Hogan Reviews

The Battle of Jedha is a full length audio drama from Audible, and while normally that means still plenty of prose bookends this time it’s more akin to the Big Finish style audio dramas I’m accustomed to and I really enjoyed it! Admittedly I’m still a little miffed at this prequel side step phase but at least this was not only exciting but put focus on Jedha after it was talked up so much during Rogue One as a former holy place for Force Users. So let’s take a look!

The story picks up right after Convergence as the peace treaty between Eiram and E’ronoh is about to be signed on the neutral world of Jedha, with representatives of both planets in attendance and Master Creighton Sun (Raphael Corkhill) and Knight Aida Forte (Kristen Sieh) also in toe to make sure things go smoothly. In a pre-credits flashforward though we’re made sure we know that things don’t go smoothly as a riot and a crashing speederbike put an end to the signing, but that’s not until later…

They obviously thought to bring that scene forward because it does take a while for the story to really pick up. We actually open with Creighton and Aida talking with Gella Nattai (Cassandra Morris) about how the two heirs will unite their planets but establishing that they stayed behind to concentrate on relief efforts, with Gella helping before heading off to become a Wayseeker as revealed at the end of the book. It was a nice bit of connecting plus it got people caught up if they hadn’t read Convergence. Speaking of getting people caught up we’re soon introduced to Jedi Master Silandra Sho (Catherine Ho) who was introduced in the YA book that I never got round to reading, but it didn’t take long for me to get a good feel for the character, the fact that she’s reeling from the loss of her Padawan and her unique energy shield to go along with the traditional lightsabre. She is on Jedha for a break, to look around the “holy city” and refind herself and its here we get told about several landmarks including “The Protector”, the massive Jedi statue seen buried in the sands during the Jedha establishing shot in Rogue One, at this point still standing. Sadly she also bumps into Marda Ro (Shannon Tyo) and the Path of the Open Hand, who are doing their best to come across as peacekeepers to the people of Jedha while painting the Jedi in their usual negative light. We get a brief scene in their Almshouse where The Mother (January LaVoy) and The Herald (John Pirkis) discuss matters including the Leveller that Mother has apparently brought with her.

The clean coverart! Always nice to see characters like Creighton Sun and Aida Forte given their novel / audio only appearances so far. (Concept art for Sun from the previous book notwithstanding…)

Next we meet young adjunct to the Church of the Force Keth Cerepath (Brandon McInnis) and his droid P3-7A (Sean Kenin Elias-Reyes) who amusing can only communicate via religious scripture. He heads into a bar and is generally firmly established as someone who wants to do well and achieve something meaningful, which leads him to be assigned to “babysit” some of the officials on Jedha for the signing, specifically the mediator Morton San Tekka (Phillip Hernandez). At a reception party we’re introduced to the final few key characters in E’ronoh Ambassador Tintak (can’t find his voice actor…) and Eiram Ambassador Cerox (Salli Saffioti), both of whom are eager to get this over and done with. After some more scenes with the Path’s propaganda and Creighton and Silandra meeting (apparently they’re old friends) we get to the signing, where Keth arrives late and sneaks his droid in for good measure, which is immediately suspicious as the treaty is interrupted mid-speech by a droid who charges in and explodes, killing San Tekka but luckily not either of the Ambassadors.

For the next while we get all three Jedi searching for the culprit, Keth being suspect no. 1, and the Path scheme about finding significant Force objects like the “Rod of Daybreak” and generally blaming the explosion on the Force “levelling itself” against all the manipulating of it the Jedi do. I believe the artefacts search is connected to the comics, which I’m a few months behind on, so… oh well! As you’d imagine both sides of the treaty suspect the other as being behind the bombing, some even suggesting they saw someone in armour of the opposing planet fiddling with a droid before the incident so tensions are running extremely high. Another fun thing was during Silandra’s investigation she comes across a sect of Dark Side force users called the “Brotherhood of the Ninth Door” who all wear bone masks and unsurprisingly people stay away from them. She also meets with The Mother and feels the psychological effects of the Leveller nearby and we hear that Tilson Graf (Sullivan Jones) of the notorious “hyperspace prospecting dynasty” had been appointed the new mediator.

This concept art was for her book appearance, but hey-ho, still works for her audio appearance!

It all leads into the disastrous second signing heard at the start of the play followed by the titular Battle of Jedha, but I’ll get to that in the spoiler section. It’s a very good production, the voice cast is great (amusingly Corkhill‘s Creighton Sun veers quite closely to Obi-Wan Kenobi, which is how I described him in the previous review!) and the mostly re-used music from the films and the sound-effects are on par too. Obviously being the first audio drama set in this period and these characters having only appeared in text once each it took a little while to recognise who was who but the voices were distinct enough that it didn’t take long. It was a great story really, hopefully it’s all building to not only something equally as great but something that properly connects this to the Phase 1 time period and justifies the whole backwards time jump thing… (Yes I’m still going on about that!)

Overall Thoughts:

The Battle of Jedha was a great sweeping story full of fun, well-voiced characters and plenty of action at the end of it. It’s well worth going out of your way to listen to (or read the script book if you’re really anti-audio!) and the highlight of Phase 2 so far, but then I’ve only read one book and two comic issues so far so… that’s not saying much at the moment!

The riot going out outside the signing is caused by Path of the Open Hand’s Herald, who intentionally riles up the locals seemingly to cover for his own plan to do with the Leveller and the ancient artefacts, again I assume that will be covered in more detail in the comics, the main thing is that during this riot Ambassador Tintak is shot dead by someone riding a speeder and that’s the final straw as the riot then turn into a battlefield as both Eiram and E’ronoh deploy troops to the holy city and begin all out warfare, with Ambassador Cerox declaring the peace period over and even admitting being thankful because they never wanted it any other way. During the mass outbreak of violence Creighton, Silandra and Aida, along with the Guardians of the Wills (like the blind guy from Rogue One!) all try and stop the rioters and the soldiers from killing each other and the fleeing civilians, with Silandra being accompanied by Keth (whose robot returned revealing he wasn’t responsible) and finding out the true culprit as a member of the Brotherhood of the Ninth Door who can change his appearance at will, allowing him to frame both sides and really stir the pot. He manages to get the better of Silandra and is about to kill her but Keth intervenes and saves her at the cost of his life. The assassin is also killed, but that’s of little comfort to Silandra, who came to Jedha to get over the loss of a young life in the first place.

Threw up the cover to break up the text but it’s just the nice art from up above with writing all over it… Still nice though, for the record!

As the battle intensifies The Protector statue is brought down (so that’s the origin of that…) and the Jedi help with saving civilians while the Path of the Open Hand are more interested in recapturing the Leveller and leaving on the Gaze Electric, leading to a complete flip of perception from the local populous. Turns out they were actually responsible for the breakout of war, not just The Herald stirring up the people but doing a deal with Tilson Graf who in turn hired the Brotherhood of the Ninth Door assassins to do the deeds. Tilson is betrayed by The Mother as she fled, killed before he could tell anyone of their involvement, though the Brotherhood assassin had made sure to expose Graf before his own death. As things really heat up Creighton Sun is able to give a motivation speech to both sides of the war as they’re about to open fire with the Jedi in the middle of them, motivational enough that everyone drops their weapons and leaves in their troop carriers. The Battle of Jedha is over but the war is back on, the Jedi and indeed the High Republic look quite inept as a result.