As I move into the third Star Wars book with
Cavan Scott’s The Rising Storm, continuing the High Republic era of
stories, I am reminded of my experience with the prequel trilogy. Star Wars has always had political
commentary, much of the original trilogy has its roots in deriding the Vietnam
War with the Empire largely representing the United States. The prequel trilogy is equally political,
though also completely through the storytelling lens of George Lucas which
largely failed due to issues with pacing, dialogue, and just muddling some of
the themes. The Rising Storm is
the first of these High Republic novels that feels as if it is taking George
Lucas’ themes of political corruption and how that can begin the crumbling of a
democratic republic as represented by the High Republic. Now Cavan Scott clearly hasn’t written a
novel that completely encompasses these themes as this is a novel that is one early
installment in a multi-year initiative to explore the era, but Scott makes the
all important effort to show the early stages of corruption, mainly through
alliances being made with the Hutts which is essentially shorthand for a government
dealing with the mob. The Rising
Storm is as close as a direct sequel to Light of the Jedi that could
be with a completely different writer, pushing the timeline one year in the
future which assists in making this easier to get into without having to be
bogged down with the continuity details of the previous novel which is wonderful.
Scott as a writer also clearly had more experience in
novel writing than Charles Soule, understanding how to make a breakneck pace of
a novel, especially as the plot moves towards a quite explosive climax. This is not done with a countdown to the
climax a la Light of the Jedi, but by Scott decreasing the length of the
chapters as they increase on average, though also understanding that sometimes
a chapter may need to be longer than a previous chapter. Though like Light of the Jedi Scott is
dealing with many, many characters, not all being given perhaps enough time to
be fleshed out. The characters at least
on this read who I found the most interesting to follow were Bell Zettefer, and
Chancellor Soh, at least on the side of the Jedi Where Scott does succeed are the several philosophical
discussions on the Jedi and their relationships with one another.
Sex is something that Star Wars as a franchise
feels a little too light on necessarily including, especially with the prequel
trilogy largely establishing the rule about Jedi Knights and Masters not being
able to be married, as well as a general discouragement of sexual
relations. The Rising Storm
actually posits that perhaps the no marriage and no sex rule isn’t as set in
stone as possible: characters have sex in this novel, though not explicitly
depicted, and there are discussions about how that relates to their emotions. This is largely something drawing on real
world Buddhist and Hindu ideas of nirvana and enlightenment, not allowing one’s
emotions to truly rule them, the Jedi being explicitly written as having to put
the needs of the Order and others before their own personal feelings. It’s something Claudia Gray equally worked
with in Into the Dark, though for a younger audience, and feels as a
natural theme for the High Republic novels.
It’s paired nicely with the exploration of the Nihil as villains,
largely being as complex as the Republic in terms of a society. The Nihil are very human villains and seeing events
from their perspective is excellent, large point of views with their agents and
how their plans can largely be one step ahead of the Republic. It’s also nice to have a faction of
antagonists who aren’t the Sith.
Overall, The Rising Storm shows that Cavan Scott,
while wonderful on audio, is equally competent as a novelist. While the novel suffers from being a bit
overstuffed with characters and occasionally cutting away too early from a
plotline, it’s quite the fun read from start to finish, feeling like an action
movie put to page in a great way. The
philosophical discussions comparing the Jedi, Nihil, and the Republic are the
high point especially when some of the characters sadly don’t have enough time
to always be as developed as they can be.
7/10.
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