Star Wars: Spoiler-Free Book Review – The Rising Storm by Cavan Scott - The High Republic Era (Phase 1, Wave 2)

This week Mike is doing another spoiler-free book review from the High Republic era, now venturing into the second wave, starting with The Rising Storm by Cavan Scott – the “main adult” novel with a huge amount of characters, major plot points and shocking moments!

In more detail, for the first half of the episode, Mike gives a bit of information on the other releases for The High Republic (the first two waves within Phase 1), gives some background/plot information on the book and then delves into his spoiler-free review; providing information from the blurb, the themes, how it continues from Light Of The Jedi, what he enjoyed about it, which characters have returned and details found within the first few pages.

From around the halfway mark, Mike reads out the blurb & crawl before providing more details on the characters and their general journeys/thoughts, the state of the Republic at the start of this book, the wider themes and how they impact story elements, as well as how it fits in with other High Republic material, which all falls into light-spoiler territory. He then talks about “connected content”, primarily the tie-in High Republic comics and gives a mini-review of the Tempest Runner audio drama before giving plenty of warning and delving into his more detailed review, which still doesn’t fully spoil the book but it does mention some plot details right at the very end, so you can listen to as little or as much info about The Rising Storm before picking it up yourself.

The Rising Storm was released June 29th 2021 by Cavan Scott. He has also written the Dooku Jedi Lost audio drama, The Tempest Runner audio drama (set just after this book), as well as one story from each A Certain Point Of View book, all of Marvel’s standard The High Republic comics plus several titles under Star Wars Adventures for IDW publishing including the Monster Of Temple Peak mini-series, all 3 sets of Vader’s Castle stories and Adventures In Wild Space.

The Rising Storm is the adult novel of the second wave of the High Republic’s first phase along with Out Of The Shadows and Race To Crashpoint Tower, while Wave 3 (due early 2022) will include Claudia Gray’s “adult” novel The Fallen Star plus junior-novel Mission To Disaster and young-adult novel Midnight Horizon.

From the first wave of phase 1 is Light Of The Jedi, A Test Of Courage & Into The Dark, which Mike has reviewed on this show in 2021; LotJ was March, AToC was August and ItD was October.

Mike also spoke with fellow THR author Claudia Gray on December 12th 2020 on this very channel/feed, so make sure you check that out if you haven’t already, plus Mike spoke with Star Wars comic artist Paolo Villanelli on the feed of his other show Genuine Chit-Chat (video version also on YouTube).

Check out the last episode of SWCIC for the penultimate chapter of the War Of The Bounty Hunters crossover, Mike goes into the many plot details of the 6 comics along with many of the connections to other content and more!

Mike returned to Star Wars Timeline to talk about The Force Awakens here: https://youtu.be/c4VMXeBU3W4 The Last Jedi here: https://youtu.be/7dGEsdfSMkY and The Rise of Skywalker here: https://youtu.be/9fZWXji7_Jo

Mike & Megan spoke with Alex & Mollie of Star Wars Explained, you can listen on this very feed or check out the video version on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/R2fr4-TdbQA

Intro theme arranged by Mike Burton, backing music by Eric Matyas at www.soundimage.org