Damn. What a finale. Yes, I know this is technically not the Phase II finale, with several comics and a manga all set to come out still, but with this book doing so much heavy lifting (literally — it clocks in at over 500 pages) it’s hard not to feel like this is the grand finale of Phase II. The story that prepares us to launch back to the future and jump ahead 150 years to where we last left the Jedi and the Republic in the wake of the Starlight Beacon crashing into the sea. But that’s enough talking around it. Let’s dive into Cavan Scott’s Path of Vengeance.

The Story

The galaxy has erupted into chaos. Or at least, chaos for a few specific individuals. The battle of Jedha has left the holy city in ruins, with adherents of the Force more divided than ever. At the biggest odds are the Path of the Open Hand, who maintain that anyone who uses the Force for their own aims is a heretic and responsible for the chaos, and the Jedi, who have a tough time playing peacekeeper when everyone is so damn belligerent.

At the heart of the story are cousins Marda and Yana Ro, whose personal approaches to the work of the Path continue to veer in the directions set out for them in Path of Deceit. While Yana is disillusioned, and wants nothing more than to get away from the group that is responsible for the death of her girlfriend Kor, Marda is the other way around, devoting herself even more to a cause and a belief, and a leader (the Mother), who is the reason for her losing her own love, Padawan Kevmo Zink.

As Jedha falls apart, Marda accompanies the Mother back to Dalna, while Yana is made to stay behind and reclaim the Rod of Daybreak, which when joined with the Rod of Seasons, will give the Mother full control over the Leveler – the terrifying beast responsible for calcifying Force sensitive individuals. While she does that, Marda covertly joins a mission to the mysterious Planet X, where the Mother has sent a small team to bring back more eggs to create more Levelers, thus giving her greater power and control.

But the Jedi are not sitting back and twiddling their thumbs while all this goes down. Padawan Matty Cathley is sent with Jedi Knight Oliviah Zevaron to pursue the Path back to Dalna and discover what exactly they are up to there. While it’s more a run of the mill mission for Matty, who just wants to get to the bottom of things, the investigation – and the identity of the Mother more specifically – is a major point of interest for Oliviah.

As with the rest of Wave 2, all paths converge on Dalna for a final showdown that had several gasp-worthy (though well set up) moments.

My Impressions

Where the rest of Phase II set up what we needed to know in bits and pieces, Path of Vengeance brought it all home in one large cohesive chunk. As with Cataclysm, the novel overall is very satisfying, and doesn’t leave key plot points from this era dangling over into the next. Naturally there are still bigger questions still out there: how did Marda and her followers eventually go on to become the Nihil we see in the Eye of the Storm comic? Why did the Jedi – knowing about the Nameless – not say anything to anybody? Yes Creighton and Yoda decided to remove archive information, but why did the story not spread? All things I look forward to discovering in Phase III.