Tales of Light and Life is a collection of short stories set both during Phase 2 and just before Phase 3, making this sort of an epilogue and a prologue at the same time, and like all short story collections there are some good ones and some bad ones, as well as some really quite pointless middling ones. Still though, I love me some High Republic so I couldn’t pass it up, even if it was mysteriously not available on the UK Kindle store unlike the rest of the series… Anyway! Let’s take a look!
May as well go through them in order, but I’ll leave the one or two bits of spoilery material for the Spoiler section. The first story is “The Queen’s Bloom” and focuses on Axel Greylark from his teenage years and this is one of the stories where I felt it was fine as a story but I don’t know why it was written. Axel as a character has gone through all the ups and downs (mostly downs to be fair) and come out the other side a character that’s hard to have much sympathy for but it was a fun ride to go on. Going back to the Phase 2 character on the verge of Phase 3 and not telling us anything new or interesting seems like a waste. He and his friends sneak into a rich person’s party where Axel is shocked to find his parents and so he has to hide the fact that he’s sneaked off only to find a group of thieves and killers dressing up as the staff to rob the place, including a girl Axel thought was his friend and possible love interest. It was fine, and the scenes with Axel and his Dad showed us their close relationship we were only told about but like I said at the end of it I wondered why I read that story and especially why it kicked the anthology off. Very weird.
The next story is the exact opposite, it’s a story set after Phase 2 and shows us a key bit of lore missing from it. “A Closed Fist Has No Claws” focuses on Marda Ro after she turned on The Mother of the Path of the Open Hand and took control of what remains of the religious order onboard the Gaze Electric and it shows us how she slowly starts the group on the path of becoming the Nihil. She starts off trying to find other members of her race and slowly downplays the religious aspects in favour of stealing to get what they need in order for her to achieve her goal. It’s a good tale of how the sweet and innocent girl began recruiting strong criminal types and even how she helped kill a Jedi and how her wiping his blood on the wall created a logo similar to the Nihil, stuff like that. Not to mention that she has the Great Leveller in the bowls of her ship but realises it she won’t be able to keep it forever, leading to it being sealed away until the current Phase 1/3 crisis.
A very simple cover, making for a rather dull review thumbnail, but hey-ho…
We then get a couple of more simple stories as “Shield of the Jedi” is a mostly light-hearted story about Rooper, a Padawan under Silandra Sho who is given a final trial of finding her Master’s shield and learning lessons along the way. It’s a nice break after the bleaker Marda Ro story. Then “The Lonely Traveller is Home” sees Padawan Ram Jomaram feeling homesick (which is odd for a Jedi but I guess the High Republic wasn’t quite as strict with the child-napping) and a bunch of his friends throw a party for him on Starlight Beacon. I didn’t care for this story at all frankly, it was like a children’s story written with more mature prose and so it just felt… off. Thankfully “After the Fall” is a return to form as we get our first glimpse of post Starlight Beacon fall life as the crew of The Vessel, Affie, Leox and Geode, are stuck on Eiram due to all the traffic being tied up with the rescue efforts and so the crew begin to help the people of the planet by offering off-world transmissions from their ship and helping relief efforts but this leads to Affie getting confronted by a member of the Byne Guild, the same guild she was a member of and took down (in admittedly a book I didn’t read, but hey. Easy to infer what happened here…) and by the end of the story Affie finds a new goal in life after being inspired by her time helping people and that’s to reform the guild under her leadership and use it for good. It’s a good story and I enjoy the crew of the Vessel from their appearance in “The Fallen Star” so it was good to see more of them.
