Hogan Reviews

Phase III of the High Republic continues, at last. “Temptation of the Force” was a good read and leaves things in an interesting place heading into the era’s grand finale, shame that the next and final book isn’t out until spring next year! Arrgh! Oh well, this book sets some things up nicely and moves Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann forward in a really interesting way, so let’s take a look!

The main focus of the book, as the cover will tell you, is Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann. The two have shown an incredibly strong bond that even when the events of the previous book kept them on the other side of the galaxy (and the other side of the Nihil’s impenetrable “Storm Wall”) they managed to get through to each other and realise how much stronger they are when together. As they reconvene on Coruscant it starts becoming something more akin to love, something that Avar is willing to embrace, after all it’s the will of the Force, but Elzar is more reluctant, after all the Jedi don’t encourage attachment due to the whole fear of loss being a path to the darkside thing. It’s an interesting dynamic, but for the first half of the book it’s put on the backburner as each of them has their own task, with Elzar helping out the Republic’s leader Lina Soh tackle unpleasant negotiations with the likes of the Nihil’s Ghirra Starros (and getting an offer to join the Jedi Council) while Avar is leading incursions into the Occlusion Zone thanks to a way to punch small holes through the Storm Wall being discovered (in one of the YA books…) so important people are now being evacuated thanks in part to a resistance within the Zone.

A closer look at the cover, with our leading duo front and centre!

While this has been going on a new danger has emerged: “The Blight”, a strange infection spreading on several worlds that have had the darkside-using plant creatures called Drengir on them in the past that is turning anything it touches to stone in the same manner as the terrifying Nameless creatures. Everyone’s favourite double act of Wookie Jedi Burryaga and human Jedi Bell Zettifar are the ones who end up investigating it, with the former’s strong emotional connection to nature and the flow of the Force making it extremely hard for him, especially when he makes mental contact with a dying Drengir. Another character that becomes interested in the Blight but for all the wrong reasons is Nihil leader Marchion Ro, who becomes fascinated with it, seeing it as a true form of his original plan to spread the Drengir across space but far more deadly and unstoppable. The connection to his Nameless isn’t lost on him either and he soon uses the Rod he has that controls the Nameless to not only guide them across the Blighted land but also walk across it himself without issue. He starts concocting a plan where he intentionally gets Drengir infected with the Blight and then sends them to planets important to the Republic to cripple them. Sadly this is all he does, across just a few short chapters, until the big finale. I really love Ro as a villain and I always come away from these books wanting more from him!

The first major plot point comes from the duo of spoiled rich kids who we’re supposed to like in Xylan Graf and his husband Cair San Tekka, the latter of whom is the one helping smuggle people across the Occlusion Zone and eventually reveals a method to not only safely travel through the Storm Wall in large numbers but also potentially take it down, so long as they also promise to recapture his home planet of Naboo. After Axel Greylark in Phase 2 I have had more than my fill of arrogant YAs from wealthy families going through a hard time in some attempt to make me like them, so I can’t say I found myself too attached to Cair, but there you go. It did lead to the big action centrepiece of the middle of the book as Elzar led a ship-based assault on the Storm Wall’s main power source while Avar, Burryaga, Bell and Vernestra Rwoh (now of live action fame!) head to Naboo to free it from the Nihil. While Elzar’s battle goes surprisingly well the battle on Naboo gets a little more complicated thanks to the return of two more characters in Porter Engle, who survived his near-death experience at the end of the previous book (knew they wouldn’t let him go that easily!) and his long term rival General Viess. They have a duel in the middle of everything but it gets interrupted when one of Viess’ aides brings in a Nameless, much to the displeasure of Viess herself as she wants to finally kill Engle one-on-one, so this particular showdown ends inconclusively, but it’s not their final one in this book!

It’s concept art of Cair San Tekka! …. Right, moving on.

