Light of the Jedi

A decent enough, well-written foray into the High Republic era of Star Wars. This book is the original prequel. Soule is a solid writer, and I had no issues with his prose.

I wanted to like it more than I did. I had really high hopes for the launch of the SW book series given how Disney approached it by getting writers together and building the stories out with a concerted effort, much like Kevin Feige did to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

However...what I got was an exciting, over-the-top space search-and-rescue with a whole bunch of Jedi when the Jedi were the prized peacekeepers of the Republic. There were a whole bunch of names and races thrown at me in the first few chapters, and by mid-book I realized I didn't really have a whole lot of care for any of them. The book failed to grab me the way I wanted it to. I wanted a new Luke Skywalker or Han Solo to care about. I wanted a new Din Djarin to follow. Instead, we get a whole bunch of names and non-faces that just ran in and out of my head like songs on the muzak at the grocery store.

Another big fault was going all the way back to the High Republic era. We know how the Republic falls. We know how the Jedi order gets scattered. Ultimately, to me, their stories are largely pointless because of that.

Move the franchise forward. Stop mining stories in the past, Disney.