Max Nocerino 
Experience the next chapter in the High Republic series with George Mann’s The High Republic Tears of the Nameless. Join the thrilling Star Wars journey in this YA novel.
George Mann makes a comeback to the Star Wars universe with his latest work, The High Republic: TEARS OF THE NAMELESS, following his successful adult novel The Eye of Darkness. While the book has its highs and lows, it’s an intriguing YA read.
When reading this YA novel, I was initially excited as I regard George Mann’s novel High Republic: The Eye of Darkness as one of the best entries in New Canon. Mann weaved such a tremendous story with such aptitude that I felt like I was watching a classic Star Wars movie (and die-hard SW fans know that Star Wars is the only bit of media where the movie is BETTER than the book). However, when reading Tears of the Nameless, my suspension of disbelief was challenged at various points. I also felt that Mann would build exciting and suspenseful plot points only to squash them with ambiguous dead-end finalizations.
RETURN TO THE GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY…
The novel initially sets a strong pace and reintroduces two characters I’ve been curious about: Jedi Master Mirro Lox and his padawan Amadeo Azzazzo. Lox and Azzazzo work together as a Jedi team in the field. Their mission is to address the spread of the enigmatic Blight on different planets across the galaxy. They are currently aiding in relocating villagers from the planet Cethis to a temporary settlement on the same planet but farther from the Blight if that makes sense.
What I love about Mirro is that he is just such an exceptional master to his padawan. He is kind, helpful, encouraging, and overall, just such a good mentor that I would love him to be my Master if I were a Jedi. What I find equally cute is that this Master and Padawan team is always practicing combo moves for future battles. They use the Force and their physical aptitude to assist each other in fights with tandem attacks, such as using the Force to throw each other at an enemy and using each other as launch platforms. My only complaint about Lox is that perhaps he is a bit too optimistic in his approach as a Jedi. he marvels at the privilege of him and Amadeo being the last beings to witness the last gasps of a dying forest being consumed by the Blight.
THE BLIGHT
This is a bit too positive and silly, considering the tragic circumstances this ecosystem is experiencing. It brings back my critique reservation feelings on the Jedi as a whole. Sometimes, the Jedi are too complacent with death. Throughout the book, their belief in an oversoul is constantly repeated, which I don’t like. In Star Wars, retaining your consciousness after death is not how the afterlife works (typically). I find this very frightening and uncomfortable. Mann is playing true to the saga, though, as this ability to maintain your identity after death is a highly unknown and vaunted technique that only Force users can learn. Only a handful have discovered the secret (e.g., Qui-Gon Jinn). Yet this does not appeal to me at all.
TRANSITIONS
At the novel’s beginning, the book constantly transitions from chapter to chapter with new perspectives. Mann is far more successful in this literary technique than authors like Timothy Zahn and Chuck Wendig (with the latter’s infamous interludes). The cast includes the fan-favorite but now controversial Vernestra Rwoh, the intellectual and adept survivor Reath Silas, and his wayward former Master and Jedi Cohmac Vitas. Additionally, there’s a new character, the creepy and vicious Jedi hunter Sicarus, who is a pet of the mad Ithorian scientist Boolan, a prominent leader of the Nihil responsible for their science division.
I was especially disturbed by Sicarus. I feel his glee towards killing Jedi by sic’ing his Nameless pets onto innocent Jedi was quite blood-curdling. Sicarus is the only Nihil’s perspective we get to read from in this novel. The absence of the perspective of Marchion Ro and Ghirra Starros works quite well in building some suspense. Sicarus is also being infused with Nameless blood transfusions, which are not explicitly explained but only subtly referenced. I think this is also an intelligent storytelling move. The Nameless (for those of you living in a cave) is a breed of grotesque wolf-like monsters that can drain the life energy of any Force-sensitive and reduce that being to husks of ash.
