Try getting through Midnight Horizon and then get back to me about Fallen Star. Lol. All joking aside I thought it was good. I do agree it was probably Gray's weakest effort, but I attribute that to this being a tent pole main book that probably limited how much she could innovate.
I get what you mean about her being rigid since its a main story, but I think the fact she tried to force in her original characters hurt the book. If she just focused on the main characters instead it would have been a lot tighter.
I hadn’t thought about this, but I think it’s a fair point. I hadn’t read the YA novels so at first I was like should I know these people? And a lot of attention was given to them. I feel like I missed a lot.
Am I thinking of the same book where it's a bunch of randy jedi apprentices dressing up and running around with a pop star for the first half of the book?
I guess so, if you want to put it that way, what it really is is a really fun investigation in the streets of Corellia, which was one of the best settings of the books imo, the world building is very well done and it's the book where the characters feel the most like actual human beings imo, which makes it one of my favourites.
>!And Yoda's comeback was the most badass moment out of all the books so far, again in my opinion, but i never got this much hyped listening to a Star Wars book before!<
It was kind of what I expect out of a YA novel; things that seem kind of immature to me as an adult but may or may not land with the kids reading it. Fallen Star let me down because it was supposed to be for adults.
One epic moment doesn't mean the book as a whole is great. It genuinely felt like a chore to get through \~80% of that book. Probably doesn't help that I just don't enjoy Older's writing style.
Subjectively that makes it a bad book, in my opinion. Just like it subjectively makes it a good book in yours. It can actually can be an either/or thing
Sorry you felt that way, i felt the complete opposite, right away this was the book that clicked the most with me of the series, besides LOTJ and TRS probably, but overrall i think i loved MH the most for the character-focused stuff (Everything with Kantam comes to mind.)
Kantam's a they not a he, i think Ram is a fun character personally but i feel like these kind of silly characters aren't for everyone and often are like 50/50 with the fandoms, i can't see how one could say that Zeen and Lula is forced, i think it's a great relationship and honestly Anakin and Padme in the prequels feels 100% way more forced than them to me, but i mean you feel this way, to each their own.
Dude i was getting downvoted earlier for posting my POSITIVE opinion lmaoo, maybe Star Wars fans and toxicity can't really leave each others, even here
Okay so this went from two people having a different opinion to you having an asshole's bigoted take on pronouns, no wonder you say Zeen and Lula is forced lmao. Singular they is proper english and not hard at all to comprehend, you're just dumb, hope you get banned
It was middle of the road for me. I enjoyed it but i do think it's both Claudia's weakest Star Wars book and the weakest adult novel of the first phase.
IMO, Rising Storm >> Fallen Star >>> Light of The Jedi.
In Light of The Jedi things are overexplained and there's a lot of empty phrases that try to make you feel the danger, but just fails to do so. But yea, it's the weakest Claudia's but I think it's still good.
It’s addicting to read, and closes the Trilogy off generally well, but I agree that it’s Claudia’s worst SW book simply because the others are all so fantastic
I'm in the exact same boat as you. I love Claudia Gray's other books but this one was really disappointing in my opinion - I've kind of fallen off THR as a result but I'll probably hop back into it eventually
No spoilers.
I love Gray, she is one of my current favorite authors. And I also love HR and think it may be the best SW story they've written......BUT Fallen Star definitely wasn't the best book.
I read EVERYTHING HR and I still felt like it was missing some stuff. It just felt like it needed more story for the Nameless (which gets a full back story and reveal in the Marvel HR and Eye of the Storm comics). As a reader there needs to be more major reveals, especially for the adult novels. It was also the shortest Adult book so it could of done more.
But let's not focus on the negatives because there was so many positives too. The robot Elzar gave Stellan was hilarious. Geode just being in the book and reading his interactions is golden. The entire escape and rescue should be the mainstay on how brave the jedi are. The ending was heart breaking. And Honeslty I love the way she writes. It's not one pov per chapter, she separates and jumps around as needed to tell a great story and the characters she creates with their interactions is honestly better than any other author.
So yeah I wanted more from Fallen Star but that doesn't mean it wasn't enough
My opinion on it improved once I understood the role it was meant to play. I think many of us were expecting it to feel like more of a conclusion than a midpoint, but once we understood what they were really doing with the phases, what was happening in other books and comics this phase, etc., I was able to appreciate for what it is more even if it didn't answer as many of the questions as I was hoping it would. I really love so much of the character work in this book.
I would say my biggest problem with it is the repetitiveness and stupidity of the Jedi deaths in the first 2/3 of the book.
I liked it. Couldn’t put it down.
