I'm rating this 3.5 stars but honestly I think the first half is 3 and the second half is 4. It was much stronger near the end.

Criticisms: The SFX in the audiobook are UNBEARABLE. They make listening to this an absolute chore, I'm slowly getting closer to giving up on Star Wars audiobooks all together. At points in this book the SFX were so much louder than the narrator that I actually couldn't follow the dialogue. In an audiobook. There's no excuse for that. And more generally, I think I prefer the YA and MG arcs of High Republic because they actually have characters I can get behind and get attached to. The scope of the adult High Republic novels are just too wide. There's a million characters to try and keep track of and I think it means I'm less attached to them all as a whole than with the other stories. In this book it was still Lorna Dee, Vernestra and Imri that jumped out to me - because I've read books focused on them specifically.