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There were a few reasons why I was feeling a bit less than inspired to dive into Justina Ireland’s  THE ACOLYTE: WAYSEEKER & I’ll try to unpack those a bit here. 

The first is something I mentioned to a Star Wars friend the other day: I think I developed High Republic Fatigue Syndrome (a serious condition) at some point during Phase Three. It all just started to feel like too much. Even though I had adored some of the earlier titles, the one thing that stuck out to me in an EXTREME way was all of Dark Horse’s The High Republic Adventures comics. 

Oof. Like. Holy fuck, there was just so much. One-offs. Different miniseries. And then the ongoing main title, which to me, became almost unreadable at some point. It was just all so chaotic in my brain, and it ultimately had a negative impact on how I enjoyed the last couple YA & MG books as well. So much so that I never even reviewed them (along with the audiobook for TEMPEST BREAKER), which I kind of hate. But there it is.

And also, the cancellation of The Acolyte just made WAYSEEKER feel weird in a way to me. Like, I’m glad they went ahead and published it, because I actually really enjoyed this. But it also just feels…odd. Because there was clearly a lot of story left to tell with that show, and this book was like the bridge between The High Republic books & The Acolyte, so this book…even though it stands on its own quite well, I can’t help but feel like it’s just one more part of an incomplete story.

But yeah, anyway. All of that aside, and separate from my garbage attitude, WAYSEEKER is a great Star Wars book, and felt really unique in some ways! 

Vernestra Rwoh was & is one of my very favorite characters from The High Republic era. And I’ll be honest, I cannot say I was a huge fan of the way she was portrayed in The Acolyte. While I enjoyed the show overall, I definitely had a few criticisms of it, and ,Vernestra was one of them. She just really did not seem like the same person I had grown to know from the books, and one of the things WAYSEEKER does well is make the disparity between the two versions of the character a bit less extreme. 

I think the pairing of Vernestra & Indara for this book is honestly brilliant. The Acolyte overall felt very…crowded & busy. It was tough to get to know anyone, Indara most of all. So getting to really know her here is great!

The story is pretty simple: Vernestra has spent many years as a Wayseeker, doing good deeds around the galaxy, helping where she can, and thwarting the occasional pirate invasion on lesser-known planets across the galaxy.

She’s also repeatedly ignored messages from the Jedi Council. But there’s an urgent matter that Yaddle decides requires Vernestra’s attention. Yaddle selects Indara to embark on a sort of recovery mission to find Vernestra & bring her back to Coruscant. 

The book does pick up some story threads from The High Republic, but I don’t think you’d need to have read any High Republic stuff to enjoy this, which I think is really smart storytelling. 

While there are some super fun action sequences & plenty of cool lightsaber scenes, WAYSEEKER is an incredibly character driven novel. The whole book turns into one of the deepest contemplations of what being a Jedi even means. And it’s just about two characters at very interesting times in their lives, relative to where we have seen them in previous Star Wars stories.

While Indara lacks the battle experience that Vernestra has, she’s no Padawan. She’s been working in the Jedi Archives, but is more than capable of handling herself in the field. But Vernestra struggles early in the story to not see Indara as something like a Padawan. So this leads to quite a bit of tension between the two characters in the early going. They both have so much to offer the other, there’s just a lot of bumps in the road getting there. 

I listened to a lot of this one on audio & overall was a huge fan. Jessica Almasy is the narrator & she’s wildly talented. It took me way too long to realize she’s done the voice of Lourna Dee on the High Republic audio dramas! And like all the adult Star Wars audiobooks, there’s sound effects & music the whole way through, which just gives you such an immersive experience. I really did not love the way Almasy voiced Yaddle at all, however. 

Between “Tales of the Jedi” and her appearances in various parts of The High Republic, Yaddle has sincerely become one of my favorite secondary characters. She used to seem kind of like a punchline, and now I just think she’s fucking amazing. But Almasy seemed to approach the character as just “grammatically correct Yoda, but a woman” instead of trying to get anywhere close to Bryce Dallas Howard’s incredible performance in “Tales of the Jedi” and I guess it just kinda bugged me. It felt like a missed opportunity to get everyone on the same page. A minor complaint but one that nagged at me when I listened. 

I really dug this one a lot! I read somewhere along the way that Justina Ireland doesn’t plan to write any more Star Wars books, which is a bummer. She’s done a lot though, so I can understand wanting to just move on to other things, but she’s definitely been one of the most consistent Star Wars authors for  the last couple years. 

Either way, WAYSEEKER was really solid. If you watched The Acolyte & were still interested in more from that era, or are just looking for a fun Star Wars adventure to read, this is a great choice!

And oh! WAYSEEKER also does something VERY unique that I absolutely loved: Vernestra’s POV chapters are first-person, something we basically never see in Star Wars! It just felt so unique & refreshing, and definitely increased my enjoyment of this one by a lot!

May the Force be with you!!