Books The High Republic: The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray

I quite like how they're doing this, with each being given time for their next bit.

 

I'm sure, given the nature of the project, Claudia had a lot of input on wave 2 even though her name's not on anything.

 

yes but she didn't have anything herself which is curious

 

Well, having just read High Republic #7, it seems

Spoiler

that they are telegraphing a grim fate for Avar. All Force Vision stuff and not likely to play out exactly as the issue foretells, but it's specific to her, and... well, the signs are there, she's in play as a potential tragic loss. Just sayin'.

 

Not really - good books take time to write.

 

Cover reveal.
https://www.starwars.com/news/the-f...ealed-on-the-star-wars-the-high-republic-show

 

Interesting seeing Indeera at the forefront, and that Orla is there.

 

And that Avar isn't -- I'm guessing this image is from the top of the tower of Starlight Beacon.

I like Indeera a lot. (She deserves better than a repurposed Obi-Wan/ROTJ Luke lightsaber hilt, but book covers are book covers)

 

So I think fallen star has two meanings.

1. Starlight beacon comes under attack. Preferably not destroyed since it hasn’t been active for that long. We still have phase 2 and 3.

2. A Jedi will fall to the dark side. Hopefully not because of some secret influence/connection to the Sith. It is very rare in the nu canon for dark Jedi to act outside of being servants towards the Sith (in Kylos case unknowingly).

 

I think it's possible or even probable that a Jedi will "fall" without it even being a dark side thing. Defeated or killed or fallen from grace in some other form... there are contenders for all of those fates in play.

 

I like the juxtaposition of the jedi looking all heroic and glass above them starting to break.

I guess you could say here is where the cracks start to show.

 

Well damn.

It’s unfortunate that the only Jedi Space Station we have so far in canon, only had around 1 year of operation after completion.

If I were a writer of the HR I would tried to have it last longer. Besides there hasn’t been much stories focused on life on the station prior to Fallen Star.

Would be awesome to see in a video game. Still could in a pre-Fallen Star setting.

Hopefully we can eventually see another Jedi Space station. For an order that has existed around 25,000 years, I doubt Starlight was there first attempt. Maybe we can get an Old Republic era station someday, and see how it differs from the future starlight.

 

I am personally a little surprised that they are pretty much just giving away that Starlight Beacon is destroyed by the end of the book. I guess they saying the real mystery is which characters will die and which ones will survive.

In regards to Starlight Beacon yeah it would have been nice if it lasted longer but at the same time if it lasted for any significant time at all it would have been weird that it seemed to be a big mystery to most of the OT characters. The guy who first introduced Starlight Beacon also is currently writing the current Star Wars ongoing series and in that series Starlight Beacon is something that even most of the leaders of the Rebellion had never heard about. I could buy the idea of Starlight Beacon lasting a long time and people from the OT never hearing about it if say the High Republic stories we're set 500-1,000 years before the OT. But not just a little over 200 years. That would be like us not not knowing about major conflicts of the Revolutionary War.

I think they already need to explain why Starlight Beacon the way it turned out to be ended up being a big mystery to future generations. Which wouldn't be that difficult to do as we know the Republic and the Jedi undoubtedly end up winning this conflict with the Nile. They can simply revise the records and tell the story how they want it to be told. As history is written by the people that win wars

 

True - honestly, I am not sure Starlight has gotten nearly enough stories set on it to really have the full emotional impact of its fall fully realized. Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9 it is not. And in universe, it is amusing that it is apparently remembered by the alliance centuries later when it only lasted a year or two.

That said, I am still looking forward to the story itself. I loved the last two, and I am curious how exactly the Nihil will do it, given their depleted resources.

And it is great art.

 

Amongst the leaders of the Rebellion in the issue it is talked about it is really only known by one person. I find it a little odd more people wouldn't know about it even with it only lasting for a couple years

 

This quote applies to a lot of things in Star Wars.

 

Overwhelmingly (though of course this might be a misdirect) it feels like the destruction of Starlight means the end for its primary identified character, Avar. I mean, not only does the narrative point that way, we've already seen a vision of her totally skeletonized, which doesn't feel like an accident. I'm prepared to be bummed out about it if it happens. There's just a lot that I love about the character, her musical Force connection being a big one, and we haven't gotten many stories truly from her perspective. Yeah, she's kicked some ass, primarily in the Marvel book, but she's rarely been our identification character or gotten much in the way of internal monologue -- both Stellan and Elzar have taken that role more often, and the younger knights and padawans really get more focus than any of them.

But I wonder about the "optics" of it as well... she's kind of canon's first big example of a female Jedi being a prime mover in the order and seemed to be rolled out as such, so she's a strange choice for a casualty. Not that the High Republic cast lacks for female representation, and again, could be a misdirect, but...

 

It still would have been better if a completed Starlight lasted a few years. Still a short timespan for a space station existence but longer then what we have been given.

 

Yeah a lot of people are theorizing that Avar will die. I would be disappointed if that happened also (as you can probably tell from the username I chose). Avar is on the cover of a couple High Republic issues that will be released after Fallen Star but that doesn't mean much because it generally takes the comics a bit to catch up to the latest adult novel released (I'm sure there will be another short timeskip in the book released in January).

It does feel though that Stellan has become the main character of the High Republic so it wouldn't throw the narrative for a loop if she does die. Here's hoping though that they use Avar as the point of view character of what this Nihil War turns the Jedi into (and that is what the term Fallen Star means) and they just don't outright kill her off.

 

I hope most of the Jedi who maned Starlight were evacuated before it’s destroyed.

This era has to be careful when it comes to potential mass Jedi death.

It’s only around 231BBY (??, Great Disaster was 232), and this golden age for the Jedi/Republic ended around 82BBY.

We are not even in the halfway mark timeline wise for the era.

 

Yeah, mass Jedi death really shouldn't happen. I also hope this era doesn't go too grim. The general positivity of it has been a nice breath of fresh air in Star Wars and it seems to more and more swerve in the other direction. To a certain degree that is absolutely necessary, because the stories obviously need conflict and you need to build up an enemy to make the Republics defeat of it meaningful. But they shoul take care that they don't make the enemy too stong and the situation too desperate. That would fit neither the timeline placement nor the general feeling they had at the beginning. Also not really happy about Starlight Beacon going this early, though I'd be ok with it, if this and Avar's possible death is the absolute low point and they build themselves back up from there.

 

I hope we get the number of Jedi existing in this era. I suspect the High Republic was when the Jedi Order was at its largest, compared to any past era.