Authors: Adam Christopher, Alexander Freed, Ashely Eckstein, Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, Beth Revis, Cavan Scott, Charles Soule, Christie Golden, Chuck Wendic, Claudia Gray, Daniel José Older, Delilah S. Dawson, E.K. Johnston, Elizabeth Wein, Gary D. Schmidt, Glen Weldon, Greg Rucka, Griffin McElroy, Ian Doescher, Jason Fry, John Jackson Miller, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ken Liu, Kieron Gillen, Madeleine Roux, Mallory Ortberg, Matt Fraction, Meg Cabot, Mur Lafferty, Nnedi Okorafor, Pablo Hidalgo, Paul Dini, Paul S. Kemp, Pierce Brown, Rae Carson, Renée Ahdieh, Sabaa Tahir, Tom Angleberger, Wil Wheaton, Zoraida Córdova
Genre: Space Fantasy
Series: Star Wars Disney Canon Novel
Publisher: Arrow
40 Years. 40 Stories. In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope, this unique anthology features Star Wars stories by bestselling authors, trendsetting artists, and treasured voices from Star Wars’ literary history. Over 40 authors have lent their unique vision to 40 “scenes,” each retelling a different moment from the original Star Wars film, but with a twist: every scene is told from the point of view of a seemingly minor…
Bit of a baffling one this – it takes the chronological run of Star Wars (or, if you’re hung up on such things, “Episode IV: A New Hope”) and then each chapter of this book is a short story written from the point of view of a bit-part character. A sort of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” type arrangement, perhaps. The incongruousness is that because each story is by a different author there’s a wild variance in the execution… so some stories cover the few moments before that character’s involvement in the story. Some cover the aftermath. Some are about the weeks and years leading up to that moment. Examples from memory are:
- the Imperial functionary who saw what they thought was an empty escape pod taking off towards Tatooine, and their subsequent manipulation of Empire red tape to try to avoid having their arse handed to them for missing such a key piece of intelligence
- a Jawa’s story of the things they collected and stashed away in a hidden compartment in the sandcrawler
- back story on the Bith musicians in the Mos Eisley Cantina
- a life-perspective on the tentacled creature living in the Death Star’s trash compactor
Such a mixed bag. Mildly interesting.
From a Certain Point of View (Star Wars)
