Books From a Certain Point of View, [A New Hope] 40th anniversary anthology novel (#OperationBlueMilk)

Bought the book here in Orlando, i will back to Brazil friday, good read for the airplane.

 

My big takeaway from this book? I love Jot.

 

I love anthology books. Used to read the old Chicken Noodle for the Soup books when I was a Kid, and im loving this one because it's a star wars book.

What they really need to do is find all of the short stories that are canon from ole magazines and those that are published and create another anthology book (We got three so far with Tales from a GFFA Volume 1, FACPOV and the upcoming Canto Bright book) I would love it.

The Short stories that need to be published in an anthology book are

• Bait
• Blade Squadron (short story)
• Blade Squadron: Jakku
• Blade Squadron: Kuat
• Blade Squadron: Zero Hour
• Bottleneck (already published in the Rise of the Empire book but still love it to be in with the other short stories).
• The End of History
• Inbrief
• Kindred Spirits
• Last Call at the Zero Angle
• The Levers of Power (already published in the Rise of the Empire book but still love it to be in with the other short stories).
• Mercy Mission (short story) (already published in the Rise of the Empire book but still love it to be in with the other short stories).
• One Thousand Levels Down
• Rebel Bluff
• Scorched
• The Perfect Weapon
• The Voice of the Empire
• TK-462 (short story)
• Turning Point (Jason Hough)

 

Yes that would be an excellent idea. Warhammer 40K has been doing that forever, it's really great when you're not the kind of person to poke around reading every obscure short story that pops up here and there.

 

exactly. and plus that list right there is 20 short stories most of them are only 6 pages but stories like the Perfect weapon are 57. Mercy Mission and Bottleneck are 22 and The Levers of Power is 16 you do the math that's 200 pages. more than enough to make a book.

 

interesting. not as much of a mouthful now, and lines up with other tusken names like a'yark and a'sharad.

 

Yes, i wished it was about Biggs coming back to Tatooine, as shown in the deleted Anchorhead scenes, instead of the battle against the Death Star.

Most stories are great, but what i really missed were stories about Luke's friends on Tatooine.

 

Fun fact, when trying to figure out if you have enough content for a book - use word count, not page count. Page count can be aped with spacing, font choices, font size, line breaking, margins, etc. Word count is more consistent.

 

I really enjoyed this book. So much so, I think it’s my favorite book of the new canon. Part of me regrets dismissing the concept of the book initially because I thought they were overusing the OT, and I only decided to buy it because Amazon gave me a discount deal for the Kindle edition. But now that I read it, I’m going to buy the hardcover edition because this book is well worth the money (and the money is donated to a good cause too, which I didn’t know).

My favorite stories were, in no particular order:

1. The Sith of Datawork – I didn’t know I needed a story about nothing but Imperial bureaucracy, and now I want more of these.
2. The Red One - I usually dislike stories that humanize droids too much, but this is quite the exception. It was simply brilliantly written.
3. Fully Operational, And Incident Report and Verge of Greatness – I have a preference for Imperial POV stories, and this book did not disappoint me. The writers of these stories managed to write these fascinating Imperials perfectly in-character, elaborating on their distinguishable personalities from ANH, but they also gave me something new about them. I particularly loved how, once combined, these stories make Motti a rather mischievous and hilarious character.
4. The Trigger – Aphra is one of my favorite SW characters overall, but even I initially thought it was a bit too forceful inserting the character in a movie she didn’t exist. But the story did find its rightful place in the canon; it was well thought-out and the character was as compelling as ever.
5. You Owe Me a Ride – not just because they were the only (noticeably) females in the cantina scene, but the story feels so very classic Star Wars in its simplicity, fun character interactions and ultimately good ending that worked out for everyone.
7. Not for Nothing – “What if we get sand in our eyes, D’an? Do they even have eyewashes on Tattoine?” Omg I loved this story.
8. Reirin and Rites – never thought I would love Tusken Raider stories so much. I loved that the first story gave an small insight to their culture from a female run-away’s POV, and in Rites I simply loved how they mystified Obi-Wan.
9. Duty Roster – at first I thought it was a little weird that they would have a story about a fandom joke, but the way it fleshed out Col and the way it ended was so awesome, now I love that “Fake Wedge” is part of canon too.
10. Contingency Plan – I love that Mon Mothma was this close to surrender herself and the Rebellion had the events from ANH did not happen. I like the character more when literature acknowledges she is an imperfect leader albeit with good intentions, and story gave her a whole lot of depth.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed about 90% of the stories. There were a few stories that left me feeling apathetic or meh about it, and only one story that I actively disliked. But it’s quite an amazing accomplishment for a book with 40 different stories from different writers, and I’m usually more on the critical side.

 

I could go on and on about the stories I liked from this book.

Suffice it to say the only two I disliked were the one that was all the different denizens of the Cantina fighting among themselves and the Palpatine story. I got taken out of Palpatine's because of the writing style.

