Teaser

Lanoree Brock is a Je’daii Ranger, travelling the Tython system in a quest to maintain peace. Yet when a threat from her own past imperils the entire system, Lanoree must face the brother she once thought dead . . .

Review

The Star Wars universe covers a lot of history. In the current canon, the nine films take place over about sixty years, with books and comics expanding that to several hundred years before the birth of Anakin Skywalker. In the former Expanded Universe, or Legends, canon, the events of The Old Republic pulled back the veil of history to show us what was happening three thousand years prior to the films. Dawn of the Jedi pushed that line even further back, with the events of Into the Void taking place ten thousand years earlier.

Right off the bat, there is a slight problem with this. Star Wars is an iconic setting, but that leads to certain expectation about what readers will experience. In the case of the Old republic, it was still about the Jedi/Sith conflict, but with more combatants on each side. There were different designs of droids, but ultimately T3-M4 is a stand-in for R2-D2. The technology of the setting is fairly static, with the main difference being that the bad guys wear slightly different armour. On this front, Into the Void fares well. It takes place at a time without hyperspace travel. Indeed, much of the plot is driven by the worries over dark matter, an unusually scientific term for Star Wars, and the possibility of building a gateway to the stars. The biggest change is in the Force, however.

Here, the force is not divided into the usual binary of good and evil. The Je’daii employ both Light and Dark aspects. Lanoree practises alchemy, mutating flesh with the power of the Force. More than this, the Force imbues every aspect of Tython, with force storms and force-sensitive animals. The Je’daii strive to balance light and dark within themselves rather than choosing one side or the other. Though I must admit I was disappointed to hear that some Je’daii have fallen into total darkness, without any suggestion that being fully committed to the light is equally bad. I suppose some binaries are to powerful to overcome.

The story itself is a relatively straightforward quest narrative, and it ends up feeling a lot like a fantasy novel that happens to have a spaceship instead of a boat to get from place to place. Things do fall apart at the end, however, as there is a major off-page incident that is never explained. Now, partly this is because the Dawn of the Jedi series involved a lot of comics, where this particularly incident may well have been covered. But I can’t rule out the possibility that, given the timing of publication, any potential follow-up was negated by the ending of this particular canon.

Either way, Into the Void is a fun little, well-narrated adventure, and a fascinating glimpse into the history of that galaxy, far far away.

Audio Stats

• Narrated by January LaVoy
• Originally Released 2013
• 10hrs 23mins