Books Tales from Vandor by Jason Fry

Finally ordered this on Amazon UK after not finding it in town today. Hopefully I'll get it next week.

 

Had Barnes and Noble order it for me as for some reason they did not have it in stock. Lot of stuff in there....

Spoiler

Even "Ian" from the Star Wars Lego stuff

 

I finally got it from Amazon UK but I haven't had time to read it yet. Maybe this week.

 

Caught up with this today. It was a quick read but I found it enjoyable. Liked the art a lot.

 

@jasonfry
Does the inclusion of the Han Solo book info re-canonize those stories or are they just for shout outs??

 

No details that reference Legends works re-canonize those works; the canon doesn't work that way. If it did, the first time durasteel was mentioned, for example, would have re-canonized every Legends story to mention durasteel. All that happens is that something with that name exists in the canon universe, along with any other details introduced by the canon story; nothing from Legends gets ported over because of it.

 

This is more than just a word or name....Dash is mentioned but it does not recanonize every thing with him....however there are specific details in ToV that relate to the adventures Han and Chewie had in those early books regarding freeing Chewie from Star's End and destroying it as well as dealing with Xim's war droids.

 

Just a thought on canon and re-canonizing things that I've been mulling over since the Disney buyout. I suppose it's neither here nor there, but I just had to say it somewhere--but, to me, Star Wars is about faith. George Lucas has said on more than one occasion that it's about believing in something greater than yourself, about seeing the magic in the world, etc. You have to take the saga on childlike faith. To me, that's how the whole canon thing always worked all these years. No, not every detail lined up. There were some huge errors, GIANT gaps in logic, and just plain impossible situations--but in the EU we were told "it all exists". God bless 'em, those like Jason and Daniel and Abel and others have crafted wondrous retcons to help us believe, but it really always came down to our own belief. No, it didn't make sense that everything "happened", but as long as were allowed to believe that it did, that was all that mattered to me. Faith was kept alive. When Disney came into the picture, however, their first order of business was to make a public declaration: "These things in the EU absolutely, unequivocally did not happen!" They took all the mystery out of it, and killed the simple joy of believing. To me, that's what killed Star Wars for me for a while. Now we had hard lines in the sand: "This happened, but this did not happen". It became too concrete. But! (and this is the reason I write this), with things like ToV and the wonderful Visual Guides coming out...I feel that faith slowly coming back. By having references to guys like Dash and SO many others in that excellent book---I love it! I don't WANT to know how it all fits together. I don't need to know what parts of a book are or are not canon. Just open that possibility to me that it COULD be canon. That in some crazy way that we don't know about yet, in some form or another--even just as in-universe stories--those things "happened". Rather than say "no/yes" as Disney did in the beginning, give me a twinkle in the eye and a mischievous wink and say "Some legends ARE real..." These days, that's all I need to satisfy me when it comes to the debate over whether something has been brought back into canon. Give me that magic back, that simple childlike faith that it all fits together. Just allow me to believe that "it all really happened" in some way. I don't need any more details beyond that.

 

Sure, so only the details mentioned are canon; it doesn't make the content of any of those Legends stories canon. So in this case all we know is that Bollux believes Han blew a Corporate Sector prison off the surface of a planet to rescue Chewie, and that he helped destroy a battalion of Xim's war droids. That's it.

 

1. It's interesting that early EU (like before it was the EU) stuff, like the Brian Daley Han books and Lando trilogy, is easier to see as almost completely canonize-able because it was so one-offy and not tied to any other continuity stuff that's likely to be invalidated. So while only certain details of those novels are now canon, I struggle to think of any reasons why the whole stories wouldn't "fit". Kind of the opposite of, say, "canon Thrawn" whose very introduction wipes out his EU history almost completely.

 

I mean, they pretty much did that. In a show no less, and from a fan favorite character.

 

It does? I thought Thrawn and Thrawn: Alliances were specifically written by Zahn to (broadly) match up with both Legends and canon? The start of Thrawn basically adapts Mist Encounter almost verbatim.

 

Nu Canon does change enough that there is nor reason the NR would not know who he is by the time of the Thrawn Trilogy.

 

That's a reasonably minor issue I think could be written around easily enough (especially if he's still missing, presumed... in the Unknown Regions circa 9 ABY). It's not really on the level of wiping out his history completely.

 

Solo has Lando literally narrating his novel adventures and I think L3 got a pretty big inspiration frolm Vuffi Ra. Why would the screenwriters chose Lando's sidekick to be a droid if not for good ole Vuffi?

 

I think L3 would have no problem not calling Lando master.

(that was the running joke with Vuffi Ra).

 

I like the many Legends shout-outs in this.

 

Are there any more to spot? I passed on the Smuggler's Guide, but have still not found this book anywhere.

 

Interesting to see this one get defrosted.

Tales From Vandor was one of those weird books where my opinions wound up bouncing around a lot.

It had a difficult delivery -- we had a lot of back and forth to get the tone/approach right -- and then the book pretty much got lost in the shuffle post-Solo. (Not a big surprise, as Solo itself pretty much got lost in the overall Star Wars shuffle.) I kind of sighed and put the book out of mind as one of those projects that hadn't quite worked, in various aspects and for various reasons.

But I wound up dipping back into it a while back for some reason, and found myself happier with it than I had been -- the flaws and bumps didn't bother me as much, and I was able to appreciate the stuff that worked more than I had. And over time more and more folks have discovered it and seemed to enjoy its unreliable narrator, arched-eyebrow tone and the deep cuts from lore.

Anyway, this thread cheered me up today. Hope everyone's healthy and not going too stir-crazy. Be well, be nice to each other and see you at a con/movie theater soon. Well, soonish.

 

To some the unreliable narrators are the most reliable of them all

 

Still tempted to pick it up, but looks like I will have to Amazon it, now.