The crashing of Starlight Beacon… (reusing a few old pictures from prior High Republic reviews to break the text up…)
“The Force Provides” sees Vernestra Rwoh finding herself in something of a crisis of faith after Starlight’s fall and so ends up travelling around until, well, the Force provides a seemingly innocent older woman who gets targeted by some hired goons. Vernestra ends up travelling with the woman back to her home and stopping some bad guys (to simplify it as much as possible without spoilers) and ends up reaffirmed with her place as a Jedi in the galaxy. “All Jedi Walk Their Own Path” is my highlight of the book as it focuses on Bell Zettifar in the wake of the Starlight Beacon crash as he clings to the idea that his Wookie friend Burryaga might still be alive. This reminds him of when he thought his master Loden Greatstorm was alive when nobody else did and so we end up getting two stories in one as we get a flashback story of Bell and Loden on a planet stuck in endless war where Loden insists on staying in one small town and through the acts of kindness turns the people around in an act he hopes will then inspire other towns to do the same and maybe, just maybe, the planet will one day be at peace. In order to get out to the wreckage of Starlight Bell becomes a crew member of a fishing boat and using the lessons of those days with Loden endears himself with the other fishermen who start off less than willing to trust a Jedi after their great Starlight Beacon just caused a major disaster across their planet. Does he achieve his goal? Find out in the spoilers! I will say though that I really enjoyed the story, especially the flashback scenes with Loden, he was such a nice guy… *sigh* Now I’m sad again…
Bell rides a steed into battle (in the background… just) Wow, remember this artwork from the first novel? Seems like ages ago now…
“Light in the Darkness” focuses on new characters Hoi and Kian as they struggle in the Outer Rim due to the Nihil’s barrier stopping the High Republic forces, including Jedi, from reaching them. Hoi has lost all faith in the Jedi ever helping them and now believes the Republic’s promise of the peaceful united galaxy to be an impossibility while Kian still holds on to the hope. It’s a good story but I’ll admit to my attention drifting in parts. Lastly we have “The Call of Coruscant” and sadly this is the worst one of the lot. It follows new characters again (at least new to me, they may have appeared in the younger readers stories) this time Jedi Master Mirro Lox and his Padawan Amadeo Azzazzo and basically Amadeo is a country bumpkin type who only knows of his backwards home planet and the Jedi temples and so while in Coruscant he ends up seeing the big lights of the city and going off with his new city friends to experience this unique style of life for a night. I had zero attachment to any of these characters and the story was a dull cliché. I mean I guess it was a Padawan who was losing faith after the Starlight Beacon thing manages to find happiness again in a new experience, or something? Pfft. Either way, did not work for me and was a real shame to end a fun anthology on such a sour note.
Overall Thoughts:
Like all short story collections “Tales of Light and Life” had some standout stories, some fine but forgettable stories, and sadly some poor stories, though at least the latter is only really two stories I actually didn’t like. It also had one key thing I felt was left out of Phase 2 (Marda Ro and the Path of the Open Hand’s slow turn towards the Nihil) and answered a lingering question I didn’t think we’d get an answer about until Phase 3 proper (Burryaga’s fate) Overall a fun collection for a fan of the High Republic like myself and generally a well written anthology but not something I’m going to rush to read again.
A few notable things:
In “A Closed Fist Has No Claws” Marda Ro does meet other Evereni and finds out about their natural instinct to betray and kill each other but it doesn’t stop her from eventually recruiting an Evereni duo and even keeping the one she doesn’t kill (to be fair she had a faithful servant who was killed shortly beforehand by the other Evereni, it wasn’t totally living up to her species nature). I assume the male she keeps around is who she eventually has a child with, thus securing the Ro line down to its current head. “The Force Provides” had a fun, though quite easy to see coming twist of the old lady actually being a famous rebel who wanted to retire with her son and his family only to find out that his son’s wife was actually against her as well due to figuring out her identity. Names escape me, as I’m sure you can tell, but it was a fun story anyway…
The cover of the very first novel, complete with Burryaga and Loden Greatstorm…
Most importantly did Bell find Burryaga in “All Jedi Walk Their Own Path”? The answer is yes! Hooray! Bell eventually senses the Wookie and is able to take a dangerous path via a submersible and rescue the starving and distressed Jedi. All is well… well, okay the galaxy is still in a pretty buggered up state, but still! Bell and Burryaga are reunited and Bell didn’t lose yet another person close to him, which is a nice change. About time Bell caught some sort of break…
Hogan Reviews 