THE NAMELESS
They are the Nihil’s secret weapon against the Jedi and the only reason the Nihil pushes back the Jedi. Of course, that and the Stormwall, an artificially created barrier in time and space that the Nihil erected to carve out their own fiefdom in the galaxy. Sadly, this novel does not include Stormwall hopping, as all the action conveniently takes place in Republic and Wild Space.
However, the main problem with this novel is that the whole family has been responsible for finding out how to stop the Blight and connect it to the Nameless, who is SCIENTIFICALLY the young Knight Reath. While Reath is an intelligent kid, it is one of the silliest things ever to have just one person research a significant problem. It’s like if the COVID-19 vaccine was only being studied by Anthony Fauci and not teams of scientists, which is logically and realistically what would happen.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Then, of course, an even less reputable mind, the mind of Amadeo Azzazzo, decides to help Reath in the lab and makes a startling connection to how the Blight kills people. Specifically, the Nameless kill Jedi was obvious and should have been apparent to Reath from the beginning! Okay, sure, you need total certainty in science, but it’s just silly how narrow the scope of this research is. I like how Reath visits the disgraced Dark Jedi Azlin Rell, housed in the Jedi Temple’s bowels, having faced the Nameless and lived over a century prior.
Azlin is very creepy and does not give Reath direct answers to help with the Nameless research. I find him an odd-inverse version of Yoda, who wasn’t always clear with Luke during their training. Azlin has excellent respect for Reath and is proud of his cleverness, yet it is unclear what his true intentions are. He seems to want to destroy the Nameless but is very dark and untrustworthy, holding back information for his amusement. The interactions between Reath and this strange “pseudo-mentor” were my favorite parts of the book, and as the chapters transitioned to their visits, I grew more alert and interested when I read.
MANN’S STYLIZATION
However, besides this nonsensical approach to pandemic research, I was disappointed with Mann’s portrayal of Reath’s former Master Cohmac. He left the Order and his padawan very abruptly due to misgivings. To illustrate this uncertainty, we transition back to Cohmac’s youth with Orla Jareni (who died at the hands of the Nameless a year prior) to a time when Cohmac suddenly lost confidence in his abilities and became afraid to jump from a cliff. Jumping from a cliff to another cliff?! That’s all you got, George? It’s such a failure of an analogy. Mann could have given us something more complicated and creative to illustrate this crucial message.
ORIGINS
Cohmac is also on the trail of the Nameless. Unbeknownst to his Padawan, they are both looking for the origin of the Nameless and a civilization called the Tolemites, who legends have said to have defeated both the Nameless and the Blight. They have their paths merged and need to deal with the Bantha in the room of Cohmac, abandoning Reath and the ill feelings that ensue afterward. I think Mann’s writing skills were more impressive than the cliff metaphor. However, I felt there could have been more anger from Reath and more remorse from Cohmac. It was somewhat depicted, but I think it could have been portrayed better.
I also want to make a quick note about including the Vessel. The Vessel is a (literally named) ship captained by Affie Hollow, Leox Gaysi, and the literal mound of rock alien Geode. These characters were first introduced by fellow High Republic writer Claudia Grey in her YA, Into the Dark. Honestly, I wouldn’t say I liked this team from the beginning. Leox was like an annoying pothead hippie. Affie was, ehh, and Geode was just a bad joke and the equivalent of Cohmac’s cliff in terms of creativity on Grey’s part.
Yet I started rooting for them in The High Republic Tears of the Nameless and felt that they ultimately saved the day in a way that wasn’t clear from the beginning. I like it when the pieces seem nebulous but fit in at the end. I love that Affie was helping transport Jedi on relief missions, and Leox didn’t annoy me as much this time. His concern for Affie and his family’s safety was very refreshing, as it is logical that he would question the validity of these dangerous missions.
