Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi there, everybody. My name is Bryce Rankins, and this is my co host, Brian Romero.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Hello, there you are.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: A bold one. And now let me shimmy off my cloak very sensually.
And we are here today to talk to you guys about the first wave in phase one of Star the high Republic.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Yes. More specifically, we're here to talk about the books that came out in wave one of phase one.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Yes, indeed we are. And all of the ways that those books are interweaving and making sure that you can keep track of everything that's going on within those books, as well as maybe a little bit on which to read first, which to read second, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Keep in mind, this is a non spoilery update on everything.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So strap in and hold on tight, because this is the Starlight archive, and this is where the fun begins.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Wizard.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Starlight archive. We're gonna talk about books today. Brian and I are longtime readers of Star wars fiction. We are both industry professionals who work in and around the film industry, and we are here to talk to you about navigating the high Republic, which is a three stage. Three phase, if you will, story initiative put forth by Lucasfilm Story Group. So phase one begins with three major novels. Brian, what are those novels?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: We have light of the Jedi from Charles Soule. We then have a test of courage from Justina, Ireland, and then we have into the dark from Claudia Gray.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Nice. So let's start with Light of the Jedi, Charles Soul. He's not unfamiliar to the Star wars universe.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: No, no. So his first book with the Star wars universe was actually the Lando miniseries that came out.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: I loved the Lando miniseries. I didn't realize that was Charles Saul.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he did that. He put in a couple little Easter eggs here and there. That ended up leading to a few other books, which led to a couple other books, which led to a couple other books. So it's really cool the way he sprinkled stuff in to kind of give himself an opening later on to open up storylines and different things.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: I guess that makes sense that his first book is Lando. He has openly said before that he likes Lobot a lot.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: And he does love kind of holding on to those characters, which I think is something that we see in a lot of these books is these writers holding on to certain characters and making sure that they can kind of find ways to make them work again. Not that Lobot has made an appearance in the high Republican. Just gonna get that out of the way.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: He actually has a really great story arc within the Star wars mainline that Charles is writing.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: So Charles Sowell wrote the Vader book.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So he. He started with Lando, and then he went on to the Poe Dameron book, wrote all the issues for there, which was a great run.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Is that the one with Poe Dameron hanging out by the forest tree?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: A little bit. Yep.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Non stop bang.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: This guy. Yeah. And his run started just before, chronologically within Star wars. Started just before the Force awakens a couple of years and then goes through the end or just after the last Jedi.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: So we're in good hands as far as somebody who is familiar with the Star wars universe. I know in that interview we watched from Star wars explained, he talked about there being. There's still that pressure of writing well, but he's like, I think I. I've got my feet under me as far as knowing how to write within the Star wars universe and how to tell that story.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Which is nice.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And he had a great mini series in Obi Wan and Anakin showing Anakin's kind of original, like, do I really want to be a Jedi? Thoughts? But also sprinkling in a little bit of our buddy sheev and them becoming BFF's.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: We do love sheev.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. But also he did the rise of.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Kylo Ren miniseries, which does come up later.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Without getting a little bit too ahead of ourselves, weirdly getting too ahead of ourselves in a book while we're talking about these other books. Anyway, let's get to these actual books. It is all connected. Let's get to these books. The light of the Jedi.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: This is the book that starts the entire run off. The entire high Republic starts with the light of the Jedi.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And ordinarily, I think going forward with this podcast, I want to make sure that we are linking back to previous books and going through, who's this character? How do they relate to each other, et cetera, et cetera. Because sometimes it's hard to keep track of some characters that haven't been around for four or five books before they show back up again.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: But in this case, I don't know that we have to go that deep into that.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: No. And what's nice about this book starting everything off.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: There's kind of a lot of characters, but you're not supposed to know who anybody is. Like, this is the intro book, so this is what's going to introduce everybody.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah. If I was gonna tell you about Harry Potter, I wouldn't explain the entire wizarding world versus muggle world before letting you just read chapter one of Harry Potter, the Sorcerer's Stone, or for our british friends, the philosopher's stone. So maybe we don't have to go too far into that, at least for this one, because it's all self contained within the book. But this book has a lot of interwoven storylines.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you put it best where it's like a love actually storyline.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: It really is. You're following so many things tangentially. It's like love actually or Valentine's Day or one of those. Except Elzerman's not going to stand in front of Avar Chris holding a sign that says, to me, you are perfect. Although maybe he should.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think the Jedi would like that.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: No.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: I think it's kind of frowned upon. But you know what?