What I will say is that even though I loved this book and the stories in it, I am quite disappointed with the people in charge that decided this book needed to be told between RO and ANH. This would have been a perfect chance to give us a ton of short stories between RoTJ and TFA. Hell, between RoTJ and Jakku. Instead we get the same time period fleshed out more. It is a bit sad to me and annoying.

 

I've only read the first 5 so far (and The Trigger) and I loved Reirin. Love stories about tusken raiders and this one sucked me right in.

Spoiler

Any idea who the ":trader" was who wanted the crystal? I'd love to find out what happened to this girl. Sounds like she feels the force and could be trained as a Jedi if anyone (Yoda or Obi-Wan or any other surviving Jedi) ever found her. I could have read a whole novel with this short story being just the first chapter. Really well done.

 

I hope they do that at some point. But this book was specifically done for the 40th anniversary of ANH.

40 stories for 40 years.

 

I get it and understand why it was done the way it was. I just want MOAR.

 

In case anyone's interested -- notes and discussion for "Duty Roster."

 

Thank you so much for sharing. I love getting into authors' minds

 

Well, they could have done that, but then it would have been a completely different book.

There are other Star Wars books from other time periods.

ha you're not the only one

 

Say, you guys, I may need some help here.

In the FACPOV panel, we learned that TD-110 (the "Move along" stormtrooper and also the one who hits his head on a door in A New Hope) is the Fist Order officer Wanten from Join the Resistance #2.

I've decided to expand the Wook article on Wanten/TD-110, but I'm facing some discrepancies my three sources, two of which are stories from this anthology (the third one is Join the Resistance #2). Not sure if I still need to spoiler-tag the whole thing, but I'll do it anyway.

Spoiler

• According to "Born in the Storm", TD-110 was the stormtrooper commander of Foot Patrol 7, a unit that was dispatched to Tatooine by Tarkin specifically to retrieve C-3PO and R2-D2.

• In "Bump", we learn that TD-110 is now aboard the Death Star, and that he's just back from Tatooine. It's all fine and dandy, except it says he and his mates were "sped here on the hurry-up instead of continuing with the Devastator to Alderaan" after TD-328's helmet cracked in a sandstorm. Timeline-wise, it sounds wrong. Why would the Devastator have gone to Alderaan after the droid incident in Mos Eisley? Also, we're told that TD-110 is from the planet of Parsh--you'll see why it's a problem later.

• In Join the Resistance #2, Wanten says he has a "Corellian nose", and at one point we read "It was as if Monagha Schnelle, the fabled gift-giving red she-wolf from the holiday stories Wanten had heard as a youth, had arrived upon Vodran." Here, it sounds an awful lot like he's Corellian. Additionally, the book implies that he was stationed on Tatooine for some time: "He’d been left to make sand castles on Tatooine while he watched as his friends and peers were promoted. He missed all the good battles—Endor, Jakku. Granted, he’d probably have been killed had he been there, but that kind of action was, Wanten often thought, preferable to running border checks on a planet no one cared to visit. His time on that desert planet had given Wanten a lifetime antipathy for Hutts."

I find it all quite hard to reconcile.

 

And now following you. Cheers!

 

I love reading behind the scenes stuff, specifically from a great Star Wars author. Thanks for sharing!

 

As I wrote above, I love the Tusken Raiders stories Reirin and Rites. One question...

Spoiler

Now that A'Yark (from JJM's novel Kenobi) is a part of the new canon due to her appearance in this book), isn't the leader of the Tusken Raider clan a female? And, if so, why does Reirin have the view that she can't become a warrior and is limited in what role she can have in the clan due to her gender? Don't all of the Tuskens know their leader is a female and that she is the fiercest warrior they have? Seems like an inconsistency, but I'd like to hear your opinions.

 

IIRC

Spoiler

Reirin says that women of her tribe don't fight. Maybe she doesn't belong to A'Yark's.

 

@LelahMekha That is a possible explanation...

Spoiler

I assumed the different tribes wouldn't be that close together, but maybe Reirin traveled a bit to get to the sandcrawler stop. If your explanation is correct, it's possible other tribes do not know who A'Yark is or they do not know that she is a female. You would think A'Yark would be legendary and that Reirin would seek her out.

Just something I was curious about. I really enjoyed both of these stores and am very happy to see A'Yark brought back into the GFFA.

 

One last thought on "Reirin" & "Rites"....if Reirin knew about A'Yark and sought her out, it is possible that A'Yark could recognize Reirin's gift as being a potential force-user based on A'Yark's experiences with Kenobi and Sharad Hett (the Tusken Jedi, who I know is not canon). Then, it is quite possible that A'Yark brings Reirin to Kenobi.

 

I think for Wookieepedia you need to treat FACPOV stories that are contradicted in other works as a special case. Like put one of those "the following information is of uncertain canonicity pending further guidance from Lucasfilm" bars over it, like with Tales or things that got confusing because of TCW.


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That was definitely a facepalm moment for me reading the book. Like did you really need to make the "move along" Stormtrooper commander from Tatooine the same one that bumped his head on the Death Star . . .

Seemed like a very forced attempt at making some connections at the expense of actually making sense