Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon Owner's Workshop Manual Review

In what may seem like deja vu the creative team of writer author Ryder Windham and artists Chris Trevas and Chris Reiff are back in the cockpit for another book exploring the inner workings of the most famous starship ever, the Millennium Falcon.

In September of 2010 this trio brought us the Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: A 3-D Owner's Guide, which was a really fun book put together by Becker & Mayer Books.  The 3-D Owner's Guide was an over-sized heavy cardboard book that featured a layered cut-away of the Millennium Falcon, each page contained a "slice" of the ship showing certain systems and surrounding the cut away was text and images associated with the systems discussed.  That book was designed for ages 8 and up, so as cool as it was it was designed for a younger audience and at 22 pages there was only so much information that could be included.

Random House Publishing's Del Rey imprint has taken a similar idea and put a new spin on it that gives a book that is both visually appealing for younger audiences and is detail rich for the more discerning nerd.  Partnering with renowned automotive repair manual publisher Haynes, the Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: Owner's Workshop Manual is 125 pages of geek fun.

The book is crammed full of  images from the films, production photos, and illustrations.  While this full color book doesn't look like most Haynes manuals I have seen on the inside, the concept itself works to make the marketing gimmick make sense.  If you have used a Haynes manual in the past, this book is of a better quality.  It comes with a glossy hardcover and the internal pages are printed on a nice sturdy paper stock.  

Artwork for cutaway

The only production issue that I have with this book, is the binding which causes you to loose some of the content into the hinge of the book.  This problem is greatest on pages 36-39.  Pages 36-37 feature a cutaway of the ship spread across two pages and pages 38-39 feature a two page floor plan of the ship, the problem is that both images are bisected by the binding.  This would have been potentially solved by either having a fold out insert page at this point in the book, or tweaking how the image was laid out on the pages.

Finished cutaway in the book.

The book contains a ton of information, already released in the United Kingdom, here is the table of contents  which is broken down into nine sections.  (1) The History of Corellian Engineering & The YT-Series, (2) The Millennium Falcon, (3) Piloting a YT-1300, (4) YT-1300 Propulsion, (5) Weapons &  Defensive Systems, (6) YT-1300 Engineering Systems, (7) YT-1300 Sensors, (8) Crew Facilities, (9) Size Comparison Chart.

This book gives you a ton of back story on Corellian Engineering, the YT series in general and the special modifications that Han Solo had made to the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.  While it may not be a must buy for all Star Wars fans, if you are interested in spacecraft, design, art, or simply learning more about the Millennium Falcon, this is a book you will not want to miss.

If this book doesn't make you want to build your own Millennium Falcon, then I am not sure what will.

The Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: Owner's Workshop Manual will be released on January 31st, 2012 and has a MSRP of $28.00.


For more on the Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: Owner's Workshop Manual visit, Random House's Website.