Books The High Republic: The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray

Soopoo.... Two hours or less?

 

Yeah not sure that makes her a main character. Episode IV makes several references to Bail Organa but he's not a main character because he's not actually in the movie.

The fact there's confusion/uncertainty about what constitutes a main character in these books underlines how bloated the cast is.

 

It's not really that bloated. The person that originally made the comment that started this conversation struggled to get into the first book and doesn't really remember much from it. Those that are really into this series could easily tell you who the main characters are.

 

You know one reason maybe why none of the Adult Novels are doing it for me is that they feel to much like very bloated Event Comics, with a huge cast and a lot going on and it's easy to get lost.

I much prefer something with ONE THING I can hone on and focus on.'

There aren't enough anchors foe me

 

Elzar, Stellan and Avar

Spoiler

were very much the HR's main Jedi trio.

Were?

....well....yes.

Edit - Reading the various pieces does show up the coordination going on. And it would be fair to say some of the stuff done is books learning from event comics. Characters weave across the mediums and the age ranges. A particular revelation in this book doesn't work anywhere near as well without the fuller context from the YA books.

 

Maybe but I only remember Avar and I don't know who the other two are nor really have much of a connection or feel compelled to follow them in anyway.

 

In which case there are other stories for you to enjoy more, if this isn't working for you then why continue?

Alternatively, try the junior and YA books, ignore the age ratings and you might be pleasantly surprised. The junior books don't hang around, their authors know kids can get bored so the plot.... moves.

Although, from your recent posts, you seem to have lost interest in reading entirely which, if true, is a shame.

 

I mean i haven't really been compelled to ready anything outside of Light of the Jedi. I mean the era itself is kinda cool and curious how it adds to the lore, but honestly I just don't feel the need to buy anything else.

Comics are too hard to keep up with and books are expensive to buy.

 

Well, if you don't buy online with a big, fat discount... Yes.

 

I don't buy comics I just look up Youtube videos on them when i feel like it.

 

Except you just tried to suggest that the three main characters include someone who has only been in one of the books, so I'm not sure there's an 'ease' of listing the main characters. I've read both books and generally speaking enjoyed them, but they have very bloated cast lists. The second book felt like 2/3rds of it was just padding as we jumped between different views of random people dealing with the Fair disaster which had zero progression of any overall plot.

 

In my opinion she is a main character. Avar was the character that received the most hype prior to the initiative starting. There is no defined list of which characters are main and which characters are secondary. It's all a matter of opinion.

To be honest I am not even sure why you are trying to make this argument anyways. Even if she technically isn't a main character in the adult novels she still is an extremely important character. And when you take in everything she absolutely is a main character.

 

I can't really recall a previous story that did what has been done with HR and Avar is a good example of that. Starts off as a main character in LotJ, then moves to the comics and stays there past TRS, looks likely to be in Tempest Runner then has a supporting role in TFS. This is not the kind of character trajectory we're used to, which makes classifying much harder.

 

Yeah Star Wars has never really done anything like this before. The closest legends got to something like HR was the CW multimedia project and even there they were still telling stories in an already established era where the key characters were established by the movies. The post RotJ EU material was just going to follow Luke, Han, and Leia and their kids. The Old Republic books were largely either one off books or part of a two or three book set. By the end of HR there will probably be about 10-12 adult novels. 10-12 YA books. At the very least one ongoing comic from Marvel (plus several minis) and at least one ongoing comic for the young readers.

 

I'm not trying to make it into an argument, just using this as proof that there's a broad range of characters who flux between being primary and secondary, which contributes to some people finding the stories hard to engages with/follow.

As someone mentioned, the Clone Wars project worked so well because we had anchor movie characters, so even if we had books that didn't follow them (Republic Commando, Medstar, etc.) we could come back to them through other books (Jedi Trial, Shatterpoint, Dark Rendezvous). High Republic has the challenge of having a bunch of characters that people can't immediately connect/identify with. It's a great opportunity to have a blank canvas, but it also seems strange to deliberately set it within living memory for a lot of known characters (Yoda, Maz, Chewie) and then not at least use them as crutches to help keep people engaged/interested.

Like, either set it 1,000 years before and really go for broke with the new cast of characters, or use the characters you have available.

Marchion Ro is, to me, just about the only character I can really identify and appreciate, and maybe Bell. Elzar is getting there and I've enjoyed his POV, but there's a lot of clutter from other Jedi perspectives that keep muddying it IMO.

 

NJO did it a bit with a lot of non-movie characters given leading roles, and then Legacy of the Jedi and Fate of the Jedi did it even more, although did use Luke, Han and Leia as anchors (as well as Wedge and others).

 

Those kept it all within books though - here, in the case of Avar, we're jumping from book to comic to audio production back to book.

More widely, there is jumping across the age ranges in the books - as there are a few of the YA characters that turn up in TFS.

 

I think what might be the reason here is that this is more inspired by big Fantasy sagas like GOT, Wheel of Time etc. that also have many characters and POVs. Having grown up reading those stories I actually love the multiplicity of viewpoints High Republic offers, but I can definetely see how it won't be for everyone. But I do think that there are some clear main characters. Vernestra, Reath and Bell definetely come to mind here, in my opinion more than people like Stellan and Avar. They are important sure, but most of the time they are more marginal presence also because of their importance. Keeve could also make the list as the absolute central character in the comics, but she hasn't shown up in anything else yet, so I am hesitant to include her. But for me Bell has been the central character of the adult novels so far and Reath for the YA, with Vernestra showing up in basically all mediums and played important roles. I actually find it intresting that this series focuses more on this younger generation of Jedi, instead of using Loden, Stellan, Avar or Elzar who were more prominent in the original marketing.

 

The issue/difference here is that the character perspectives are not given the depth or complexity of a GOT. It's not as easy as it looks, and you can't just "be a GOT" by having ten different perspectives in a book all responding to the same event. The characters need to be built up and given individual characteristics to get the reader to identify with and connect to each of the characters you intend to portray. You can't just throw a bunch of different perspectives on the page and consider it job done.

 

I can agree with that to a point, because i honestly don't really remember any of the characters from Light of the Jedi.

The most I remember is the first chapter with the refugee ship...and then they all died.

 

I look forward to discussing the book when it comes out.

 

I hope this is hyperbole, Jid. Because it sounds like user error, otherwise.

I mean, GRRM has been working on his Meereenese Knot for over ten years, now. I'm ok with the HR project not falling into that kind of release schedule.