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A review by itskaitw
Midnight Horizon by Daniel José Older
3.0
hm. okay. here are my thoughts.
what i liked:
• this COVER and title ! definitely my favorite of all the high republic books. giving it an extra star just for the sick title & cover
• my boy reath was finally knighted :)
• all the lgbt rep was great
• the action at the end was fun
• jedi master who admits he has crippling depression. you never see jedi masters being forward with their feelings so this was honestly refreshing
what i didn't like:
• the plot & all the non-jedi characters. my biggest beef with the HR is that every book is split into alternating chapters of characters i like (the jedi we've grown to love over the course of several books) and characters i can't bring myself to give a single shit about (minor supporting newcomers like the nihil saboteurs, smugglers, pilots, etc). it makes half the book super good and the other half boring at best, annoying & skippable at worst.
• every chapter of this book that focused on Crash & her band of ?? whatever they were?? skimmed. didn't care. didn't add anything to the overarching plot. it felt like there were so many chapters of minor non-jedi characters through all the HR books just to lengthen the page count. this book could've easily been 100 pages shorter and 100% more enjoyable to read.
• there was WAY too much dialogue, and this is coming from someone who loves dialogue. at times i just wanted everyone to shut up and get back to what they were doing ! quit making sassy comments in the middle of a fight and just describe the actual scene please !
• cohmac knighting reath then immediately turning in his lightsaber, declaring himself no longer a jedi, and running off into the woods? what tf was that about? i wanted cohmac to get help with his depression not just run away! what kind of ending to a character arc is that?!
• ram was so annoying. i'm not sorry. he was cute for the first 20 or so pages but for the rest of the book i wanted to punt him out of an airlock
• the writing style. if not for the actual content of the book i would think i'm reading a generic modern-day YA novel. the writing style and dialogue just didn't feel like star wars. idk if that makes sense but the vibe of everything felt off to me.
• going back to the characters for a minute- characters on the cover are supposed to be who the book focuses on. by looking at this book you'd think we'd be getting lots of scenes with reath and cohmac together. But there were hardly any! i wanted to see how their relationship progressed and matured but we didn't get any of that! and cohmac just up and left right after reath was knighted so we're never going to get more of them together. this author did them both, but ESPECIALLY cohmac, so dirty
overall this book was okay, definitely not the best the high republic has to offer. nothing of note happens until the last 30 or so pages so just save yourself the time and read the last couple chapters
what i liked:
• this COVER and title ! definitely my favorite of all the high republic books. giving it an extra star just for the sick title & cover
• my boy reath was finally knighted :)
• all the lgbt rep was great
• the action at the end was fun
• jedi master who admits he has crippling depression. you never see jedi masters being forward with their feelings so this was honestly refreshing
what i didn't like:
• the plot & all the non-jedi characters. my biggest beef with the HR is that every book is split into alternating chapters of characters i like (the jedi we've grown to love over the course of several books) and characters i can't bring myself to give a single shit about (minor supporting newcomers like the nihil saboteurs, smugglers, pilots, etc). it makes half the book super good and the other half boring at best, annoying & skippable at worst.
• every chapter of this book that focused on Crash & her band of ?? whatever they were?? skimmed. didn't care. didn't add anything to the overarching plot. it felt like there were so many chapters of minor non-jedi characters through all the HR books just to lengthen the page count. this book could've easily been 100 pages shorter and 100% more enjoyable to read.
• there was WAY too much dialogue, and this is coming from someone who loves dialogue. at times i just wanted everyone to shut up and get back to what they were doing ! quit making sassy comments in the middle of a fight and just describe the actual scene please !
• cohmac knighting reath then immediately turning in his lightsaber, declaring himself no longer a jedi, and running off into the woods? what tf was that about? i wanted cohmac to get help with his depression not just run away! what kind of ending to a character arc is that?!
• ram was so annoying. i'm not sorry. he was cute for the first 20 or so pages but for the rest of the book i wanted to punt him out of an airlock
• the writing style. if not for the actual content of the book i would think i'm reading a generic modern-day YA novel. the writing style and dialogue just didn't feel like star wars. idk if that makes sense but the vibe of everything felt off to me.
• going back to the characters for a minute- characters on the cover are supposed to be who the book focuses on. by looking at this book you'd think we'd be getting lots of scenes with reath and cohmac together. But there were hardly any! i wanted to see how their relationship progressed and matured but we didn't get any of that! and cohmac just up and left right after reath was knighted so we're never going to get more of them together. this author did them both, but ESPECIALLY cohmac, so dirty
overall this book was okay, definitely not the best the high republic has to offer. nothing of note happens until the last 30 or so pages so just save yourself the time and read the last couple chapters