Phase II
of Star Wars: The High Republic is meant to mirror the prequel trilogy
and that is nowhere more apparent than Path of Vengeance. Cavan Scott writes this final novel in the
phase, mirroring the plot progression of Revenge of the Sith, watching
someone fall from where their worldview and everything they love breaks down
around them through the manipulation tactics of a charismatic, but obviously
evil leader taking control of their culture’s dominant philosophy. That philosophy just isn’t the Jedi/Sith binary,
but the schism that has been developing within the Path of the Open Hand since
this phase began. Path of Vengeance
is a young adult novel and paired with Path of Deceit, and now that my
reading of the phase is over, it becomes clear that this pair is really where
the story arc of the phase succeeds its best.
Convergence and Cataclysm are a pair of books that are
more concerned with the actual Jedi than the Path, same with The Battle of
Jedha, an audio drama that I ended up listening to because reading Star Wars
books are part of a book exchange with my friend. It’s incredibly interesting to see that the
heaviest material and most interesting character exploration is in the pair of
young adult novels, the adult novels having the potential to be just as interesting
and are just as important, but one of those just didn’t work and suffer from having
a writer who wasn’t quite on the same page as everyone else. Path of Deceit and Path of Vengeance
as a duology is honestly just an excellent example of showing someone’s rise,
corruption, and fall.
Scott had
a monumental task laid out before him in writing this, he has to tie up all of
the threads knowing that because this is a young adult book, there is
inherently a larger audience of adult Star Wars fans who have already committed
to The High Republic and the traditional young adult audience, also
likely a majority fans, who likely wouldn’t be committing to reading the material
aimed at adults. This is also attempting
to tie together multimedia stories into one, so there is a lot of the first act
of the novel to be recapping a lot of what went on in Convergence and Cataclysm,
especially Cataclysm as things build to the Path of the Open Hand
fleeing to Dalna where much of the rest of the novel takes place. Path of Vengeance does get dragged
down because of this slightly, it becomes one of those necessary extended
points of exposition and catch up, while Scott makes it largely compelling it
does feel a little redundant after immediately reading Cataclysm. Scott also makes use of multiple point of
view characters, which is fine, but whenever we’re not in the perspective of
the Ro cousins, the book ends up lacking ever so slightly. Now this is another aspect of the multimedia
project tying together other storylines, I was informed Scott was writing the
comics at the time and that clearly influences how much of the final act of
this novel was written. There is a
Padawan character, Matty, who gets quite a bit of point of view, but sadly his
narrative just isn’t as compelling as the main narrative. This isn’t really a book about the Jedi, it’s
about the Path having begun to splinter, continuing to splinter, and part of that
splinter becoming the Nihil from Phase I.
Path of
Vengeance is a
novel that belongs primarily to Marda Ro; poor, traumatized Marda Ro. Plagued with visions of Kevmo, the internal
conflict of despising the Jedi while loving one of them who has died, and being
completely taken in by the Mother who has been manipulating her the entire time,
so much of Path of Vengeance is putting her as the analogue to Anakin
Skywalker, except her ending is much less dark and her fall is actually better
written. Yana Ro, her cousin, is the
other primary point of view character, and her story is equally interesting and
far more violent in terms of the radicalization by the end, but then again
there is more interesting about who Marda actually is and what makes her
tick. The entire third act of the novel
actually gives itself over to fantasy, becoming closer to a thriller novel as forces
greater than Marda are eventually released.
The actual establishment of the Nihil is something that happens on the
very last page of the novel, and only indirectly by symbol and not name, an important
distinction because unlike the film series that this multimedia project is
emulating, there was clearly an arc planned from the very beginning.
Overall, Path
of Vengeance and indeed the entire Phase II of The High Republic has
been one of those stories that I’m very glad I was able to experience, even if
there are still issues here that don’t quite work. The book is quite long, especially for a
young adult novel, but Cavan Scott is a writer whose prose is excellent and his
strengths have always been writing characters, especially characters going
through their own personal hell and falling down because of it (look at his
early Doctor Who work with Mark Wright for other examples of that). This is Marda Ro’s world and we’re sadly all
living in it. 8/10.
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