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paulviebranz 's review for:
Tempest Runner
by Cavan Scott
Star Wars: The High Republic - Tempest Runner is the third fully-produced Star Wars audio drama released in the past few years, after Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott, and Doctor Aphra (adapted from the first volume of the Marvel comics by Kieron Gillen). Tempest Runner is also written by Scott, and performed by a full cast.
I've read all of the High Republic material to date, with the exception of the second arc of the High Republic Adventures comics by Daniel José Older, and the Edge of Balance manga by Justina Ireland that was just released this week. Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, the novel that kicked off the era, is my favorite Star Wars book of all time, and Scott's own The Rising Storm is very near the top of my list as well. Indeed, I've greatly enjoyed the whole publishing program as a whole so far.
One thing that has always felt a bit off to me, though, was the Nihil. I love the look, and I love the idea of this entropic, chaotic force challenging the Jedi through these amoral pirates. But in all their appearances, they have felt somewhat inconsistent to me. In Light of the Jedi, they're introduced as cold-blooded killers obsessed only with money and drugs, who don't care at all for any rules.
Yet... they have their own hierarchy, their own ways of doing things, that ARE structured, for all their talk of doing whatever they want. This kind of gap between their ethos and how they operate might be deliberate-- maybe we are MEANT to question them, to understand that while they're absolutely dangerous, they're still people, and people, on the whole, aren't simply evil for the sake of it, no matter what kind of game they talk.
Then there's Nan, from Claudia Gray's Into the Dark, and more recently and more confusingly, Ireland's Out of the Shadows. Nan is a young female Nihil who winds up having to put on a charade of normalcy to evade detection by the Jedi on a space station in the former book--and that's all well and good--but then in the latter, she's framed as tied directly to the Eye of the Nihil, and as some sort of super bad-ass spy... but it's entirely unclear WHY, or WHAT she is good at.
All of this to say, there's a bit of a trend of telling and not showing with the Nihil. To be sure, the Great Disaster and the attack on the Republic Fair on Valo were horrific attacks; they're definitely bad news. But from the uncertain role of Marchion Ro in the Nihil's power structure to the unpredictable loyalty or lack thereof between any given members of the group, they're tricky to pin down, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
So going into a story entirely about Lourna Dee, the Tempest Runner whom the Republic have mistaken as the leader of the Nihil, I had reservations about how the Nihil as a whole would be presented. As it turns out, the majority of the audio drama does not directly involve the Nihil much, beyond Lourna herself and a few others, plus the return of Pan Eyta.
I think that Tempest Runner did a good job presenting the Nihil, finally, as an organization that truly IS without constancy-- loyalty is always in flux, backstabbing abounds, and I think their lack of a unified vision will be their downfall before long. We see how, once taken out of the immediate violent energy of the gang of pirates, the individual Nihil are all people, capable of change, sometimes even willing to do so. They all have a past before the Nihil, and many of them are more than willing to cut and run when the going gets tough.
Lourna's backstory, as a de facto princess, and then a military grunt, was very surprising. Her continual rebellion against authority reframes her violence against the Republic, and the Jedi specifically, as deeply grounded in personal issues with anybody in power, and I love that.
But I have to say, at the end of the day, this book could be summed up in just about one sentence: Lourna Dee was captured by the Republic, but managed to escape with a new loyal crew, and return to the crippled Nihil in a position to assume an even greater role in their ranks. She underwent a journey of self-discovery, learning to trust not only her physical strength, cunning, and ruthlessness, but to make her own decisions, and take EVERYTHING she wants, including power, without subterfuge or trickery. She tried doing the right thing and found, in the end, she just didn't want to-- she wanted to take control, so she did.
But I'm not convinced she ended the story in a terribly different place than she started. Of course, as they say, "it's the journey, not the destination," but I wasn't always very invested in the various subplots, as many of the secondary characters weren't fleshed out beyond "jailed mob boss" or "gruff military guy."