We don't care.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no. And Taylor Swift also isn't there. If you were thinking this is a little bit too close.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Shoot. Spoilers.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah. No Taylor Swift in this whole thing, but she was in Valentine's Day with Taylor Lautner. Oh. And they were in love, the Taylors. The Taylors. Didn't they date for a hot second?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Not important. Anyway, so there's a lot of plot lines interwoven here, and we have a lot of Jedi being introduced, and I don't think it's necessarily spoilery to just list them real quick. Yeah, no, name em, Bryan.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Oh, man. So here we go. We have Avar Chris. We have Elzar, man. We have stellan geos, which those three will come in kind of big time going forward. Those are. I wouldn't say that's our big three characters, but they're very prominent in the books and the comics and the audio dramas and. Yeah, so we got those three. We then have Estalamaru, who's the head of operations of Starlight Beacon. We like him.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: We do love Estalamaru.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: We then have Porter angle, who's the blade of Bardotta.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: More on that later.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: More on this later. Endeara Stokes. We have loading great storm and his padawan, Belle.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Ah, belle Zed afar. Yeah, we love Belle Zed afar.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: We do.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: He's such a cool dude.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah. We then have Nibiseek and her padawan, Barryaga, who's a wookiee.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Full name, Beriaga agaberry.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Which I just found out, like, two days ago, and I'm sure it says it somewhere within the books.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: A few times, but most of the time it's just biriaga or just Barry.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Most people are calling him Barry, but, like, burry aga. Beriaga. Aga Berry.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, for the record, he's one of my favorite characters in this whole thing. Barry's the best. Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: And then we've got some Joramali and skier.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: But we also have some familiar faces.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So Yoda's around. We have Yariel. Poof.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: And Opo Rancisis.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yaddle's in and around these books every once in a while. So it's, you know, some of these characters that have continuity wise, long lives because of their species are in these books. They may not be super big main characters, but they're around, and they do serve important roles.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: We also have a bunch of other characters that are going to be coming in that are bad guys, but we have intentionally left that blank because spoilers. Yeah, you can get to that later. And then we have non Jedi, too, that are really cool. I really, really liked the character Hedda. Cassette or cassette, who's the. This awesome captain of a ship called the Legacy run. And the people who were on the legacy run are really kind of endearing. I really liked Serge Eukaryon.
I felt like there was something very real about his character, which I really liked. And then there's also a character named Mervyn Getter in Vel Quran, and there's this really awesome kind of. I don't know if you'd call him a programmer, maybe hardware engineer named Kevin Tarr. And then there's Joss and Picca Adrian. They're citizens that are going to get caught up in this whole thing. And then we actually get to see this really cool organization that we haven't seen in Star wars, as far as I know yet, which is the Republic Defense Coalition.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: And we have a couple people there with finial bright, which I love any captain named Bright because I'm a Gundam fan. But there's also a character named peoples, and peoples has people's problems.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: What?
[00:08:53] Speaker A: I don't know that peoples has people's skills and then a character named enemy. And we have a bunch of new planets that are coming in.
I don't know that I fully understood how all the planets worked initially, so I feel like we could go over that a little bit in that this is largely happening in the Hetzel system, not a system we've really talked about very much in current canon.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: But it is a farm planet, and the whole system is kind of dedicated to agriculture, because if you're going to have biomes, you might as well have urban development plants, too. So, of course, where's the farm planet?
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: So Hetzel prime is the farm planet. It's got a rooted and fruited moon, which I love that the rooted and fruited.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Rooted and fruited.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: I feel like that's how I should say things are done or on their way to be done. Yeah. Oh, no, they're rooted and fruited, bro.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Let's get rooted and fruited, bro.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Oh, that's a whole different podcast.
