Into the Dark is a novel written by Claudia Gray. It was published as part of the Star Wars: The High Republic publishing campaign and was originally released on February 2, 2021. The events of the novel are set two centuries before the events of Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Publisher’s Summary: Padawan Reath Silas is being sent from the cosmopolitan galactic
capital of Coruscant to the undeveloped frontier—and he couldn’t be less happy about it. He’d rather stay at the Jedi Temple, studying the archives. But when the ship he’s traveling on is knocked out of hyperspace in a galactic-wide disaster, Reath finds himself at the center of the action. The Jedi and their traveling companions find refuge on what appears to be an abandoned space station. But then strange things start happening, leading the Jedi to investigate the truth behind the mysterious station, a truth that could end in tragedy…
Review: The second book in the High Republic series is by Claudia Gray, who I consider the best author in the Star Wars series so far. It continues the story of the Great Disaster which started in Light of the Jedi. Something goes wrong in hyperspace and it throws the galaxy out of whack. In this story, a couple of Jedi – Reath Silas, Orla Jareni, Dez Ryden, and Cohmac Vitus – and a ragtag crew – Affie Hollow, Leox Gyasi, and Geode, a Vintian from the Byne Guild – are trying to make it to the new space station Starlight Beacon. While they are traveling there, all hell breaks loose in hyperspace which forces them out of it as fast as they can. They discover a new space station unknown to them that was made by the Amaraxine people a long time ago.
Weird things are happening as the Jedi can feel the dark side is strong there. After some time in the story and a few mishaps and adventures, we learn of a new plant-based monster called the Drengir that are actually pretty cool and bloodthirsty. There are a few moments in this story with them that causes some anxiety as you read because some scenes are straight out of a horror story. I mean, their favorite line is fresh meat or new meat so these guys are nasty. My kind of plant, to be honest.
They leave the station and have to come back after making a mistake to reseal the dark side after breaking the seal the first time, and it was pretty cool how Gray intertwined a flashback story along with the story that was being told at that timeframe of the book, how two of these same Jedi on one of their first missions made a big mistake that cost Cohmac Vitus his first master. They return and then the Nihil show up making things dangerous or I should say more dangerous than they were. Chaos starts to break out as everyone is trying to get their certain missions done.
I do these not to really spoil too much to give you a brief summary of the book and some of its plot, and tell you what I thought about the story overall. This I will say is another solid book starting off the High Republic series but my one complaint was that I wanted more of the Nihil and what they are doing. We don’t find out much about them in this book than what we already knew, which disappointed me some.
I’m going to start rating these on the ‘if I feel you should read’ scale. So, basically, if the book is good and the story grabs you, and if I feel you need to read it for Star Wars, I will rate it accordingly. The scale is going to be 1-5. So for this book, I rank it at 3 on the ‘you should read it scale. Although I would like to say that it is the second book of a big series that may have been setting up new stories with new characters that you may need to know. But so far, this is its own story not really connected to the first book Light of the Jedi at all besides the hyperspace and Starlight Beacon part of the story. I am excited to see where it all goes from here and this book was another great overall, another solid offering from Gray.
