Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Light of the Jedi is the first book in Disney’s new “High Republic” era, 200 years before the Prequel trilogy during a heyday of expansion of the Republic. This era appears to have been opened to try to gain some distance from the problems of the already established eras and particularly to try to avoid the fallout after the Last Jedi/Rise of Skywalker. The book is set up to give us moments of impressive coordination of Force Powers in the face of insurmountable odds. We are introduced to a wide cast of characters, with about half of them being Jedi and the rest being Republic government officials, people in need of rescuing, or the space-pirate villains called the Nihil (unironically and not in reference to Darth Nihilus though their “rule of three” is a bit suggestive of the triumvirate). But none of the characters are fleshed out enough in this volume or focused on enough with backstory and more than a brief idea of who they are. It is a crowded novel focused on introducing the era as a whole and starting a story than it is on providing meaningful character development and individual character depth; this is an acceptable failing in a first book in a series, but does not bode well.
-Spoiler Warning-
The first half of the novel is the description of an unfolding disaster and the expanding response of the Republic and the Jedi; it builds slowly and expands from one incident into a cascade of things going wrong. We get a healthy dose of heroics and big, impressive cataclysmic scenes of disaster. This works pretty well on its own: we have a hyperspace incident that leads to a wrecked spaceship that disintegrates and re-enters real-space in fragments going so fast that they will cause radical damage if they collide with anything. The chance that a collision in Hyperspace can happen at all is explained in the novel to some degree of satisfaction in a way that only just avoids breaking the universe. But the probability of any part of even the largest exploding ship randomly exiting hyperspace near a habited planet is astronomically small, and when you increase that to there being enough pieces in enough places scattered across the whole outer rim that it would threaten multiple systems over the space of a month while also having survivors within the wreckage it stretching the suspension of disbelief well beyond the breaking point. At least in this case the coincidence is working against the heroes which allows a lot more narrative leeway.
The Jedi response to the disaster is heroic and sacrificial, leading to some casualties in physical action and more due to the strain of using so much of the force; this is the best part of the novel, getting to see the Jedi Order in action and working together in numbers to do miraculous things. Even in the Clone Wars and Prequel era, this is the type of concerted action that was suggested would be possible but we never really got to see. Hyperspace asteroid mitigation at scale is an impressive logistics problem to solve even if the inciting incident is laughably implausible. I have some complaints about how the Jedi manage triage in the disaster: they send some Jedi (including named viewpoint characters) down to one planet to manage unrest and hijack a small private ship to assist in evacuation and send a team to a solar power-collection array to rescue 20 people while there are giant wreckage fragments that those same Jedi/Republic resources could be destroying or keeping from hitting planets and moons containing billions of people that are at risk.
The way that the Jedi and the Republic respond to the emergency brings out what seems to be the central theme of the novel: that tyrannical emergency powers and summary execution/use of force without democratic oversight are good and noble if people can be saved or convinced to do the “right” thing.
We are introduced to the current Republic Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh who enacts a hyperspace travel ban over the outer rim area affected by the potential hyperspace disaster; she is presented as a heroic leader who is helping people and expanding the light of civilization through her frequently mentioned “Great Works” including the Starlight Beacon, a large space station in the outer rim that is set to lynch-pin the expansion of republic oversight into the outer rim. She unilaterally authorizes commandeering nearly every nav-droid in the galaxy for a computational engine to predict the path of the disaster, shuts down all trade and travel in the affected secretor (and presumably far beyond the actual reach of the disaster) and authorizes the assembly of a galactic defense fleet to fight the space pirates that end up being behind the disaster with no mention or consideration of the political involvement of the senate or any kind of democratic deliberation. It’s almost like we are recapitulating the rise of Palpatine two-hundred years early without the realization that he is the bad guy. This could be considered as foreshadowing of future problems that could be explored about these tyrannical powers, but the way that the Republic tyranny is praised is also counter-pointed by the philosophy of the antagonist Nihil.
The book contains extensive passages introducing us to the Nihil and their space-pirate haven anarchist caricature. The Nihil have a magic hyperdrive that somehow allows them to navigate hyperspace in ways that normal hyperdrives can’t (which given how little hyperdrives in Star Wars are actually explained and limited isn’t really necessary other than to make them feel special and allow the original hyperspace disaster to happen without breaking the larger universe). Their group as a whole has an anarchistic “don’t follow the rules and take what you want” outlook on life, but are actually very regimented into a hierarchy with top-to-bottom chain of command with opportunities for advancement based on attacking each-other or taking advantage of any mistakes to replace their superior and take higher position. The top rank in the group is shared between three different leaders who each have about a third of the group under their command, creating a triumvirate of power with the mysterious hyperspace-shaman “Keeper of the Paths” holding a fourth seat of power without his own physical command, instead this fourth seat is granted because of control over the secret hyperdrive technology and the distribution of Paths that allow the marauders to attack from unexpected locations. The group has a secret base in “No-Space” a new pocket reality in sub-space that can only be reached by their “Path Engines” where they engaged in drugged-out parties and debauchery, they encourage recruitment as a way to elevate in the ranks and they murder anyone who makes the group weaker and they engage in clearly despicable backstabbing, pillaging, extortion in the face of disaster and terroristic attacks. But at the same time in the face of the encroaching republic tyranny they claim the goal of standing up for freedom and self-determination, so I can’t help but root for them a little in the face of the tyrannical Republic despite the way they are presented as the obvious and irredeemable bad guys. It is odd how much space in the book is given over to describing the perspective and philosophy of the bad guys if the point hadn’t been to lionize the authoritarian necessity of the Republic in resisting them. The whole novel would have been better played with a tighter cast and more mystery over the motivations and inner workings of the Nihil, saved for explication at a later date when the Jedi and Republic characters actually have contact with the group.
All in all, the novel was poor but not bad enough to be upsetting or damaging to the Star Wars universe as a whole (unlike the Last Jedi), but not interesting or outstanding enough to be good or excellent. I think I will try to read the second eventually just to see how it develops. I don’t really have a desire to spend more time with these characters, but I am interested to see if further stories in this era can draw me in. Even with all its flaws something with a similar template and concept would have made a far better Star Wars movie than The Force Awakens and the rest of the sequel trilogy, so I rate it as a step in the right direction, even if it is already too little, too late.
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