Meanwhile Rwoh and Cair encounter a Nameless which the latter kills thanks to having no Force ability, and more impressively, and importantly, Burryaga and Bell encounter a Nameless and are cornered by it, leading to Burry channelling the fear he and Bell were experiencing and using it to drive him to move forward and strike, killing the beast before either he or Bell turned to stone. Finally, a Jedi has stood up to the Nameless terror! Great stuff. We then get another come down on Coruscant as Burry tells the Jedi Council about how he managed to stand up to the Nameless while Avar and Elzar have another meeting together. It causes Elzar to talk to Yoda, officially turning down the position on the Council and asking his advice about his feelings for Avar. The experienced Jedi Master imparts some usual vague wisdom but doesn’t outright decree it as bad, and that’s all Elzar needed to hear. Avar, Elzar, Bell, Burry and Rwoh, plus some of the non-Jedi side-characters, then head to the Occlusion Zone as they manage to figure out the likely planet where Marchion Ro himself currently is. On the way there Avar and Elzar get intimate and afterwards feel all the stronger for it…

The idea of two Jedi falling in love with each other is a really interesting one, we’ve seen what a Jedi falling in love with someone outside of the Jedi Order does, but thanks to the looser rules of the High Republic Era it’s going ahead without much resistance. Their relationship is completely believable as well, credit to all the HR writers for that and especially this book’s author in Tessa Gratton. Outside of that though it did feel like the story was resisting moving forward, the Storm Wall came down but went right back up, Porter and Viess are pretty much in the same place as they were at the start of the Phase by the end, none of the Nihil or Jedi characters are killed or injured, it feels like with the exception of bringing back the  Drengir and introducing the Blight (though I believe both of those things were already done in the YA novels…) all the major moments are being saved for the final book, which is fair enough but I would’ve like a bit more to chew on here…

Overall Thoughts:

Some great new concept art for Avar as well… Yeah, not a lot to say about them, but they do break up the review a bit at least!

“Temptation of the Force” was a good read, the development between Avar and Elzar was really well written and interesting and the few big action set pieces were really fun. It is slow in parts though, especially towards the start (as many books are) and I would’ve liked a bit more forward momentum from it, but to be fair it does set up the big finale well. Can’t wait to find out how it all ends, but sadly I’ll have to… for quite some time!

While Marchion Ro attempts to infect a Drengir with the Blight the Jedi arrive and begin to dogfight with the Nihil in the nearby area, though soon Avar, Elzar, Bell and Burryaga arrive on the surface to investigate a factory, with Bell being sent away when they sense the Nameless nearby. Sure enough, Marchion sends a mechanically enhanced Nameless off in their direction and continues his experiment but soon runs into Vernestra, who crashed her ship while trying to take out a Drengir from the sky. She followed it to where Ro was and found him walking through the Blight without issue thanks to the Rod, but due to this she was unable to go after him and he manages to escape in the Gaze Electric when it appears overhead. Meanwhile our other Jedi trio try to follow Burry’s advice and channel the fear they experience and use it as a weapon against the Nameless creature, and thanks to the extra fear of losing each other between Avar and Elzar, the former manages to channel so much fear into herself that the latter is able to move freely and so strikes the beast with his lightsabre, though sadly it doesn’t kill it and it manages to wound Avar before he finishes it off. Everyone is soon evacuated off-world.

And finally, Elzar Mann Phase III concept art. Apparently this is the first art depicting him in his “Mission Robes” so… Hooray, I guess!

I also have to mention that Porter Engle and Viess have another showdown which ends with the former victorious and to his surprise Viess runs instead of accepting defeat in their duel. As he chased her back to her ship he lets her go when she shouts back that she knows where his sister is, referring to Barash Silvain, so… that was an unexpected twist! Just how many Phase 2 characters are going to turn up alive in the Phase 1/3 “present” anyway? It’s getting a little silly now, especially including the comics… Anyway, we then get our cliffhanger as Ro asks to meet with the High Republic top brass face-to-face, so a still hurting Avar, Elzar, Yoda and a bunch of other Jedi join Lina Soh as Marchion Ro appears and throws some Blighted flowers on the floor and claims to be the only person in the galaxy who knows how to stop it…