But, you know, rooted. The rooted moon is darker, which is, you know, kind of, I guess maybe they've got onions over there.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: And then the fruited moon is a warmer climate, and there's other planets. There's Abdullah, there's this other space where there's no planets called no space, which you've heard us reference before. And then there's a planet called Alfrona.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: And there's also Naboo and Santeka compound. And by the way, the Santekas are here.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Those Santecas from Force awakens.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yes. And most importantly, new chancellor named Lena. So who we've talked about in the podcast before, in our previous episode, she has two giant arcanines. They're not actually arcanines. They are targons, which sounds kind of like arcanine, I'm just gonna say it. But she's giant cats. Two gigantic lions. Lion. Yeah.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Like, they're like pet bodyguards.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. They're super cool. And she is trying to get this republic into this new era of expansion, but not in a, you know, we're taking over this grand empire. It's much more like, let's all. Let's all help each other and grow and, like, it's this kind of benevolent expansion, which we all have seen historically how sometimes that can go necessarily go as well. And I think. I think they. I think they handle it in a really neat way.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: They were. I feel like in this book, they set themselves up for success.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: And then things happen.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So. And we've got some cool ships in this one, too. We got the legacy run. We have, like, a monitoring station. We have the ship called the third horizon. The. What's the one? The adoraxia.
That's a big one.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Defense, coalition ships. We've got this really cool ship that only Jedi can fly, called a vector. That is the way they lock that out is some really neat world building, which I think is cool.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah. With the lightsabers. Yeah.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: You'll see how that works when you get to the book. And if you want the full spoilery version, then let's just listen to our later episode where we give the full spoilery version, and it'll be very clearly marked that it's the spoilery episode. So if that's what you're looking for. So the most basic of basic plots, Brian, how would you describe this?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: It's almost like there's seven or eight different plot lines happening, and as the book goes on, one plot line starts forming into another plot line while the other two starts forming into one, and they each kind of all sync up towards the end.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah, they do all kind of converge together, much like love, actually, or Valentine's Day or one of those. This is. You're watching a lot of individual stories kind of come together, find their way together, for one thing. And I've heard it compared to a sort of Marvel Universe sort of Avengeries, Avengery kind of thing, in that you have each story is its own thing.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: But important to the overall plot.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And some people have liked that. Some people haven't. I personally thought it was really cool. I dug that. Charles Soule handled it extremely well. But more on that on the spoilery episode.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Then we move into what is one of my favorite books in this entire phase, into the dark. Claudia Gray is no stranger to Star wars. She's fantastic.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: She's written pretty much most of our favorite books in new canon.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: She wrote lost stars.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: She wrote lost stars. She did master an apprentice.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: That's one of your favorite?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Oh, my God, I loved it. Yeah. She also did Bloodline.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Bloodlines was really good. That was one of the first times within the post a ridge Tridge era. Yeah. That I really enjoyed.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Because I wasn't super into the storyline structure of aftermath, so I didn't really go very far into those stories, but I really, really liked bloodlines, and I liked what they were doing with Leia's character and building toward, and I felt like it really did flush out the sequel trilogy. Leia a lot more, definitely. But, yeah, Claudia Gray is absolutely fantastic. She's written plenty of novels, also comes from the novel side of things, not from the comic side of things.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Though that time will come.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: We're very happy about it. So in into the dark, there's a whole bunch of characters, but it's much, much more self contained than Light of the Jedi. Light of the Jedi has all sorts of things happening all across the galaxy, and about two of those events directly are going to affect this story. In a very large way, but not in a way that is overly complicated.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: So we've got Reeth Silas, Dez, Rydan Komak Vitus, and Orla gireni.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Are all on their way to the Starlight beacon dedication ceremony.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Everything leads to the starlight dedication ceremony. Even the high Republic young Jedi adventures. Cartoon on Disney.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Leads you to the dedication Starlight beacon dedication ceremony. We love the dedication ceremony. It's a really good nexus point, I think, for this entire.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: It really is.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah. To move forward, it kind of ties all these things together. So they're on their way, but they can't find a good ship, so they wind up getting on Matthew McConaughey's ship. Matthew McConaughey is not actually his name, obviously. His name is Leox Jassy, and he's basically Matthew McConaughey.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: He is. And like Claudi Graves has said, she built her character around Matthew McConaughey in space.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah. In a later book, he'll even find a way to squeeze in and. All right, all right, all right. But they get onto his ship called the vessel, and he is the captain of the vessel, along with his co pilot, Afy Hollow, who is an up and comer in what's called the Bind Guild. And she was raised by a character named Skoverbein, who took her in after the untimely death of her parents. And because it's Star wars, it's got to be about parents. But most importantly, the navigator on this ship is by far the most just rizzed out, sexy, awesome character. And his name is Geode.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: He's a wise man. A few words. He's a Ventian, and he basically looks like a large rock.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: He's a large rock, and he's great. We love him.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: One of the best characters and weirdly.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Very well written, despite him never saying anything.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting seeing his. I don't know, I guess, people. It's interesting seeing everybody online react to him.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: It's very, very divided. It's one of the most polarizing things I have seen in a very even.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Division of all things in Star wars. Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, Star wars fans have a sordid history of getting angry over certain little things and watching them get angry or get excited about Geode is, like, this beautiful 50 50 split. So good of people going, dude, he's amazing. While everyone else goes, I.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: He's a rock. He's a rock.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: I don't get it.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it doesn't make sense. It's like it's Star wars. What about Star wars makes sense now?
