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neilrcoulter 's review for:
Race To Crashpoint Tower
by Daniel José Older
Race to Crashpoint Tower is like a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (or, in Star Wars lingo, “Tag and Bink Were Here”) side story that takes place mostly on Valo during the Nihil attack on the Republic Fair. Some of the characters and events from The Rising Storm, which told the fuller story of that battle, are glimpsed from a distance in this book. But unlike Tag and Bink, Race to Crashpoint Tower isn’t a comedic retelling from another perspective; it’s just more stuff that was happening at the same time as the previous book. And that makes me wonder: why not tell the whole story in one novel? Instead of being drawn in and intrigued by the addition of new actions into the previous story, I feel annoyed. Anyway, because this book is almost a non-story and the writing style is pretty bad, I’ll write some more general thoughts about the High Republic series.
As the fifth volume in the High Republic series (not counting graphic novels), this would seem to be a good time to stop introducing fifty new characters in each book. But no. The difficulty is that when a new character enters, I have to ponder: Is this a brand-new character who has never appeared before? a minor character who was mentioned in a previous book? a major character I’ve totally forgotten? the main character in a previous book that I’ve somehow missed? The answer could be any of those, and so the High Republic is a really dispiriting method of storytelling. I don’t want to put the book down and check Wookieepedia every time a character is mentioned.
That’s related to another major flaw in the High Republic endeavor: spreading the story across different kinds of books. What is the point of publishing books for different audiences if you have to have read all of the books of every level in order to understand what’s happening in the story? There is no way someone could read the “young readers” novel Race to Crashpoint Tower without having read the “grown-ups” novel The Rising Storm. I don’t understand how this publishing strategy makes sense. This is only the second year of High Republic books, and I have tried my best to read everything and in the proper order, and still I’m lost.
Of all the many, many characters who have been introduced so far in the High Republic, the only one I find interesting is Vernestra, who makes some brief but unimportant appearances in Race to Crashpoint Tower. I imagine that eventually the High Republic will coalesce around her as the only character who has the potential to carry all the narrative weight. (I’m even cynical enough to guess that this was the authors’ plan all along, but they want us to think that we’re making our own decision about which character should take the central focus. I mean, how far could a story go with a moody, introverted Wookiee Jedi? Obviously he was never in the running to be the main character.) Still, though, even with Vernestra there’s little reason that she had to exist in a different era from what we’ve seen in the movies. She could easily live in the prequel era. Actually, she would have been excellent as one of Luke’s students after Return of the Jedi—if the sequel trilogy had been . . . well, other than what it was.
As the fifth volume in the High Republic series (not counting graphic novels), this would seem to be a good time to stop introducing fifty new characters in each book. But no. The difficulty is that when a new character enters, I have to ponder: Is this a brand-new character who has never appeared before? a minor character who was mentioned in a previous book? a major character I’ve totally forgotten? the main character in a previous book that I’ve somehow missed? The answer could be any of those, and so the High Republic is a really dispiriting method of storytelling. I don’t want to put the book down and check Wookieepedia every time a character is mentioned.
That’s related to another major flaw in the High Republic endeavor: spreading the story across different kinds of books. What is the point of publishing books for different audiences if you have to have read all of the books of every level in order to understand what’s happening in the story? There is no way someone could read the “young readers” novel Race to Crashpoint Tower without having read the “grown-ups” novel The Rising Storm. I don’t understand how this publishing strategy makes sense. This is only the second year of High Republic books, and I have tried my best to read everything and in the proper order, and still I’m lost.
Of all the many, many characters who have been introduced so far in the High Republic, the only one I find interesting is Vernestra, who makes some brief but unimportant appearances in Race to Crashpoint Tower. I imagine that eventually the High Republic will coalesce around her as the only character who has the potential to carry all the narrative weight. (I’m even cynical enough to guess that this was the authors’ plan all along, but they want us to think that we’re making our own decision about which character should take the central focus. I mean, how far could a story go with a moody, introverted Wookiee Jedi? Obviously he was never in the running to be the main character.) Still, though, even with Vernestra there’s little reason that she had to exist in a different era from what we’ve seen in the movies. She could easily live in the prequel era. Actually, she would have been excellent as one of Luke’s students after Return of the Jedi—if the sequel trilogy had been . . . well, other than what it was.