VERDICT
The High Republic: Tears of the Nameless was very much “stripey” because it had such excellent plot points mixed in with horrible ones. Determining if a story is good with many working and broken parts is challenging. But there are also brilliant parts. I did not see the big reveal in the Jedi Temple’s bowels, and the Tolemites’ tombs were quite stimulating. I also think Yoda was used correctly, and less was more in terms of Vernestra. She’s had her time in the spotlight. It was Reath’s turn.
Star Wars: The High Republic – Tears of the Nameless is now available from Amazon. Will you be adding this book to your reading list? Let us know in the comments section below.
FORCE FACTS
Get ready for an adventure through Force Facts. Here, we will uncover all the fun facts, juicy trivia, and hidden Easter eggs. Buckle up and see how many of these incredible nuggets of information you spotted!
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One of Vernestra’s “brief” roles was a recap of her encounter with the Nihil (and Marchion Ro) on Vixoseph 1. As she flew through the sky, the book makes it clear how, despite Star Wars ships having inertial compensators, Venestra was very much dealing with g-forces as she made high-speed flight maneuvers. A human can only handle 2-10 gs of acceleration, and while Vernestra is not quite human (close), it makes me wonder how the mechanics of G-forces work in the galaxy. Sometimes, the compensators fail when “overworked,” or is there something about aerodynamics that we Earth humans don’t get?
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Reath uses protons to cope in his scientific work. I don’t know what that is, exactly. Still, microscopes can see down to the microbial level (pronounced), and protons are subatomic particles, so perhaps this is an advanced tool that can resolve what individual protons look like. I wonder how that works.
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When Sicarus recalls the last Jedi he killed, he mentions it was a bird-like Fosh. This is “perhaps” the first appearance of the Fosh in Canon, as in Legends, they were a mysterious bird-like species that the former Jedi and dark side “mentor” to Jacen Solo, Vergere, was a member of.
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As mentioned in the review, Boolan gives Sicarus regular injections of Nameless blood, allowing him to merge with a pack as its leader. It also takes away his ability to taste food and is supposed to repress his former life memories-yet this doesn’t always work.
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In New Canon, the Jedi Temple was said to have been built on an ancient Sith shrine on Coruscant. This was established in the 2014 Tarkin novel (one of the first entries of New Canon), and now we get to see it, and it gets a name—the Shrine of the Depths. I was getting serious Chamber of Secrets “vibes” from it, by the way.
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Vernestra describes the feeling of the Force in the Shrine of the Depths as ‘sour’. One of the strengths of the New Canon High Republic’s depiction of the Force is that every Jedi mentally manifests the Force’s “feel” in a different way. None can feel the Force the same, and it’s illuminating to have it described as sour like sour milk. Great visualization!
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The Tolemites are encased in Kyber’s coffins, and the crystals themselves are used as receptacles for information. In the real world (and noted in-universe by Reath), crystals can be mediums for information, but in this case, the coffins can transport someone into a recorded “memory” of the past. More Harry Potter vibes here.
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After that initial point, the Nameless can mutate and feed on their kind. They also change physically and become transparent.
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One of the strange things about Star Wars tech is the “backwards-ness” of its complexity. They DO have automated weapons systems, but they aren’t simple automation; they are achieved by slaving a former droid intelligence to a system in a kind of “prison” for that old droid. It’s a bit excessive to use artificial intelligence for something so basic.
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Apparently, a starship needs a power relay inverter component, or it is “grounded” without it.
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Amadeo is revealed to be bisexual, and the man he meets, who he was attracted to, a medic named Dorian, is a transgender man. After the transition, Dorian said that it took some time for his father to accept it. Huh?! In a world of giant slug people and metallic droids, why a human male would initially be uncomfortable with their child’s decision to change genders is almost ludicrous. Last time, I checked, Star Wars canon has acknowledged over 13 different genders among various aliens. Why is becoming male from female even a concern?
Max Nocerino is a regular Staff Writer for The Future of the Force. He is a passionate Star Wars fan and loves the literature of the galaxy far, far away. Follow him on Twitter where he shares his love of the Force frequently!