[00:17:04] Speaker A: I disagree mostly, I disagree necessarily with that mentality, because I feel like Star wars still exists and makes sense.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: It's very grounded with.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: With its own. Within its own rules. Yeah.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: But truly, like, what the Vintians can do, who the Vintians are, their lifespans, how they. They live, and the way they deal with him moving around the ship and maneuvering is this kind of.
I don't even want to give any more away. You'll understand.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: You'll understand when you read it why this has become such. This point of contention. There's also a whole bunch of other characters in this story. There's a character named Nan who kind of finds friendship with wreath Silas. And there's a character named Haig who takes care of Nan. And then there's a whole bunch of other people that aren't really named. You know, they're just kind of other crews, because this is very much a we're trapped story as well. The events of Light of the Jedi lead to a lot of people not being able to do anything, and that's. We'll talk more about the third version of that problem within the comics episode that comes up after this. But basically a number of ships, including some cargo haulers and some passenger ships, some of which have, like, hundreds of people on them. They all get stranded in a dying star system and the sun in the star system. There is a space station in said star system, and there is a dying star. So they go to the space station.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Through some, because you gotta be protected. So everybody goes to the space station, and the space station is, the question is, do we spoil it? And I'm gonna say a little bit.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: The space station is the Imaxine station, first seen in the rise of Kylo Ren.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: So it's this overgrown space station with tons of plants on it. It is not the pristine, lush place that Snoke has made it in the rise of Kylo Ren, it is overgrown. It is tended to by a bunch of gardening droids.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Yeah. They don't know what's really going on. They're just kind of doing their daily tasks.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah. In some areas, they're weirdly protective, and others, they just kind of let people pass. It's very unclear, but the amaxine are.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: An ancient race of warriors, kind of like the Mandalorians, but they were around thousands of years ago and eventually disappeared. But the station is kind of everybody's not. I wouldn't say everybody's really known about the station, but it's not unheard of. And these people aren't unheard of. In fact, the first mention of the max scenes are in bloodline.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Oh, really? That's super cool. I did not know that. Claudia Gray bringing it back, like we said earlier about bringing in the things you've already written about and getting to remention them and tie your stories all.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Together and expand on them and stuff, but, yeah. So the space station is around and things happen.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So the ships all get grounded? Spaced.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Floated. Floated. They get stopped. They're not allowed to get on the freeway anymore because the freeway is closed down because of events that take place in light of the Jedi. And while the freeway is shut down. Hyperspace lanes. We're talking about hyperspace lanes. While those are shut down. All these people wind up stuck on the space station, stuck together in this. We've got to figure out how to live together because we can't go anywhere right now. And so you've got slavers and passenger haulers and just general people going out to the frontier.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: A couple of bounty hunters and pirates.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: People who are just trying to make a life for themselves and some in.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: More sketchy ways than others.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Good way to put it.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: So we've got all these guys on there, and we've got our character wreath. Who is this bookish?
He's a bookworm. He's a bookworm.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: He's a bookworm.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: And he's awesome. But he's a bookworm.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: And he likes archives, and he loves the. Yeah, he loves the Jedi archives.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: He loves learning. And he doesn't really want to leave Coruscant.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: No.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: And his master, Jorah Molly, says, no, you gotta leave. You gotta come out and hang out at the starlight beat.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: You gotta see the galaxy. That's how you also learn things.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And her former padawan, Des Ridan, is his total opposite.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: He is a suave, attractive, charismatic guy who has no qualms with going and getting a little friendly with the locals, maybe even a little promiscuous, because flirting and charming up the locals doesn't necessarily mean you're getting attached. In fact, not being attached makes it probably a little easier for the guy. But Dez has got his own thing going on.
