Review: Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare

They don't call it Star Peace for a reason, authors Jason Fry and Paul Urquhart put the war in Star Wars with the latest edition in the Essential Guide series, Star Wars: Essential Guide to Warfare.

This book has long been in development originally planned to be the Essential Guide to the Star Wars Military was announced in 2008 and to be authored by Karen Traviss before her Ba'slan shev'la from the galaxy far, far away.

Image from Starwars.com

I have been a constant reader of the Star Wars Expanded Universe since it's modern rebirth under Timothy Zahn in the early 1990s, but early in the EU the Essential Guide line was something that while I read felt rather shallow.  This first generation of EG's as defined by Wookieepedia ended with the EG to Alien Species, later we saw a second generation of books along the same subject lines updated and re-branded as "new."  I didn't pay close attention to this second generation as it largely came during the Dark Times of my personal fandom.  My return to the Essential Guide line came with 2007's Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force by Ryder Windham.

The addition of new original content as well as a gigantic leap forward in the artistic illustrations in the books really began for me with the Essential Guide to the Force.  This book was by the breathtakingly geeky Essential Atlas by Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry, which took fictional stellar cartography to unparalleled heights.

As a Star Wars book nerd, my most anticipated EG book is Pablo Hidalgo's forthcoming The Essential Reader's Companion.  That being said, Del Rey's Star Wars Facebook page has been releasing sneak peaks of The Essential Guide to Warfare's artwork for awhile now and my excitement has been slowly building.

What authors Jason Fry and Paul Urquhart deliver in this book far exceeded my expectations and sent my inner fanboy into fits of giggles.

The Essential Guide to Warfare reads like an exceptionally well done college history seminar textbook.  You have a mixture of secondary source accounts, primary source excerpts along with a historical narrative and technical discussion.  It is the synthesis of all these elements that comes together so well.

Before I go any farther it would be a shame not to mention the many artists who contributed some really imaginative and fun pieces of art to this book.  Much of this books impressiveness is do to the work of;

Drew Baker, Tommy Lee Edwards, Ian Fullwood, Ansel Hsiao, Stephan Martiniere, Modi, Jason Palmer, Chris Scalf, Dave Seeley, Darren Tan, John Vanfleet, Bruno Werneck, and Paul Youll.

Image from Star Wars Books Facebook

The book covers the entire span of conflict in the Star Wars universe from its earliest beginnings to the events in Dark Horse Comics' Legacy series.  Mixed into the overall historical narrative there are detailed break downs of the ships and technology of war, profiles of important military leaders, detailed campaign maps and a bit of gallows humor thrown in for fun.

There is a tremendous amount of character depth and world building going on in this book, by creating in-universe primary source documents and secondary source accounts we get facts that had previously been created in various sources from role-playing guides to novels coalesce to give you what feels like the author's where sitting between the stacks of the Celebratus Archive at Obroa-skai juggling sheets of flimsi and data-tapes.

Without giving away all the goodies in the book, there were a few sections that made me totally geek out; the inclusion of D'harhan, Han Solo, the Ewoks, and Kal Skirata made this a tremendously enjoyable read.

Hardcore Clone Trooper, Mandalorian and Republic Commando fans will be most happy, we may not have gotten Omega Squad, the Null-ARCs or the Mando training sergeants in The Clone Wars animated series yet, but ....  Go buy The Essential Guide to Warfare and you may still be grinning like this impressed fanboy.

New Exhibits at Legoland California's Star Wars Miniland

I went up to Legoland California last year to check out the Star Wars Miniland, it looks like I am going to have to make a return engagement as they have added new exhibits to the Star Wars area of the park today.

 Legoland California is scheduled to unveil its expanded "Star Wars" Miniland section to the public Thursday, including a 50-pound Jawa sandcrawler made up of 15,000 Lego bricks. 

Other new models will be introduced, as well, including representations of the ion cannon in the Rebel base on the planet Hoth, a Crystal City building and a model of the giant opee sea killer on Naboo.

A dozen characters will be represented as 3-foot-tall mini figures that will be on display in the "Star Wars" Gallery. Each figure was constructed from about 10,000 Lego bricks.

SOURCE: 10news.com 

My latest Clone Wars Season 5 Speculation on The Star Wars Report: Darth Maul: Underworld Crime Lord

Please head over to SWR and check out my overactive imagination about where Darth Maul's story could go in Season Five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Click Image below for LINK: 

Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill Cover Art Makeover

New Cover Art

Del Rey released revised cover art work for the forthcoming Aaron Allston novel, X-Wing: Mercy Kill.

The new cover art superimposes a silver background and Alliance Starbird logo over the original cover art.  This is kind of similar to coloring and use of symbols that we saw on the Shadow Games cover.

Personally I much prefer the original cover art, not only do we loose some interesting new artwork with the change, but the previous cover fit in better with the rest of the X-Wing series covers.  With respect to the good folks at Del Rey, I have enjoyed most of the covers recently (Choices of One not withstanding) but this strikes me as one photoshop too far.

Old Cover Art

Let us take a look at the cover art for the other books in the series:

Timothy Zahn's Next Star Wars Novel: Scoundrels

*3/23/12 UPDATE*

Timothy Zahn provided an update via Facebook regarding the cast of characters that will appear in his next novel.

 An additional note:
I've noticed that speculation has already begun as to the identities of the rest of the scoundrels. Just to make it clear: while there may be a name or two you recognize, most of the rest of the group will be new characters. (Many of Han's old established cohorts are smugglers, and we're going to need *slightly* different skill sets on this one.)

EW.com today released the front cover art for New York Times Best Selling Author Timothy Zahn's next Star Wars novel.

Star Wars: Scoundrels will be set during the OT (Original Trilogy) and will feature the tumultuous trio of Han, Chewie and Lando, along with a motley crew of other characters in an Oceans 11 style heist story.

We had already gotten a brief description of the novel, but today we got the sharp looking cover art and the official description of the novel from the publisher Del Rey.

The Death Star has been destroyed. The Rebellion has had its first big victory. And Han Solo, newly conscripted to the Rebel cause, is on the run from the Empire and the bounty hunters eager to turn him in for the huge reward being offered by Jabba the Hutt. Now a mysterious stranger offers Han the resources to execute a daring robbery from a major crime lord. The mission is impossible, but the prize will make Han a free man. With no choice but to accept, Han Solo and his Wookiee partner, Chewbacca, set out to assemble a cast of rogues, knaves, and cons with the right combination of wits, skills, and derring-do to pull off an operation of this complexity and scale — the best scoundrels the galaxy has to offer. And then the game is on: a rip-roaring, intergalactic, Ocean’s Eleven-style heist adventure starring Han Solo, Chewie, and Lando Calrissian, written by #1 New York Times bestselling Star Wars author Timothy Zahn!

Chris over at EUCantina.net has a terrific column discussion who the potential Solo's 11 could be.  Please go give it a read.

SOURCE: EW.com