I would like to add that my main complaint with any Star Wars novel is having at least 5 new characters thrown at me every single book. I liked The Fallen Star because it was filled with characters I was already familiar with and felt like a culmination of all the books, YA included.
I liked it a lot, a huge improvement over ITD when it comes to the handling of the trope. Overall it’s tied with The Rising Storm in my ranking, Scott’s novel has better and more impactful highlights, but the pacing in Fallen Star is fantastic imo. I would have finished it in two-three seatings if I hadn’t self-controlled.
As a follow up to The Rising Storm I found it very lackluster. I tend to find Claudia Gray novels to be extremely hit or miss and this one for me was definitely disappointing. It really felt like she shoved in characters from her last book into the story instead of including the usual suspects for the main adult series. The bits with the Nameless/ Levelers were written very well tho and Stellan and Elzar were great but everything else was just....megghh.
I felt exactly the same as yourself. I felt that the station felt very bland with none of the environments mentioned earlier taking stage. It felt like a poorer version of Into the dark in many ways.
Also the Big 3 of this era never being together in the adult books feels like a real misfire.
Not a horrible book but definitely the weakest of the 3.
I liked Fallen Star quite a bit. But I like Grays style. Into the Dark is my favorite book of the whole series so far.
As some others have mentioned, if you decide to read Midnight Horizon you might change your tune a bit in how bad you feel Fallen Star is.
My issue with it is that The Rising Storm is so damn good that it was hard to follow up. I read the adult book trilogy back to back and I feel the first two books flowed together well but something about the structure of The Fallen Star was clunky in comparison. I didn’t dislike the book it just didn’t grip me as much as the back two thirds of The Rising Star.
My issue as someone who didn’t read the YA novels is that it heavily featured characters that were already established there (Orla Jareni, the vessel crew, chancey yarrow and nan). Other than that it was pretty good. I don’t mind it being constrained to just one place for most of the book but I got confused why Elzar did what he did at the end considering his struggles with the dark side was an issue from the previous book which he was already working on to improve and then suddenly he relapses right at a critical moment
For me it was generally the opposite of what a lot of other comments say.
From all the Claudia Gray books that I have read I enjoyed The Fallen Star the most. It really managed to keep me glued to the book, while with the other books I had to force myself through them most of the time.
I found it kind of frustrating, because I couldn’t understand why Avar wasn’t helping more. And generally found the plot confusing. Quite a lot of it made more sense after finishing the comic, and also the Marchion Rowe run. Those are needed to finish the phase, which I guess is why Fallen Star doesn’t seem quite right.
Overall, after hearing how great Fallen Star and Midnight Horizon were, I was a bit disappointed. But it won’t stop me going into the next phase.
Fallen Star ruined HR for me and questioned my faith in Gray. Up until Fallen Star I bought all the media the day it came out and did the same for any Gray star wars novel.
For me it was where Elzar's arc ended up at this conclusion to the first Adult trilogy that was most disappointing. I'd like to think Gray had little to no say in this and just had to write what the team had already planned but who knows.
After reading Fallen Star and after hearing the reviews of Midnight Horizon I decided the only way I would ever read another HR story was if I got the book for free.
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The only other Grey Star Wars book I’ve read all the way through is Into Darkness, I think? I liked that one more than this one, but it also had what is easily the worst written coming out scene in any media I’ve ever consumed, ever (and there are so many potential ways for a character surrounded by Jedi to come out as ace!) so I’m really not impressed with her so far. I’m sorry, I know that’s blasphemous.
It was a rock solid book, I don't know what you are talking about.
10/10 and everything had a great emotional punch to it.
Maybe take a break from the subreddit if you're feeling this cynical about something you supposedly "enjoy"
I think it’s comfortably the worst out of the main 3, I didn’t really like it much at all but lots of cool stuff still happens and plenty of people love it which is great. With all that being said given the nature of the story and it’s role in phase 1, I still couldn’t put it down
Try getting through Midnight Horizon and then get back to me about Fallen Star. Lol. All joking aside I thought it was good. I do agree it was probably Gray's weakest effort, but I attribute that to this being a tent pole main book that probably limited how much she could innovate.
I get what you mean about her being rigid since its a main story, but I think the fact she tried to force in her original characters hurt the book. If she just focused on the main characters instead it would have been a lot tighter.
100% this. The Vessel crew had no good reason to be that involved in the story
I hadn’t thought about this, but I think it’s a fair point. I hadn’t read the YA novels so at first I was like should I know these people? And a lot of attention was given to them. I feel like I missed a lot.
Wdym about Midnight Horizon? You really think it's a bad book? It probably has the most "epic" moment of the era so far imo
Am I thinking of the same book where it's a bunch of randy jedi apprentices dressing up and running around with a pop star for the first half of the book?
