By: Christian Corah
Descriptives
Page count:
Author: Claudia Gray
Timeline: High Republic era which precedes the Skywalker Saga
Main characters: Reath Silas, Dez Rydan, Orla Jareni, Cohmac Vitus, Leox Gyasi, Affie Hollow, Geode, and others.
Brief synopsis: Following a hyperspace lane disaster, the protagonists of the story find shelter at an ancient abandoned space station that is full of mystery and danger.
Gut Feeling
I haven’t been more hyped to read a book in a long while. Claudia Gray is my favorite Star Wars author (I know I’m not alone in saying this) and the High Republic novels already have a lot of existing hype. So, this created a pretty rare combination of hypeness. While Light of the Jedi was world building and A Test of Courage was an exciting self-contained story, I expected Into the Dark to be a character driven masterpiece. While that is mostly true, the surprising strength of the book was what it added to Star Wars lore (although, maybe not so surprising considering the book’s title). This really does increase the strength of this novel. However, parts of the book surprisingly felt incomplete. Almost like Gray had to finish the book against a deadline, but I’ll talk about that more a little later. It didn’t take away from the fact that this was a fantastic novel and will likely rank with the best of them. Let’s get into the details.
Characters (9.25/10 pts)
Because Into the Dark was largely character led, it is no surprise that it scores well in this category (that and the fact that it is written by character master Clauda Gray). The talk of the book is certainly Geode, who is one of the most unique characters ever introduced to the Star Wars universe. Geode is basically just a rock surrounded by mystery. Just like the Jedi in the book, the reader never really gets to understand Geode. How does he move around? How does he communicate? How does he do anything? Who knows! And with that character limitation Geode will likely steal your heart (if he hasn’t already). Pretty creative and impressive writing from Claudia Gray.
Alright I had to talk about Geode, but it is now time to discuss the characters that have some real depth to them. Somewhat similar to Light of the Jedi, Into the Dark has many quality characters (as you can see from my “main characters'' list above). However, it is on a smaller scale than Soule’s High Republic novel. This is advantageous because it allows the characters to have more depth and they are easier to keep track of. Just examining the Jedi alone, there are some unique and strong characters. Reath Silas is coming into his own and offers us a “coming of age” archetype, Orla Jareni is the Qui-Gon Jinn pseudo Gray Jedi type, Cohmac Vitus is a scholar, and Dez Rydan seems like the closest thing we’ll get to a “celebrity Jedi''.
The only real criticism I have for the characters is I never really got the moment in the book where I felt completely gripped by the characters. This is common in books by Claudia Gray, notably near the end of Lost Stars. Claudia Gray is excellent at having these moments surround romantic relationships. I felt that there was potential for this book to have a moment like that, but it just needed more development. This is one of the areas this book didn’t feel like it met its full potential. I will likely discuss this more in the Twin Suns Book Club podcast. However, the book is still getting a strong score of 9.25 points.
Writing Style (9.5/10 pts)
Claudia Gray isn’t just one of the best Star Wars authors at creating stories, she’s also one of the best at telling them. At her best, she has a distinctive style that is compelling almost regardless of the content of the story. For the most part, Claudia Gray was at her best in Into the Dark. Even though certains aspects of the book may have had more potential, Gray doesn’t ever miss when it comes to her writing quality. With little surprise, I am giving a strong score of 9.5 points.
Plot (8/10 pts)
In a book that I must search hard to find a weakness (weakness when compared to the other strong parts of the book, the plot is still good), the plot is the only place I can turn to. For the most part it was excellent though. It felt balanced throughout with peaks and valleys that built up to a climactic finish. It was also high stakes throughout with some twists and turns that I wasn’t able to predict. This describes a pretty awesome plot for a book that is character driven. However, this section gets hurt the most by the fact that it didn’t reach its full potential. There were two key things that were mentioned in the book never really amounted to anything. They were introduced as seemingly key parts of the plot and then somewhat forgotten, or oddly written out of the plot. Great and purposeful authors like Gray never put something in a story unless it has a meaning later in the story. This is the reason why it feels like Gray may have been working against a deadline. However, that shouldn’t deter you at all from reading it. It just means that it could have been even better! I am giving a still good score of 8 points for the plot.
Intrigue (9.5/10 pts)
Intrigue was pretty high throughout the book and I think it never had a chance not to be. A High Republic novel would have to be pretty bad for it to have low intrigue. This book was written well, had an exciting plot, and compelling characters. And Gray also took advantage of the fact that this was a new time period in Star Wars. She was really allowed to get creative with what she could add to Star Wars. So, along with the great story causing me to read on, I was also compelled by the new Star Wars things that I was being introduced to. I am giving a near perfect score of 9.5 points.
What does it add? (10/10 pts)
In a book with many strong points, what it adds to the Star Wars universe stands out the most. Gray was certainly given the freedom to explore some interesting parts of this unexplored era. There are multiple things for me to touch one, the first being the Drenger. They are the villain of this story (alongside the Nihil) that frighten both the Jedi and the Sith. They seem to have an interesting relationship with the dark side of the Force causing them to be truly treacherous. I expect that we will learn even more about them in future High Republic novels (and will hopefully, hopefully see them in Acolyte). We also get some new glimpse into the Force and Sith lore which I wasn’t really expecting. I was consistently intrigued by what tidbits Gray was dropping into the story. Finally, like the other High Republic novels, we learn more about the Jedi in this period. I would go into more detail on these subjects, but that is a bit too sensitive to spoilers. You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out exactly why I am giving a perfect score of 10 points.
Logic (0 pts)
There is nothing in Into the Dark that adds to or takes away from the logic within the Star Wars universe So I am neither adding or taking away extra points for the logic.
Final Thoughts
My final score for Into the Dark is a 9.25 out of 10, or an A minus. This makes it my fourth highest ranked novel so far, out of 32 novels. So I think it is easy for me to say that it lived up to the hype. I know it is a theme in this review that it felt a little incomplete, but that is only because I think it could have been even better. This had potentially to be the best Star Wars novel in Canon. While Light of the Jedi is most important to the High Republic era regarding world building, I believe this is the best story. I have no doubt that you would enjoy reading it.
I hope you enjoyed this book review and if there is a book that you want me to read or review, please let me know at christiancorah@gmail.com. As for now, I will only be doing Canon books (but in the future that might change).