Adventurer. You know, Dez is the sort of Jedi that you hear about in the hollows who's out on the frontier doing crazy cool stuff, and that is not what Reeth wants to deal with.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: And he and this guy basically get paired up to go to the starlight beacon dedication ceremony. And then Orla Girini and Komak Vitus, who are old pals from their Padawan days. The Padawan palsy, as soon as things start going awry, they start remembering a previous time when things went awry.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Dealing with a conflict between Iram and Irono or Irano, depending on where you're from.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: But those two planets were at war for a very long time. And their conflict and the fallout of their conflict and the seeds of mistrust that have come from that conflict will kind of color any of their actions as the rest of this high republic story takes place.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: And we get some really cool flashbacks just to see what happened, what didn't happen, what they went through, and kind of why. Some of these memories are repressed and it gets a little heavy sometimes, but it's really well done, really well written.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: And this is a YA novel. It's not necessarily a young, young reader novel like mission to disaster was, which I don't know that we necessarily covered that, but Light of the Jedi is an adult novel.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Mission to disaster is very much a older elementary school novel. This is the book that you're going to give to a third to 6th grader, and they'll be just fine. This is much more your middle school, earlier, younger high school.
But the plot line is still very mature.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And even for all these books, I think we've mentioned on our previous episode that pretty much the main difference between all these books isn't necessarily who it's written for. While it's there a little bit, it's basically the age of the main characters.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Truly. Reeth Silas is kind of the main character of this book, and he is still a Padawan, and he is a teenager. So this book is a YA novel because he's a teenager, and they write.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: It from basically his point of view.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And mission to disaster, while it does include Vernestoreau, who is also a teenager, it largely focuses around Avon. Staros is a very young child.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah, they're 12, 13, 14. Sure.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Like a bit of a preteen.
Those two are somewhere between like nine and twelve.
They're learning who they are and they're coming into adolescence, but they're not like in adolescence the way that Reeth is. And then regarding, like this irem in Arono conflict or Arano conflict, you are talking about something that is a lot more serious. But those flashbacks are when Orla and Komac were teenagers.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: So we're again talking about teenagers in the story, and I will stand up and defend ya novels and the like. Oh, yeah, till the cows come home. I mean, Luke's 18. He's a teenager. Star wars started with teenagers.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: And Luke, while he is 18, still plays with toys and makes whirring sounds in his hut.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: We saw it. It's on screen.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: It's on screen. It's proven. So, like, he's not necessarily the most mature. Now, Leia, she's over there 5 seconds younger than he is, and she is, you know, a senator.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: And doing rebellion stuff. And Luke just wants to go down and get some power converters. So we've been dealing with teenagers for a long time. Don't let that shy you away.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: This story, it's so good. And the things that we talk about within the things that the. The book talks about, there is a little bit of Sith stuff going on. Not Sith people, but, like, historical sith stuff. Historical a Maxine stuff. So we are building kind of into a little bit of old canon lore indirectly, which is really cool.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: And we're building into old Republic lore, which is really cool. Sith war lore, which is really cool. That kind of thing. So I feel like if you.
If you take this story for sure and you take light of the Jedi, like, absolutely. You absolutely read both of those. You will get a lot from one overarching story and that this is kind of unrelated to what's going on there. But this book basically starts and ends in the middle of light of the Jedi in a sort of way. Yeah, but because it's so out externally related, again, read it afterwards.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And because light of the Jedi happens over, you know, probably a couple month period, and there's even a. I believe there's like a time jump in the last couple chapters going to the dedication where everybody's trying to get to and all the other books. Even in the comics, this reading order works out just fine.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: And it's not confusing. It's not going to get all jumbled up. Yeah.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: But who wrote a test of courage?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: So test of courage was written by Justina Ireland, and that's what we're gonna say we should read next, which is pretty fairly agreed upon online with, like, the Yutini timeline, as well as, like, the few timelines that are on the subreddit, the high republic subreddit, and a few of the YouTube videos we've seen.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Justina Ireland has been writing know novels for about ten years now. She's coming into the Star wars continuity also initially with Lando.