I suppose we'll have to wait and see how her dynamic with Marchion Ro will change, but beyond the death of Pan Eyta and Lourna taking on more power in the Nihil, this one felt a little underwhelming.
I've read all of the High Republic material to date, with the exception of the second arc of the High Republic Adventures comics by Daniel José Older, and the Edge of Balance manga by Justina Ireland that was just released this week. Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, the novel that kicked off the era, is my favorite Star Wars book of all time, and Scott's own The Rising Storm is very near the top of my list as well. Indeed, I've greatly enjoyed the whole publishing program as a whole so far.
One thing that has always felt a bit off to me, though, was the Nihil. I love the look, and I love the idea of this entropic, chaotic force challenging the Jedi through these amoral pirates. But in all their appearances, they have felt somewhat inconsistent to me. In Light of the Jedi, they're introduced as cold-blooded killers obsessed only with money and drugs, who don't care at all for any rules.
Yet... they have their own hierarchy, their own ways of doing things, that ARE structured, for all their talk of doing whatever they want. This kind of gap between their ethos and how they operate might be deliberate-- maybe we are MEANT to question them, to understand that while they're absolutely dangerous, they're still people, and people, on the whole, aren't simply evil for the sake of it, no matter what kind of game they talk.
Then there's Nan, from Claudia Gray's Into the Dark, and more recently and more confusingly, Ireland's Out of the Shadows. Nan is a young female Nihil who winds up having to put on a charade of normalcy to evade detection by the Jedi on a space station in the former book--and that's all well and good--but then in the latter, she's framed as tied directly to the Eye of the Nihil, and as some sort of super bad-ass spy... but it's entirely unclear WHY, or WHAT she is good at.
All of this to say, there's a bit of a trend of telling and not showing with the Nihil. To be sure, the Great Disaster and the attack on the Republic Fair on Valo were horrific attacks; they're definitely bad news. But from the uncertain role of Marchion Ro in the Nihil's power structure to the unpredictable loyalty or lack thereof between any given members of the group, they're tricky to pin down, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
So going into a story entirely about Lourna Dee, the Tempest Runner whom the Republic have mistaken as the leader of the Nihil, I had reservations about how the Nihil as a whole would be presented. As it turns out, the majority of the audio drama does not directly involve the Nihil much, beyond Lourna herself and a few others, plus the return of Pan Eyta.
I think that Tempest Runner did a good job presenting the Nihil, finally, as an organization that truly IS without constancy-- loyalty is always in flux, backstabbing abounds, and I think their lack of a unified vision will be their downfall before long. We see how, once taken out of the immediate violent energy of the gang of pirates, the individual Nihil are all people, capable of change, sometimes even willing to do so. They all have a past before the Nihil, and many of them are more than willing to cut and run when the going gets tough.
Lourna's backstory, as a de facto princess, and then a military grunt, was very surprising. Her continual rebellion against authority reframes her violence against the Republic, and the Jedi specifically, as deeply grounded in personal issues with anybody in power, and I love that.
But I have to say, at the end of the day, this book could be summed up in just about one sentence: Lourna Dee was captured by the Republic, but managed to escape with a new loyal crew, and return to the crippled Nihil in a position to assume an even greater role in their ranks. She underwent a journey of self-discovery, learning to trust not only her physical strength, cunning, and ruthlessness, but to make her own decisions, and take EVERYTHING she wants, including power, without subterfuge or trickery. She tried doing the right thing and found, in the end, she just didn't want to-- she wanted to take control, so she did.
But I'm not convinced she ended the story in a terribly different place than she started. Of course, as they say, "it's the journey, not the destination," but I wasn't always very invested in the various subplots, as many of the secondary characters weren't fleshed out beyond "jailed mob boss" or "gruff military guy."
I suppose we'll have to wait and see how her dynamic with Marchion Ro will change, but beyond the death of Pan Eyta and Lourna taking on more power in the Nihil, this one felt a little underwhelming.