“Knight Errant” (2010-12), John Jackson Miller’s second “Star Wars” saga after “Knights of the Old Republic,” has one of the darkest possible premises: Lone Jedi Knight Kerra Holt tries to gather up slaves from Sith territory to bring to Republic space as refugees. This is a time – one generation before the “Darth Bane” novels — […]
Ewoks are notoriously controversial among “Star Wars” fandom. The reason, as a famous episode of “How I Met Your Mother” outlined, is simple: They were (successfully) aimed at kids. The marketing was so effective that you can predict a person’s age (or at least whether they were younger or older than 10 on May 25, […]
Part of Disney’s argument for why the “Star Wars” timeline had to be rebooted was that a new movie on the original timeline couldn’t be understood by a newcomer who didn’t know the wider story. This is easily disproven by the whole history of “Star Wars” stories, which had been told non-linearly since the beginning, […]
Dark Horse’s “Star Wars Adventures,” a series of six comic digests from 2009-11, seems like a good way to experience character-focused stories set during the time of the original trilogy. However, these comics are aggressively aimed at kids, so there’s not a lot of depth for adult readers. Here are my rankings of the six volumes:
‘Star Wars’ flashback (Book review): James Kahn’s book is a blend of Foster’s and Glut’s styles, with lots of tasty backstory and continuity tidbits.
As I noted in my review of the “Star Wars” novelization, adaptations of movies give insight not only into the authors’ interpretation of the material, but also into the filmmakers’ vision months before the movie hits screens. Alan Dean Foster’s “A New Hope” novel came out six months before the film, so it serves up […]
Before the internet age, knowing that Alan Dean Foster ghost-wrote the “Star Wars: A New Hope” novelization (December 1976) for George Lucas was the mark of a true “Star Wars” fan. Today, it’s not unusual for fans to know this tidbit. In fact, I think the pendulum has swung the other way and now there’s a bias […]
George Lucas’ revelation in 2002’s “Attack of the Clones” that Boba Fett was the clone son of Jango Fett opened up a new vein of Fett stories. While subsequent stories would retain some of the pre-2002 “mysterious loner” aspect, the revelation about his background encouraged writers to explore the bounty hunter’s rare personal bonds as […]
The “Legacy of the Force” series – which often featured excellent writing despite the flawed central premise of Jacen Solo turning evil – goes out with its most frustrating entry, Troy Denning’s “Invincible” (2008). Although a round-robin interview at the back of the sixth book, “Inferno,” leaves no doubt that Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss and Denning enjoyed […]
With “Revelation” (2008), the eighth book in the nine-book “Legacy of the Force” series, Karen Traviss again delivers a novel that’s so well-written that it overcomes the central flaw of this saga: that it’s unbelievable that Jacen Solo has become Darth Caedus. Writing almost poetically about Mandalorian culture, Traviss nicely meshes the storylines of Boba Fett’s extended […]