How The High Republic Shaped Me
The High Republic is more than a book series. It has changed lives.
If you were to try describing The High Republic to someone who’d never read it, you might be tempted to stick to overall story beats. It’s about the Jedi fighting space pirates centuries before The Phantom Menace, or it’s the story of how the Republic overcomes a galaxy-wide conflict when the Jedi are scattered all over the galaxy.
To me, The High Republic represents a treacherous journey of faith, acceptance, and the undeniable victory that is never giving up on yourself. The High Republic changed me. Because it demanded that I keep reading, even when I no longer wanted to. I needed to know the ending. And that’s how I accidentally became … me.
It was at my first-ever Star Wars Celebration, in Chicago in 2019, that my High Republic journey began. Back then it was Project Luminous, and we, the fans, knew nothing about it. I don’t remember if I was in that panel where it was first announced. But I do remember feeling upon hearing about it, for the very first time, that Star Wars books were going to become a much more significant part of my life because of it in the years to come.
Project Luminous’s first reveal as The High Republic at the end of February 2020 will always stick in my memory as one of the last great things that happened before the pandemic began. Everyone’s lives instantly changed that next month. But even though the release date for the first High Republic books shifted to January 2021, the promise that it would happen never faded. A new era of Star Wars. A different era of storytelling. Another way for all of us to escape from a world that was growing increasingly more difficult to exist in.
Light of the Jedi was the first Star Wars book I got to read early as a reviewer. That’s really where my very niche endeavor into Star Wars book “journalism” began. In 2022, my first Star Wars author interview was with the Luminous Five — the original five authors whose stories launched The High Republic initiative. Since then, I’ve spoken to all but two of the 10, and I’m beyond lucky to be able to say that.
As The High Republic initiative nears its end, I find it impossible not to reflect on my own life as I look back at the series over the last four and a half years. The High Republic is in so many ways, such a crucial part of my story. A significant part of the journey that has led to who I am today. I’m not the only one for whom this is the case, and that’s fascinating. From the outside, these are just books. But here, on the inside … they’re so much more.
When The High Republic launched in 2021, I was deeply unsettled and unhappy, though of course I didn’t know it. I was slowly starting to realize that a lot of the people I called friends weren’t really fitting that definition after all. I hated my job. I hated swiping away my free time on dating apps. I didn’t like where I lived or the trajectory of my career. Everywhere I turned it felt like everyone around me was succeeding, and yet even my bigger wins were swallowed up by internet trolls and self-doubt. I should have been in therapy. I started reading a book called Light of the Jedi instead.
And it was reading that book when I fell in love with Star Wars books in a way I hadn’t before. The High Republic was so new and different and exciting that, for the first time in what had felt like years, I felt like this was a universe of stories that had the potential to alter the lives of its readers for the better.
Fast-forward to February 2021. I have a crush on a fellow Star Wars podcaster, but that’s a story for another time. I’m slowly but truly finding better friends. I’m getting better at writing book reviews … so good, it turns out, that one of them gets quoted and printed on the back of a Claudia Gray book called Into the Dark.
The quote is attributed to the site I was writing for, not me; but those are my words and they’re on the back of a High Republic book. To this day I still do not believe that this actually happened. But that was a confidence boost in a format I was not aware was possible. I had never once considered that liking an author’s work, and writing enthusiastically about it on the internet, would result in something so self-affirming.
Doing the kind of work I do, you generally don’t get a lot of praise. Feedback often comes in the form of criticism, and rarely do people take the time to tell you that your work matters. There is a reason I make an effort to compliment the Star Wars authors I interview. Their stories matter, and they deserve to know that. I learned that lesson from that quote on the back of Into the Dark. My words mattered enough for someone to decide they should exist on that dust jacket forever. It quite literally changed my life.
Since then, my life has transformed into an unrecognizable, far better version of itself. With each new wave of High Republic books, I shed a piece of myself that I’d been mistakenly clinging to or discovered something new that helped me grow. I fell in love. I got a better job. I moved. I got married and interviewed the High Republic authors on the same day. I started going to therapy. I started a podcast called Now This Is Lit.
As the stories of The High Republic grew more sinister and its characters faced greater and more agonizing challenges, so did I. As fans mourned the ongoing losses and tragedies of their favorite fictional characters, I suffered my own personal hardships. But I kept reading the books, and found community among their writers — every interview became a temporary escape from the grief-prison of my mind. I recorded an episode of the show the night my grandmother died. I finalized edits on another during my first miscarriage. I set up for an author interview knowing my mom was sick many miles away. Every new High Republic story became painful to read in an oddly soothing way. I felt less alone. I was not the only one losing. These aren’t things I like to talk about, but if The High Republic has taught us anything, it’s that feeling, and remembering, and grieving are often paths to healing, not darkness.
I’m not the same person I was when The High Republic began, and I largely have the series to thank for that. As the initiative progressed, I became more and more connected to the characters we were following throughout these books and comics and audio dramas. I saw myself in them. Their losses became mine. Their grief made my own feel manageable.
But also, their triumphs gave me the strength to fight my own battles. Their self-acceptance gave me the courage to explore the hidden parts of myself I’d been neglecting. Through The High Republic, I found purpose. I found hope. I found myself. I came out. I opened that first page as a lost, broken soul and finished the final chapter as the woman I never thought I’d ever become. Happy. Fulfilled. Excited.
A story doesn’t just touch those lucky enough to read it. It has the power to change those brave enough to truly engage with it. I’m sure, without The High Republic, I would have found my way through the maze of the last four years and emerged similarly whole. But with these stories to lean on, to learn from, to cherish, I navigated the tangled hyperlanes of the real world with hope,. The High Republic has succeeded in many ways, but its most significant accomplishment is its ability to communicate what Star Wars has always been about: the importance of finding hope in the universe and spreading it everywhere you go. Without that hope, where would I be? Where would any of us have ended up?
The end of this journey really is only the beginning. If a series of books can guide me toward the light within myself in such a monumental way, just imagine what future Star Wars stories will do for me, for all of us, in the years and decades to come.
It’s wild to think that when this all started, we thought we’d just be reading a bunch of books set in a galaxy far, far away. Instead, we discovered these same books could shape us into the heroes of our own stories, begging us to fight for brighter futures, and watching us triumph as their final pages come to a brilliant, worthwhile end.
Now This Is Lit is a podcast (and newsletter!) about Star Wars books, the people who make them, and the readers who just can’t get enough of them. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe to the Substack for more deep dives, guides, interview transcripts, and book love.