Race to Crashpoint Tower

Star Wars: The High Republic, Book 2

By: Daniel Jose Older

Narrated by: Todd Haberkorn

Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Another exciting story in the number-one New York Times best-selling series! The Republic Fair is coming! Visitors from all over the galaxy are traveling to the planet Valo for a massive, awe-inspiring festival celebrating the Republic. While his fellow Valons prepare for the fair, Jedi Padawan Ram Jomaram is hiding out in his favorite place: a dingy garage filled with mechanical parts and tools. But when a security alarm goes off on the nearby hilltop nicknamed Crashpoint Peak, he ventures out with his trusty droid V-18 to investigate. There he discovers that someone has knocked out Valo's communications tower - a frightening sign that Valo, and the Republic Fair, are in danger. Sure enough, as Ram races to warn the Jedi, the dreaded Nihil unleash a surprise attack! It's up to Ram to face down the enemy at Crashpoint Tower and send a call for help to the Republic. Luckily, he's about to get some assistance from unexpected new friend....

Don't miss all of the Star Wars: The High Republic adventures!

©2021 Daniel Jose Older (P)2021 Disney Lucasfilm Press

Fun Tie in to The Rising Storm

Unlike Test of Courage, this short High Republic book didn’t have much of a story of its own, rather, it told a story of some padawans and what they did during the events of the book the Rising Storm. As such it doesn’t add much to the overall narrative and really just serves as the continuing adventures of some characters that either were introduced her or I assume in the IDW comics I don’t read due to the mentions of Yoda. The audiobook was short and sweet with a good narrator but disappointingly no music throughout like the other Star Wars books have.

Inconsequential

Honestly, thank goodness it was short because these one-off high republic novels are really dragging on. Nothing in this story matters. Read it if you want just to expand on characters/lore.

Decent all-ages story disappointingly perfomed.

Just looking at the story itself, it isn't bad for what it is; that being a side story aimed at a younger audience than The Rising Storm, which this story takes place alongside.

However, I was expecting more varied voice acting and sound effects, like the ones in other Star Wars audiobooks (like The Rising Storm, the Thrawn books, and Master and Apprentice) but those weren't included here.

Fun story

Was disappointed at the absence of sound effects and music, but this was a fun little story. Definitely recommend reading The High Republic Adventures comic before reading this.

A hard listen.

These recent high republic series have been really hard to listen to. Not much action and adventure

Read before crashing point

This was a good side story but I would recommend reading this book before a crashing point! It makes more sense if you read it before the main plot.

Loved the story. Not the performance

The reader needs to pronounce Nihil and Drenger correctly. After listening to the first 3 delRay books, you would think this was a given. nope, they are the Nile and Dregers. Otherwise it was a great listen.

An interesting middle-grade Star Wars story

As an adult reading this book aimed at ages 8-12 years old, I am not the target audience. That said, I enjoyed the story for the most part. It was interesting seeing the events around the Republic Fair from a different perspective. Ram Jomaram is an intriguing character who uses the Force very differently from other Jedi and I hope he shows up in other stories. It was also great seeing Jedi from the previous High Republic middle-grade book, A Test of Courage, show up here as well as some characters from Daniel Jose Older's High Republic Adventures comics. I'm not sure you have to know all those characters before reading Race to Crashpoint Tower to enjoy the plot, the story does explain who they are so probably not, but your mileage may vary there. The weakest part of the story for me was how the villains were handled; all of them were far less threatening and formidable than in other stories from this era, including A Test of Courage, which was disappointing. The resolution seemed oddly convenient and not entirely believable, but it's also a kids book so I'm willing to be less critical on that score. Todd Haberkorn does a fine job with the narration, making it easy to tell when different characters are speaking. I particularly liked his take on how the Bonbraks sound. Did I love this book as much as The Rising Storm? No, but it's a very different book. As an adult reader, do you have to read this story to understand what's going on in future books? I think you're probably safe to skip it, at least at the moment. But it's fun, short, and a worthwhile addition to the High Republic era, so if you're craving new content from this period in Star Wars history I don't think it'll be a waste of your time.

Great Supplement to High Republic!

Great short story to add mew characters to Star Wars High Republic. Fast mowing plot and great new characters. Ties in perfectly to the main story line from the novels.

Sputter, stutter, mutter…dudder.

The story is not as well written as other YA books in the High Republic series. Additionally, the voice actor’s performance is difficult to engage with. I kept getting distracted. Thankfully, I had already read The Rising Storm so I was already familiar with quite a bit of this story.