Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsTeenaged Hijinks
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2022
This was the last major book in the phase one of the High Republic series. This is a YA entry, as most of the content in this series is aimed at younger audiences. For me this book had too many characters to keep track of and felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. The younger characters kept acting and talking like they were on Tik Tok or Snapchat. The legends books did a much better job of making you feel like you were in a different universe and that included speech. Half of this book was silly situations, especially about the popular performers. The legends book Shadow Games handled this much better, showing what a popular performer did and the perils she experienced. It also introduced the fun Dash Rendar, who traded witty exchanges with Han Solo. The bodyguard business was confusing as well. I haven't read the comics most of the young characters came from and I wasn't really interested in them. The two characters from other main novels, Cohmac and Reath Silas were inconsistent as unfortunately been the norm with different authors writing them. It was hard for me to believe this was the same character from Into the Dark. It finally came to a head at the end of the book. I had read the other canon novel Older had written, Last Shot, and it was inconsistent as well. This was better than the Fallen Star since it did do a better job of giving a sense of the location. The audio book was actually good for a Disney Press version, they finally understood that the YA books should have the same quality as the adult Random House Audio books and unfortunately, Marc Thompson can't do them all. Todd did a great job of narration and character voices.
The High Republic for me has generally been a disappointment, with the exception of the Rising Storm, which was the best book in the series. Since Timothy Zahn finished his Thrawn trilogy, we will not have any good adult novels. I am glad that some of the legends books are finally being given unabridged audio books and I will look forward to those. We won't be seeing novels of the caliber of Darth Plageius or the Heir to the Empire series and that is a shame for the adult audience.