The Starbird Files

  The Queen’s Bloom - Zoraida Córdova   Everyone’s favorite Phase II character (except mine), Axel Greylark is the focus of the first story of the anthology, and he is at university causing trouble and skiving off work using his status (there’s a surprise!). Despite this, he takes time to make friends with the lower paid staff and even helps a janitor with money - do I like Axel now? When a swish party is attacked by a gang of thieves Axel has a telling first meeting with a pivotal person a character in his life. The most interesting part of the story for me was meeting Axel’s father Lexxir who was clearly a very good influence on his son, and shows just how much his death would affect Axel in the future. 🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑 /5 A Closed Fist Has No Claws - Tessa Gratton The second story sees Marda Ro traveling the galaxy, looking for more Evereni, all the while gathering followers and feeding the occasional Jedi to the Leveler. She finds Evereni twins on the planet Siquay, and a possib...

Phase II of the High Republic is here and with it comes hype, expectations, a new time period and new authors. I do have worries about this new phase, not the new authors but leaving behind the characters and time period we are used to, and the fact it feels like it’s been a while since Phase I finished, would I still be into the project as much? My other worry was because of the delayed UK release of Path of Deceit and Convergence being my first review copy from Del Rey, I received both books on the same day so I decided to read Convergence first in order to get this review out promptly. How would that effect my reading experience? Phase II is set 150 years BEFORE the events of Phase I, and the story is set on the twin planets, E’ronoh and Eiram who have been at war for decades and focuses on a ceasefire hanging by a thread on the the proposed marriage of Xiri and Phan-tu the children of the respective ruling families. The Jedi, Republic officials, Xiri and Phan-tu must win over the p...