same thing with the ellipses and em dashes that separate parts of sentences by paragraphs. They should be part of one paragraph, not three separate ones. It's ridiculous.

I've finished chapter 13 and the story itself is pretty damn good. But separating myself from the grammar is very, very tough because things like that take me out of the story.

The plot though is fantastic. I'm glad that it started to pick up before I was 1/3 through.
Still gonna give it 3/5 stars unless something FANTASTIC happens with the writing.

 

I agree that was annoying as all get out. My thoughts - since she didn't do this in any other books, I think an editor made the choice to do that, not Claudia. They're soooo distracting.

 

Also I imagine they enjoy experimenting with different styles of writing from time to time as well.

 

Ugh. Sign me up to be an editor there, then.
Except not really. I don't want to work for Disney

Almost done and man oh man, the story is a pure sci-fi plot that works extremely well here. Execution of the prose aside, this is a fantastic story. I think I'd have preferred an audiobook though, where I don't have to see the punctuation.

 

I mean, I have a degree in English - technically where all of the parentheses appear - they should be there. However, it's just not a rule that's followed often now. I can see an overly enthusiastic grammar hound putting those in. If we didn't see those in "Lost Stars" which is a very large book, it likely wasn't Claudia's doing. On the flip side, the only reason that it COULD be her is the fact that "The High Republic" books overall have sooo many characters, I can see that she might've gone in and done that to try to clarify who's thinking what. But her writing is solid enough, she really doesn't need to do that.

 

I don’t know, I have a degree in English too but that crap grates on me. It’s superfluous.

 

Agreed.