First ‘The Eye of Darkness’ Excerpt Sees Jedi Master Elzar Mann in a Wave of Sorrow
Phase III of the High Republic publishing initiative is already underway from a certain point of view. Marvel’s Shadows of Starlight #1 already kicked open the door on what has changed in the galaxy after the Nihil took down Starlight Beacon. But the party is really about to start in a little less than a month when George Mann’s Star Wars: The Eye of Darkness hits bookshelves on November 14th.
StarWars.com has the first excerpt ahead of the release of Phase III’s first adult novel. In it, the loss of Stellan Gios still hits close to home for one Elzar Mann. The Jedi Master visualizes the Force as a wave, but right now it’s looking like a puddle of sadness and sorrow as he tries to live up to his friend and what he offered to not just him, but the entire Order. Making matters worse is not having anyone to share his feelings with. The excerpt gives insight into the Nihil’s “stormwall” and how it’s chopped the galaxy in two — and Elzar from his only remaining true friend, Avar Kriss.
Here is a piece of the excerpt:
Elzar closed his eyes and allowed the breeze to ruffle his unkempt hair, as if hoping that the chill wind could somehow sweep away the memories, carry them off into the streaming lanes of traffic and away through the spires and domes until they were gone. He’d noticed that a few gray strands had appeared around his temples in recent months. He’d lost weight, too, and while he was still toned — he’d taken to practicing lightsaber drills late into the night, most nights — he’d grown thin. He’d tried to convince himself that it was a result of the work, of keeping himself so busy trying to figure out a solution to the Nihil problem, but he knew he was allowing things to worry away at him.
How Stellan would have laughed at him. Nudged him in the ribs and told him to cease dwelling on things that were done. To focus on the here and now. To do what needed to be done, and accept that the Force guided his hand, now as it always had.
But Stellan was gone. He was one with the Force. He had been for a year. Elzar knew that his old friend had found peace. And yet his absence was still marked. Not just a hole in the Jedi’s hearts and minds, but in their leadership, too. Especially now that the Nihil had won, had shattered Starlight Beacon and subsequently annexed dozens of worlds, an entire sector of the Outer Rim, from the rest of the galaxy. This area was being called the Nihil Occlusion Zone, and was separated by an invisible barrier that made it all possible.
The Stormwall: a vast web that disrupted hyperspace travel, causing any vessel that attempted to cross it to be wrenched violently back out of hyperspace, either destroying it immediately or causing it to disappear without a trace. There’d been much debate about what exactly happened to those missing ships, given that communication across the Stormwall was also impeded, but the assumption was that any ships that weren’t destroyed in the attempt were being corralled by Nihil patrols on the other side, and deposited into so-called kill zones. Certainly, they were never heard from again.
Worse, the network of relays and buoys — or “stormseeds” — that powered the Stormwall was so large that traveling across it without lightspeed was equally out of the question. Any ship trying to breach such a vast gulf of space at sublight speeds would have to travel for a hundred years before reaching its destination. Not only that, but any attempt at sublight ingress was being met and destroyed by Nihil patrols or swarms of scav droids, alerted by the automated systems that controlled the Stormwall technology. Patrols that could traverse the Stormwall and deliver a killing blow before the target was even aware it had happened.
It was ingenious, in its own way, and it had so far frustrated all Jedi or Republic attempts to bypass it, usually with disastrous results. Ships flown by droids. Electromagnetic pulses. Data slicing. Sustained attack on the well-shielded stormseeds. Nothing had worked. Nothing at all.
With the Stormwall, the Nihil had carved out their own domain, challenging the Republic at every turn. And with the Nameless — or “Force Eaters,” as they were also known — they had unleashed a weapon that even the Jedi could not stop. A weapon that targeted the very essence of who the Jedi were. A weapon designed to obliterate them.
Elzar exhaled.
This would all have been so much easier if Avar were by his side. Instead, she was somewhere deep in the Occlusion Zone, as distant to him as Stellan was.
They’d stood together on Eiram, watching the last vestiges of the Beacon slip beneath the cold, crushing waves, carrying all the Republic’s hopes and dreams down with it. It had been a symbol of strength and unity, of light in the dark, of hope. And the Nihil, led by Marchion Ro, had turned that symbol against them. Now it was a symbol of nothing but failure and loss.
Head over to StarWars.com for the rest of the excerpt. Star Wars: The Eye of Darkness will be available wherever books are sold on November 14 and is available for pre-order now.
Before diving into The Eye of Darkness, feel free to check out everything else coming soon from Lucasfilm Publishing, as revealed during New York Comic Con.
Nate uses his love for Star Wars and movies in general as a way to cope with the pain of being a Minnesota sports fan. When he's not at the theater, you can usually find Nate reading a comic, listening to an audiobook, or playing a Mario video game for the 1,000th time.
