Books Journey to the Force Awakens short stories by Landry Walker

You hope they're chocolate-flavoured.....

 

The hardcover edition of short stories released this Tuesday and I picked it up alongside the TFA blu-ray. It's a great book! High quality paper, full color images before each story, like jacket. The book size reminds me a bit of those old Big Little Books.

I read one of the new stories, A Recipe For Death. It was pretty fun, reminded me of the Jabba's Palace stories.

Cannot wait for more of these. Hope they have a volume 2 in the works already.

 

Anxiously waiting for this to come in the post. My fingers are crossed that this book will sell well enough that ALL short stories such as the ones from the rise of the empire anthology book are eventually collected into volumes

 

The Unkar Plutt story is good, but bizarre. Like... catfishing is a thing in Star Wars now. I never thought that would happen.

Can we call it "gooberfishing"?

 

Did Unkar find his true love?

 

He did...

Spoiler

...money

 

will be getting together with bloodlines for my birthday....the lost treasure of count dooku sounds really interesting....yeah!...love the background characters of the sw universe so i know i will definitely like these short stories

 

That short story is a LOT of fun! Sidon is great!

 

so much to look forward too....never been a better time to be a sw fan...

 

Just started this one, I can now understand why Constable Zuvio has such a minor cult following cuz his story that opens the book, High Noon on Jakku, is straight-up awesome. I'm a sucker for Westerns and I'm a sucker for killer robots and this has both.

 

Zuvio's cult following is actually more due to his absence from the movie after all the advertising. "High Noon on Jakku" is fun, but it's also pretty short, and honestly the droid stuff is more interesting than Zuvio per se.

 

The 2nd story "Recipe for Death" is even more cracked than the first one. Which I'm okay with. Like literally the cook at Maz' kitchen finds the sous chef murdered so, logically, he sets up a freakin' bake off like Iron Chef except at one point it's Zero-G and shooting lazers. He actually mentally proclaims "The game is afoot!" It's described that the sous chef was butchered and then prepared and hung in the fridge!!! And the answer is "bake off!" I kinda love it.

The taster droids were a neat creation and I sort of figured out a few pages that "oh, this guy likes Killer droids" so that was the answer to the killer here. However, while the previous story the droids didn't actually kill anybody, these droids need to kill. Because it makes food preparation better. That's their motivation! Which, oddly, once again I'm okay with.

 

packed back 2 more stories.

"All Creatures Great And Small" is an interesting, unreliable narrator take on the Battle of Yavin that Bobbajo and his critters helped take out the Death Star (the lazer misfires instead of Luke blowing it up) which the story helps calm Jakku kids in a terrible situation but the teaser at the end implies JUST MAYBE he's telling the truth because the same critters took out an invading pirate army. Which is wacky enough to dance on the edge of being plausible. The fun part in the story was figuring out when Bobbajo's tale took place and how his creatures running around at the same time Luke and Co. were battling in the Death Star. Basically, a nicely told story, which is kind of the point. And maybe he DID blow up the Death Star.

"The Face of Evil" is about two little furry yellow dudes at Maz's castle in TFA. It's very much a horror story with deformed monsters, the description of Specimen Nine monster is really freaky. Which is totally okay because Star Wars DOES have freaky monsters in it so, as dark as it gets at the end, it does fit. Also there's a really awesome twist at the end involving the crook the little yellow dudes are giving a new face too. Good irony points however it does seem kind of dark if this is supposedly aimed for an ages 8 to 12 novel set, although I really think the young kid branding of the book kind of does it a disservice because the stories kind of go to these dark places, especially this one. Compelling read anyway and you keep rooting for the mean crook to get her comeuppance which she does, rather nastily. Also the final "Epilogue" chapter - yikes!

Only 2 more stories to go, next one is a Unkar story so I'm looking forward to that.

 

Finished this off, I really quite enjoyed it. The stories are pretty twisty, the prose is very fun, and there's actually some surprisingly darkly funny stuff throughout. (and just dark, dark stuff). My only real gripe is the chapters are, like, at every scene transition, which makes the book easy to find a place to stop, but it really pads the page count to quite a long degree (there's literally chapters that are single paragraphs or 3 sentences). that may be more of an editorial thing than the writer, though.

The last two stories are Unkar Plutt in "True Love", there's some nifty ideas in here about A.I being used in the Star Wars universe. Naturally, two crooks decide to use it to scam Unkar and the A.I. falling in love with him is actually kind of hilarious. And Unkar's eventual realization and scamming back the scammers is great. You think he's going to pull a grinch and have his heart grow two sizes that day and he .... doesn't. It's awesome. And, once again, darkly implied end for at least one of the scammers, yikes!

The final one is "Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku" is a delightful mess, which I mean in a good way. It uses an awesome piece of Prequel era continuity and then has a bunch of pirates in a mad chase for it. There's a lot of random pirates getting splattered by the elements (and even freakin space pirates boarding other space pirates on the sand seas!). An aside with a Trade Federation Battle Droid's final thoughts is great, and the "treasure" they find is really interesting. The Crimson Corsair is nicely blank except for his closing words and he even seems a bit more noble than you would expect from such a scary design. May not be my favourite story in here, that is "Recipe for Death" or "High Noon on Jakku", but it is really nuts.

In fact, the whole collection is kind of nuts, which is probably why I liked it so much.

 

A new interview with Landry Walker.

Some interesting stuff in there about his experience as a Star Wars author.