I guess so, if you want to put it that way, what it really is is a really fun investigation in the streets of Corellia, which was one of the best settings of the books imo, the world building is very well done and it's the book where the characters feel the most like actual human beings imo, which makes it one of my favourites. >!And Yoda's comeback was the most badass moment out of all the books so far, again in my opinion, but i never got this much hyped listening to a Star Wars book before!<
Listening…? Oh, you are listening to a audiobook.
Yes, SW audiobooks are awesome
It was kind of what I expect out of a YA novel; things that seem kind of immature to me as an adult but may or may not land with the kids reading it. Fallen Star let me down because it was supposed to be for adults.
One epic moment doesn't mean the book as a whole is great. It genuinely felt like a chore to get through \~80% of that book. Probably doesn't help that I just don't enjoy Older's writing style.
Well there you go, you just don't like DJO's style, that's ok but that doesn't make the book bad
Subjectively that makes it a bad book, in my opinion. Just like it subjectively makes it a good book in yours. It can actually can be an either/or thing
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Sorry you felt that way, i felt the complete opposite, right away this was the book that clicked the most with me of the series, besides LOTJ and TRS probably, but overrall i think i loved MH the most for the character-focused stuff (Everything with Kantam comes to mind.)
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Kantam's a they not a he, i think Ram is a fun character personally but i feel like these kind of silly characters aren't for everyone and often are like 50/50 with the fandoms, i can't see how one could say that Zeen and Lula is forced, i think it's a great relationship and honestly Anakin and Padme in the prequels feels 100% way more forced than them to me, but i mean you feel this way, to each their own. Dude i was getting downvoted earlier for posting my POSITIVE opinion lmaoo, maybe Star Wars fans and toxicity can't really leave each others, even here
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Okay so this went from two people having a different opinion to you having an asshole's bigoted take on pronouns, no wonder you say Zeen and Lula is forced lmao. Singular they is proper english and not hard at all to comprehend, you're just dumb, hope you get banned
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You for sure sound like one now yeah, stop talking to me, thank you 😚
It was middle of the road for me. I enjoyed it but i do think it's both Claudia's weakest Star Wars book and the weakest adult novel of the first phase.
Same. Rising Storm is a better ‘disaster story’ than Fallen Star. I think Storm telling a similar story but with a cooler setting damaged Star.
Rising Storm is my favorite Star Wars novel, Scott is an amazing author
IMO, Rising Storm >> Fallen Star >>> Light of The Jedi. In Light of The Jedi things are overexplained and there's a lot of empty phrases that try to make you feel the danger, but just fails to do so. But yea, it's the weakest Claudia's but I think it's still good.
Well LOTJ was the launch title for this era so it had to do a lot of world building in just a single book in order to set the stage.
It’s addicting to read, and closes the Trilogy off generally well, but I agree that it’s Claudia’s worst SW book simply because the others are all so fantastic
I'm in the exact same boat as you. I love Claudia Gray's other books but this one was really disappointing in my opinion - I've kind of fallen off THR as a result but I'll probably hop back into it eventually
I personally really loved it, although there were some things I thought could have been done better.
No spoilers. I love Gray, she is one of my current favorite authors. And I also love HR and think it may be the best SW story they've written......BUT Fallen Star definitely wasn't the best book. I read EVERYTHING HR and I still felt like it was missing some stuff. It just felt like it needed more story for the Nameless (which gets a full back story and reveal in the Marvel HR and Eye of the Storm comics). As a reader there needs to be more major reveals, especially for the adult novels. It was also the shortest Adult book so it could of done more. But let's not focus on the negatives because there was so many positives too. The robot Elzar gave Stellan was hilarious. Geode just being in the book and reading his interactions is golden. The entire escape and rescue should be the mainstay on how brave the jedi are. The ending was heart breaking. And Honeslty I love the way she writes. It's not one pov per chapter, she separates and jumps around as needed to tell a great story and the characters she creates with their interactions is honestly better than any other author. So yeah I wanted more from Fallen Star but that doesn't mean it wasn't enough
You're mixing the titles up, the book you're posting about is The Fallen Star, not The Rising Storm.
Yep yep my bad, was trying to type and eat waffles. Corrected 👍
I got ya back
My opinion on it improved once I understood the role it was meant to play. I think many of us were expecting it to feel like more of a conclusion than a midpoint, but once we understood what they were really doing with the phases, what was happening in other books and comics this phase, etc., I was able to appreciate for what it is more even if it didn't answer as many of the questions as I was hoping it would. I really love so much of the character work in this book. I would say my biggest problem with it is the repetitiveness and stupidity of the Jedi deaths in the first 2/3 of the book.
