With the main big screen saga at an end, it’s time for series to take stock and work out where it’s going to go next, but on the literature from it looks like we’ll be heading into the history of the Galaxy far far away with Star Wars The High Republic. With a release date for the first of the works planned for later in 2020 (see details below) and a talented team of writers collaborating on the series of comics and adult, young adult and middle grade fiction it could well go on to inspire the cinematic universe.
It’s all going to be set nearly 270 years before The Rise Of Skywalker at the height of the influence of the Jedi Order. The Galactic Empire is booming as it continues to expand its borders into the Outer Rim and the Jedi knights have huge numbers spread throughout the territory right the way up to its fringes, which have been described as the Wild West of the Galaxy.
Release date
The Star Wars The High Republic release date is slightly more complex than the Skywalker Saga has been in cinemas, because it will be a series of books and comics that could well continue for years, depending on the success of the initial trench. The first books and comics will be featured at the Star Wars Celebration Anaheim (27th – 30th August 2020), but this will simply be the starting gate for a series of releases that have been confirmed for the year.
These will be part of Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi, which is the overarching title for the huge interconnected story that will link them all together. It will span the novels and comic books to string everything together to give fans a chunky hunk of Galactic history and adventure to delve into and you can find out more about the confirmed release dates for the books below.
Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (The High Republic) release date
Published by Del Rey
25th August, 2020 | 336 Pages
The very first book that will be available as a part of the series is Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (The High Republic) by Charles Soule, whose previous work includes Star Wars comics Darth Vader, Poe Dameron, Lando and a host of others for Marvel Comics. There are very little details about the story other than the setting details mentioned above and the introduction of a new threat for the Jedi that looks set to challenge the might of the Order and the Galactic Republic.
Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage release date
Published by Disney Lucasfilm Press
8th September, 2020 | 240 pages
There’s more to go on with Justina Ireland’s A Test Of Courage, which will be the first middle grade book to come out as part of the High Republic series. It starts with a cataclysmic galaxy-wide disaster, which will be a big part of the Light Of The Jedi Story arc. The event forces a transport ship out of hyperspace, which gets stranded on a jungle moon where the young group of travellers, including a Jedi Knight and his Padawan, must band together to survive the the harsh environment and the danger hiding in the shadows.
Justina Ireland’s previous Star Wars novels include Rey story Spark Of Resistance and Star Wars: Lando’s Luck.
Star Wars: The High Republic: Into The Dark release date
Published by Disney Lucasfilm Press
13th October, 2020
352 pages
Moving on to the opening book in the young adult category, Into The Dark is the latest story by Claudia Gray, building on the success of her other novels, Lost Stars, The Power of the Force and Leia, Princess of Alderaan. It starts off with the same disaster as A Test Of Courage with Padawan Reath Silas being forced off his course to the frontier of the Outer Rim and taking refuge with his fellow travelling companions on an abandoned space station. As you’d expect, there’s more to the place than meets the eye and Silas must investigate to get to the bottom of the strange occurrences.
Comic books
There are two core comic book series that have been confirmed for the Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi series, but neither of them have confirmed release dates. However, we’re expecting both of them to land some time between the reveal at the Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in August and the end of the year.
Marvel will be publishing Star Wars: The High Republic by Cavan Scott, which will be the darker of the two series, as you can see from the cover art above. It looks like the new enemy of the Jedi, a group called The Nile, will feature heavily in the comic with two of them on the cover, but then we’re also expecting them to be at the centre of the disaster that touches all of the book releases above.
The other comic book series in flight is Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures by Daniel José Older under IDW Publishing. It introduces two new Jedi Knights, Farzala and Lula, and with a slightly younger target audience in mind than the Marvel series, it could be a nice introduction to the franchise for younger readers, alongside A Test Of Courage.
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Announcement trailer
You can check out the announcement trailer for Star Wars The High Republic in the video above to get more insight into what to expect from the new publishing series and how it all came together. The coolest bit is the tease about the new threat to the Galaxy being enough to scare the Jedi, so it’s going to be fun getting to see all of that unfold.
While The Nile are clearly going to be a force to be reckoned with there’s bound to be someone or something much more sinister behind all of the darkness that is about to come. It’ll be what came long before the Emperor and there’s bound to be at least some link, whether it’s the early motions of the Sith and just it’s then incarnation. However, with talk of scaring the Jedi, it could well be something new or different, so it’s poised to be a very interesting time to be a Star Wars fan.
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