Once again, I'm not very impress with Claudia Gray's writing. I think she had an interesting plot going in the beginning of the book, but the original story felt over by 50%, so it ended up feeling like a duology mashed together. Pacing aside, the characters' dialog (in all of her books that've read) comes across like she's trying to hard to be funny and very much like a "hello fellow kids" attempting and sounding "hip and modern", if that makes sense. Like I don't think people really speak like how Claudia writes them.

With that being said, I do think Orla Jareni and Cohmac Vitus were interesting characters, and I would be interesting in following stories by other authors about these characters. I also think the Drengir are an awesome addition to the Star Wars universe, and they were the main reason I decided to pick this up, even knowing how much I don't get along with Gray's writing.

In the hands of another author, I think this could have been a stellar book. I know many people love Claudia Gray's books, both Star Wars and otherwise, but I just can't get into her. I wish Disney would allow more authors to write books because Claudia has done so much for the new canon and, not to beat a dead horse, I just can't be bothered to pick them up knowing she's the author. I would LOVE to see what N. K. Jemisin could do with an adult High Republic book (if she'd be interested in writing one), but I would even settle for more books by Charles Soule and Rae Carson (both of whom I enjoy their Non-SW material more, but still like when they write in the universe).

Overall, if you don't have the issues I do with Claudia Gray, then I would say you might like this book. But I definitely would not recommend this as somebody's first entry into the High Republic.