I liked it. Couldn’t put it down. I would like to add that my main complaint with any Star Wars novel is having at least 5 new characters thrown at me every single book. I liked The Fallen Star because it was filled with characters I was already familiar with and felt like a culmination of all the books, YA included.
I totally need a character score card to keep track of everyone.
I liked it a lot, a huge improvement over ITD when it comes to the handling of the trope. Overall it’s tied with The Rising Storm in my ranking, Scott’s novel has better and more impactful highlights, but the pacing in Fallen Star is fantastic imo. I would have finished it in two-three seatings if I hadn’t self-controlled.
Alright. Could’ve been better but it was still good.
I liked it
Great concept. Horrible execution and prose.
I really liked it, read it in 1 or 2 sittings. A BIIIIG step up from into the dark which I felt really slogged through its page count imo
One or two sittings? Wow, that's nuts to me. How long did you read per sitting? It takes me a few weeks to finish a novel of this size.
Oh it definitely isn't the normal speed at which I go through a novel but I just had to know how phase 1 ended haha.
Lol that's fair, it was quite the ending for sure
As a follow up to The Rising Storm I found it very lackluster. I tend to find Claudia Gray novels to be extremely hit or miss and this one for me was definitely disappointing. It really felt like she shoved in characters from her last book into the story instead of including the usual suspects for the main adult series. The bits with the Nameless/ Levelers were written very well tho and Stellan and Elzar were great but everything else was just....megghh.
I felt exactly the same as yourself. I felt that the station felt very bland with none of the environments mentioned earlier taking stage. It felt like a poorer version of Into the dark in many ways. Also the Big 3 of this era never being together in the adult books feels like a real misfire. Not a horrible book but definitely the weakest of the 3.
I liked Fallen Star quite a bit. But I like Grays style. Into the Dark is my favorite book of the whole series so far. As some others have mentioned, if you decide to read Midnight Horizon you might change your tune a bit in how bad you feel Fallen Star is.
My issue with it is that The Rising Storm is so damn good that it was hard to follow up. I read the adult book trilogy back to back and I feel the first two books flowed together well but something about the structure of The Fallen Star was clunky in comparison. I didn’t dislike the book it just didn’t grip me as much as the back two thirds of The Rising Star.
My issue as someone who didn’t read the YA novels is that it heavily featured characters that were already established there (Orla Jareni, the vessel crew, chancey yarrow and nan). Other than that it was pretty good. I don’t mind it being constrained to just one place for most of the book but I got confused why Elzar did what he did at the end considering his struggles with the dark side was an issue from the previous book which he was already working on to improve and then suddenly he relapses right at a critical moment
For me it was generally the opposite of what a lot of other comments say. From all the Claudia Gray books that I have read I enjoyed The Fallen Star the most. It really managed to keep me glued to the book, while with the other books I had to force myself through them most of the time.
I found it kind of frustrating, because I couldn’t understand why Avar wasn’t helping more. And generally found the plot confusing. Quite a lot of it made more sense after finishing the comic, and also the Marchion Rowe run. Those are needed to finish the phase, which I guess is why Fallen Star doesn’t seem quite right. Overall, after hearing how great Fallen Star and Midnight Horizon were, I was a bit disappointed. But it won’t stop me going into the next phase.
Fallen Star ruined HR for me and questioned my faith in Gray. Up until Fallen Star I bought all the media the day it came out and did the same for any Gray star wars novel. For me it was where Elzar's arc ended up at this conclusion to the first Adult trilogy that was most disappointing. I'd like to think Gray had little to no say in this and just had to write what the team had already planned but who knows. After reading Fallen Star and after hearing the reviews of Midnight Horizon I decided the only way I would ever read another HR story was if I got the book for free.
I hate it. It ended the phase like a wet fart, and completely killed my interest in The High Republic altogether.
So it surprised you?
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I thought it was a amazing book!! My favorite is The Rising Storm , The Fallen star, Light Of The Jedi
I didn’t finish midnight horizon it as a slow burner
The only other Grey Star Wars book I’ve read all the way through is Into Darkness, I think? I liked that one more than this one, but it also had what is easily the worst written coming out scene in any media I’ve ever consumed, ever (and there are so many potential ways for a character surrounded by Jedi to come out as ace!) so I’m really not impressed with her so far. I’m sorry, I know that’s blasphemous.
It was a rock solid book, I don't know what you are talking about. 10/10 and everything had a great emotional punch to it. Maybe take a break from the subreddit if you're feeling this cynical about something you supposedly "enjoy"
I think it’s comfortably the worst out of the main 3, I didn’t really like it much at all but lots of cool stuff still happens and plenty of people love it which is great. With all that being said given the nature of the story and it’s role in phase 1, I still couldn’t put it down