Aaaaaaand they’re off! To the fair! The second wave of Phase 1 of the High Republic has arrived and they’re not losing any of the momentum from wave one. Out today is Race to Crashpoint Tower by Daniel José Older and why yes the middle grade High Republic novels do continue to be top tier. Why? Well, you’ll have to read on for that.

The Republic Fair is about to start on the planet Valo and with it comes (you guessed it) trouble. Equally unsurprising is that trouble is coming in the form of the Nihl. Slightly more surprisingly? It’s up to a young padawan who’d rather stay in his workshop fixing a broken speeder to warn everyone of the danger. Meanwhile, a handful of Jedi have arrived at Trymant IV to follow up on a lead from Jedi Knight Vernestra Rwoh. Little do they know, their paths are on a collision course and the Republic is depending on them to help save the day.

As stated above, the middle grade novels continue to be stellar. Star Wars fans should absolutely be including them on their reading lists, regardless of the intended age range. While A Test of Courage dealt more closely with grief, Race to Crashpoint Tower has so much heart to it that it’s impossible not to love the core cast.

The real standout in this book is undoubtedly the characters. Lula Talisola is an absolute delight who deserves to feature in as many stories as possible. She’s so vibrant that she all but leaps off the page and makes you love her after only a chapter or two. Ram Jomaram is also bound to make more than a few fans fall in love with him from how earnest he is with his love of fixing mechanical things. He’s another worthy entry into the Good Soft Boy Club in the Star Wars universe. Hopefully, Ram will appear in future Star Wars books like Lula has. Oh and also? Congratulations to Older for making me love Ty Rorrick in all of three sentences. WELL DONE, SIR.

As we’re now firmly in the second wave of books, a few things are starting to become clear, one of which is that some characters will be jumping around between mediums and also age groups. Lula, one of our main protagonists this time around, previously debuted in the High Republic Star Wars comic series published by IDW. Conveniently, both are written by the one and only Daniel José Older. Older goes a good job of catching readers who might not have read the comic up on how Lula and Zeen met and their adventures in this era so far. I did not get a chance to read the comic until after I read through my review copy and the unofficial “here’s what you missed” section was more than adequate to orient me.

Another thing that seems like it’s being established (granted, with only two data points,) is that the adult novel published by Del Rey will be the anchor novel. The events of Race to Crashpoint Tower dance around those of The Rising Storm. There is clearly something else going on but it feels more like “the adults are busy with something but we kids have our own problems too so we can’t worry about that right now!” The question becomes whether or not this will continue the further and further we get into the High Republic. These books show an impressive amount of interconnectedness and clearly a ton of thought and care has gone into planning out this publishing program. Hopefully, the non-adult novel books will continue to be able to stand on their own merits so kids who might not be interested in or ready to read the anchor novel can still continue to enjoy them.

Race to Crashpoint Tower is a lovely small-scale story in the middle of galactic level of events anchored by delightful protagonists that High Republic readers definitely should pick up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to making my “Lula Talisola Fan Club” t-shirt. It’s very important.

Thank you to Disney Lucasfilm Press for providing an advance review copy of the book for review purposes.