Book Review - Nine Jedi Embark On a Final Mission to Planet X in "Star Wars: The High Republic - Trials of the Jedi"

Two weeks ago saw the release of the final adult-targeted novel in Lucasfilm Publishing’s ambitious multi-platform initiative, Star Wars: The High Republic, entitled Trials of the Jedi by author Charles Soule (Star Wars: The High Republic - Light of the Jedi). This week I finally found time to finish the book from Random House Worlds, and below are my mostly spoiler-free thoughts.

Five and a half years ago, Laughing Place was invited to attend the reveal of Lucasfilm Publishing’s exciting new “Project Luminous" initiative, which was announced to be entitled The High Republic in the Team Disney building at The Walt Disney Company’s storied Burbank lot in Southern California. I was personally honored to be at that event, and now, at the initiative’s (theoretical) conclusion, I am beyond satisfied to have followed its narrative all the way through. Trials of the Jedi wraps things up in every way that faithful readers could have possibly hoped, and then some, though it does leave at least one tantalizing plot thread open for exploration in future stories, which have already been teased by the authors involved and Lucasfilm Publishing at large.

The story of Trials of the Jedi involves nine adventurers, each of whom are chosen by the Jedi’s Order’s High Council for specific reasons, who are assigned the final mission to journey to the mysterious Planet X– we’ve visited there previously with the Path of the Open Hand in Phase II of The High Republic– bringing some of the deadly, Force-eating Nameless creatures with them to the world on which they originated. Since they’re featured on the cover, I don’t consider it a spoiler to list the Jedi who go along on the trip: it’s Elzar Mann and his not-so-secret soulmate Avar Kriss, the Wookiee Burryaga and his buddy Bell Zettifar, the ex-Jedi monster hunter Ty Yorrick, healer Torban “Buckets of Blood" Buck, Force-bond twin Terec (who reports back to Coruscant via the bond they share with their other twin, Ceret), young researcher Reath Silas, and the unpredictable dark-side user Azlin Rell. Oh, and there’s also a certain fire-breathing canine stowaway (also revealed on the back side of the cover, seen below). Each of these characters has their own part to play in the task at hand, and each gets their own time to shine as the story unfolds.

My absolute favorite thing about Trials of the Jedi is how much Charles Soule builds upon and incorporates pretty much everything (including narrative beats, character development, and lore) that has come before in The High Republic’s many novels, comic books, manga publications, short stories, and other media. Aside from the one notable– and very intentional– dangling thread that I mentioned above, Soule leaves no stone unturned when it comes to tying up loose ends. It’s great to know, after investing so much time in this era of Star Wars storytelling, that just about all of it has mattered along the way. The author acknowledges as much in his postscript, crediting not only the other High Republic writers, but also a vast team of editors, illustrators, and architects at Lucasfilm, Random House, and beyond for making this almost unwieldy dream a reality.

It’s also remarkable how great Soule is at writing so many of these characters, even the ones he did not directly create. Sure, he kicked off the initiative with his novel Star Wars: The High Republic - Light of the Jedi back at the beginning of 2021, but so much has been added to the ever-expanding tapestry of Star Wars– as specifically this era, set hundreds of years before the events of the movies– since then, and Soule manages to weave that all in rather seamlessly. I will say that there were tangents in this novel that I was less interested in than the main storyline, the biggest example of which being the Battle of Eriadu, which has already been chronicled exhaustively in recent issues of Marvel and Dark Horse’s The High Republic comics. But even those detours build to something that readers have been anticipating for years: the climactic showdown between a certain one-eyed Jedi not mentioned above and a Mirilian warlord working for the Nihil, with whom he’s shared a centuries-long vendetta.

The main question that most High Republic readers have had (and will continue to have, as more Star Wars fans continue to discover and appreciate the initiative) is whether or not Charles Soule delivers a gratifying ending to any number of the things we have come to care so deeply about across the past half-decade. Marchion Ro, the Nihil, the Nameless, the Blight, the Jedi Order’s working relationship with the Galactic Republic as led by Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh… all of those things are dealt with here to poignant effect, and will be all the more rewarding to anyone who’s been paying attention. And as a number of characters observe throughout the course of the book, everything is connected… there are seeds planted for what we know is coming later on in the larger timeline via Star Wars: The Acolyte, the prequel trilogy, and beyond, even– as I teased above– stories that have yet to be written.

With all that said, Soule remains one of my very favorite writers contributing to the current Star Wars canon– both in novels and in comics– and in Trials of the Jedi he once again proves that he is more than capable of making the entirety of the journey feel worthwhile. So wherever the future of Lucasfilm Publishing takes us in A Galaxy Far, Far Away, I sincerely hope Charles Soule remains aboard for the ride. And as for The High Republic itself, I would say by the end of this book that this chapter of the story has definitively come to a close, but that the door remains open for more adventures during this era. Unfortunately for me, Laughing Place has decided to scale back its coverage of Disney’s publishing arm, so I won’t be able to read and review Justina Ireland’s already-released middle-grade novel Star Wars: The High Republic - A Valiant Vow or Marvel Comics’ upcoming Star Wars: The High Republic - The Beacon finale by Cavan Scott. But as a tried-and-true fan of The High Republic, I will do my best to find time to check out these and other future titles on my own, looking forward with tempered optimism– as always– to what comes next.

Star Wars: The High Republic - Trials of the Jedi is available now wherever books are sold.