Her first book was Lando's luck. Oh, and that was a novel, not a comic, whereas Charles Soule kind of enters into this via a comic story.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Justina Ireland is gonna come in via an actual book, but she wrote a journey to star the rise of Skywalker. She wrote Spark of the resistance, and then she all. And she also wrote that Lando's luck story, which was part of that kind of flight of the Falcon initiative that they were doing, but those were also starting in that same Skywalker era that a lot of this started with. Justina Ireland has a lot of experience in kind of dealing with these offshoot stories that don't necessarily push the main storyline but really help support it and hold it there, which is really important, especially in this initiative, because things might start off seeming like they're only a supportive thing, and then as the characters start to move in and out of each other's books, you'll start to go, oh, I really do need to know what happened with this person, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Nothing super spoilery, but one of the main characters in the book, Fernesta Rowe, was announced to be in the show, the acolyte.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: And so right there you see importance. You know, this is her first appearance, first major appearance. I think she briefly showed up in light of the Jedi towards the end of the book, but so did like, pretty much every single other Jedi in this whole initiative.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: And I would love to keep the audience completely spoiler free, but unfortunately, we know that she's not going to die. But we're also reading a children's book, so we're not exactly expecting characters to die.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: So it's, you know, you'll be fine.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: But sometimes it happens.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: But sometimes it happens.
There's also a character named Emri Canteros.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yep. And also his master, Douglas Sunveil.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Douglas Sunveil, that's right. And there's not really any major nihil of note in this. And without spoiling the first book that we just talked about, I certainly wouldn't want to get too much into the details of that anyway.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Right. I mean, we talked about the night hill in the previous episode.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And we kind of their basic there and who isn't, etc. But we don't want to go too much into there. And because, you know, who's present, who's not might give things away. So we'll. We'll hold things off there. And then there's also a couple of people who will show up in the book that are not Jedi, obviously, because not everybody is a Jedi in Star wars. Wow. Yeah, you know, you can't. You can't really truly have Star wars without a couple of Han Solos. So, yeah, we have honesty weft. He is not your Han Solo character, but he's pretty cool. And then we also have Avon Staros. Avon Staros being kind of the young, upstart, smart alec kid. And if her attitude wasn't enough, we have J Six, whose attitude is more than enough.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: So good.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: You know, sometimes there's always a.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: There's always a plucky droid, plucky, sassy droid around.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: But there's a difference between c three po, who is a worrywart, and two reals, who can be a bit of a smart aleck himself, or even chopper, or chopper, who is ready to start a war crime at any moment.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Our hero.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: But then you have your droids that are a little bit more rambunctious, like L 337. And who might, you know, cause some more problems because they actually can speak, you know, chopper. You only understand chopper after, you know, three, four seasons. Then you're like, oh, I speak chopper now. This is weird.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Very funny.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Oh, man. He swears a lot.
But L 337, I feel like, kind of walks so that J Six could run, because J six starts off much as this sort of worrywart caretaker droid. And as this series moves on, she kind of goes a little hk 47.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's cool because I think they upgrade her systems, and they do, which is a really cool aspect. We don't get to see a whole lot.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Avon Staros is constantly upgrading and tinkering with J Six, which I think is really, really cool. And we get a little bit more of that also with another book down.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: The line later on.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah, which with what is essentially a souped up gonk droid. But that's another. That's another episode for later down the line. Anyway, back to the plot, largely, we. I mean, we start on Haleyp, which ends up being a very important planet throughout the series, but then we go to a jungle moon, and we just kind of. Jungle Moon?
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah, they gotta survive because they crash there. Cause Star wars, and we kind of see how they get out of it.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Well, hit us with the main plot.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: All right, so basically, Master Douglas is the, like, martial leader of the Jedi outpost on Haleep with his Padawan Imery. Eventually, Vernestor Row, who's the youngest knighted Jedi knight in generations at 15, who got sent on a mission to escort Avon Starros, who is ghirastaros daughter and Gyrostaros is a big, major player senator. Yeah, we end up seeing a lot of her going forward in a few of the books. So one of the small things that starts here, but then again, weaves in and out of the rest of the series, which is really cool.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you choose not to read this book because it's not part of a lot of essential lists, you miss.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Out on some good intro, you miss.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Out on some really good intros. But at the very least, find out what happens in this particular story. Like, listen to our spoiler version of this episode so that you can really get the deets on who Avon Staros really is and how that starts and some of the things that she does, because it does end up coming up in later phases, some of the actions that she takes on the jungle planet going forward.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Right. So, yeah, what happens is Avon's kind of the, I guess, stuck up, sort of uppity troublemaker and gear was like, I got to do something about this. So I'm going to play Odin and send Thor to Earth. And so basically she sends her from Coruscant, where she's living and grown up and going to school, out to the outer rim to basically just see the world. She's going to see the galaxy and hoping that does something for her daughter.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: She's definitely one of those.
