Star Wars shares an intense excerpt from The High Republic: Light of the Jedi novel

Star Wars has shared an excerpt from The High Republic’s Light of the Jedi novel.

We’re getting closer than ever to the release of Star Wars: The High Republic, a literary series based many, many years before the events of the prequel trilogy. And with the first novel, Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, set to come out on Jan. 5, 2021, Star Wars is giving readers a quick glimpse at one of the chapters in the upcoming book.

Released today, the excerpt comes from chapter 2 of the book and it gives the reader a clear picture of the kicking-off point of the action. Just to give a bit of background, The High Republic era will tell stories about a time where peace in the galaxy is about to be shaken up. The Jedi are seen as great, defending knights. And with the Sith/Empire not a threat at this time, everything is fine for people in the galaxy until the “Great Disaster” occurs.

The authors of Star Wars’ High Republic era have teased at length about the Great Disaster, but rarely gave any insight into what the disaster could actually be. But now, it looks like the excerpt from Light of the Jedi just may be revealing what that disaster is.

You can read the entire chapter for yourself on the Star Wars website, but we’ll give you the short version here: In the chapter excerpt, it begins with a low-working employee who monitors incoming and outgoing ships. It feels like just an ordinary day for him, and he even has hopes of asking someone out who he’s been eyeing for a really long time. Things are going fine until many anomalies begin showing up on his monitor. They’re coming in hot and fast too. He and his colleague then send out a distress signal and make plans to escape the planet. But before they can even get into a ship to evacuate, they’re immediately impacted by one of these objects from out of nowhere, and it kills them instantly.

The chapter gets pretty dark, and Soule does an excellent job of drawing you in and making you sympathize with the victims. With movies, we rarely get to understand the impact of when a disaster hits, but this chapter really shows that real people are impacted by the devastation that happens across the galaxy.

Though this chapter in particular featured no Jedi, it does look like this will be an incident that the Jedi investigate. And there are many questions to be asked. What were those objects? How were they able to appear and disappear so fast? How many people were impacted? And, most importantly, who was behind this massive attack?

Luckily, that last question may have the clearest answer as we know the newest villains that will be behind the High Republic era. They are called the Nihil, and they will pose a threat to not only the citizens of the galaxy but the Jedi as well. Their plan as of right now is unclear, but we know once we’re actually able to read Light of the Jedi, we’ll have some more insight into the drama that’s unfolding.

Look out for Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (The High Republic) to be released on Jan. 5, 2021.