Too smart for her own good. Gets herself into trouble. Kids too.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Like, there's definitely that element of, oh, this is that gifted kid.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Getting into trouble all the time because they're understimulated and they're trying new things. And a lot of those things wind up involving upgrades to j six. That should not be happening when j six starts, like, swearing.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we get to see a lot of her science brain at work, which is awesome. So that happens. That's kind of how she ends up on Haley with the Jedi and the Jedi friends. And so Vernestra's first mission as a Jedi knight is to basically escort avon around to make sure she stays out of trouble for a few weeks to months. It's not really sure.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's not something that Vernestra is happy about either.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: No. But she's excited to have her first mission.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: She's excited for her first mission, but she's also kind of in this.
I am the young, I am the young knight, and therefore my job as a young knight is to babysit. Yeah, that's not necessarily exciting, but she kind of tries to take that actor perspective of, like, there's no small parts, only small actors.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: I gotta pay my mission.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Only small missions, only small Jedi.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: And she also talks to herself too, like, oh, this is an important senator's child.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Yeah. She kind of treats it as, I'm your bodyguard, J Six is your nanny. And J Six is supposed to be her nanny.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Nanny, basically.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Babysitter figure.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: But J Six is easily outsmarted by Avon because she knows all of her systems. Of course, she knows where her weak points are.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So eventually. Not eventually. It's fairly early in the book. They get invited to the starlight dedication ceremony. So this happens just after a big plot point in light of the Jedi. That'll affect things.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: But the book starts, technically before light of the Jedi even begins. The very beginning of the book. Multiple pages, it said it starts.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: The prologue is. Yeah.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: So this book starts before, but very quickly becomes kind of concurrent with what's going on.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: And then eventually matches up with this, but because of how removed it is.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Even I, who I will be the first to tell you I am not happy with super out of chronological order, like, reading things, especially with, like, big events.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: I want everything to kind of happen beforehand, unless everything is intentionally chronologically distorted. Like a Tarantino film.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Which will come up a lot in future conversations about reading orders.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Oh, we'll get there. Yeah.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: For me, I still feel like this book in its entirety should take. Should be read after Light of the Jedi.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So, like I said, they. They get invited to go to the starlight beacon dedication ceremony and on their way, some things happen and.
Yeah, and that's where the rest of the book happens.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And most of this information we've told you you're going to learn anyway within the book, but when you get to it, you'll think you'll have an easier time remembering it once you have, if you've listened to this and then go into reading. So cool.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Great.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: And, uh, I think that kind of.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Without giving anything else away, everything else I want to talk about is. Is spoilers.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Very spoiler. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that's pretty much it for the books. Uh, like we said, a lot of these characters that are introduced in some of these storylines do kind of bleed out into the comic books, which we're gonna talk about next episode.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: I'm very confident that going forward from this particular story wave that going forward, you'll want everything else. If you read these and you're into it.
You're gonna love everything that goes forward from it. Definitely. It only gets better. And I thought Light of the Jedi was fantastic. The character, the guy from Star wars explained, says it's one of his favorite books in Star wars canon.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Alex.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Yep, and I truly feel like this was such a strong start for this, and I think we can talk a little bit more about that in our spoilery episode that kind of breaks down the actual plots of these, but please go read them, and if you have, tell us what you think. Make sure you find us on our socials. Go ahead and smash that like button and and subscribe to this podcast so that you can get informed when we post the next ones. If you're listening exclusively to the spoilery ones, then let us know that you're doing that. Let us know how you're liking it. Let us know what you want to talk about. You can find us on Instagram at the Starlight Archive podcast, and you can, of course, find us at our other channel, Sneakygeek, which is our kind of flagship podcast for our network. And then, of course, you can find myself at brycerankins and Brian at Brom 1137. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast, so we'll catch you next time. And in the words of Elzar man, the force doesn't feel the need to announce its actions. It just acts.
