Lit Books Skywalker: A Family at War, A new Star Wars biography - May 4 2021

It doesn't seem very in-universe to me. The narrator is omniscient and knows what characters were thinking during any given situation. Random example - "Those words would resound in Anakin’s subconscious for years to come, an echo of wisdom—and false hope—forming the basis of his doubts that anyone could truly protect him. And if no one could, his young mind reasoned, he would have to become the strongest Jedi who had ever lived in order to protect those around him instead. If he focused hard enough, he could make it come true." No one in-universe would have that knowledge.

 

An IU work with people's perspectives from those 3 eras or from historians decades later could be interesting, but not holding my breath.

 

I'm very interested in seeing if we'll learn more about Shmi

 

I was hoping this would have some interesting new stuff, so if it's just a semi-in-universe summary of the movies I'll be disappointed.

 

Didn't see this mentioned earlier - also releasing April 6 is a Target-exclusive version of this book with three additional essays.

 

So is it coming out April 6th or May 4th ???

 

Definitely April 6, at least in the US -- confirmed by Amazon, Target, and starwars.com. Some early reports did say May 4, but those were either incorrect or the release was moved up.

 

Looks to be 4 May for the UK.

 

Maybe it's because I'm not interested in this book at all, but is anyone going to be excited about three additional essays? I understand Myths & Fables having additional stories that people may want to read, but additional essays... seems like a chore!

 

I've been excited about this one for a while, and I'll be heading to Target tomorrow for it - but I freely admit I'm a completist and my local Target is ten minutes away so I can pick it up on my lunch break. Would I be as interested in the additional content otherwise? I'd probably want to know what that content was - and of that, I currently have no idea.

 

Well, it's additional essays, and judging from what we've seen of the book so far, those "essays" are talking about little moments from the films. It could be something like "Rey sat heating up her automatic bread. She was alone on Jakku, had been alone as long as she could remember. She barely managed to eke out a living scavenging the junkyards of fallen ships from the Galactic Civil War to find something worthy of trading to Unkar Plutt for food portions. Even her home was a fallen Imperial AT-AT walker. Blah blah blah."

 

"Automatic bread" is an awesome name for whatever Rey is eating, and if the extra content canonizes that it's totally worth it.

Also, there's a new excerpt available.

 

Yeah, after reading that excerpt I have to agree with Daneira that this book isn't for me.

Spoiler

There is barely any new information on Ben's childhood, instead it gives a short summary of Last Shot and some small insights into Han and Leia's parenting mindsets. Though there was the interesting detail that Ben actively decided to go with Luke to train as a padawan.

As for Rey's excerpt I found myself laughing and rolling my eyes. No new information on Rey's father--no name, no reason for survival, and of course Rey wasn't up to much of interest while toiling on Jakku (not that I want her going on cross-galactic adventures before TFA.)

I'm confused as to why LucasFilm puts out books like this. It's not quite a standard reference book, and only a step up from works like The Star Wars Book. One thing I'm certain on after the sequel trilogy is that people want to see more of Ben and Luke prior to Ben's fall; assuming that this excerpt is representative of the whole book, I'm guessing we're not going to be seeing much of that, and this isn't the kind of book they'd save those stories for anyway. We're more likely to see Ben and Luke's adventures in novel or comic format, or else on TV.

 

Obviously, every book is not necessarily going to be packed full of brand new lore. If that's what you're looking for, yes, this may be one to skip*. Sometimes it's more about examining the existing lore from a different angle. For me, a deep dive into the core characters of the saga - fully informed by all nine movies plus the first six and a half years worth of canon novels and comics and whatnot - was a pretty easy "yep." Not to mention the DK brand virtually guarantees a certain level of quality. YMMV.

*Or not? At 320 pages the amount of content is up there in the Ultimate Star Wars / Complete Visual Dictionary range. That's a lot of room for new nuggets of lore to show up in. Guess we'll see what happens!

 

I feel this way about "Secrets of the Sith" only because I wanna know what Palpatine thinks of Snoke.

 

We know the answer, it's the same as he considers everyone to be....

Disposable.

 

Color me curious about this.

 

Lucas Publishing is way too focused on High Republic. Unfortunately, aside from the Star Wars/Darth Vader/Bounty Hunters comics set after ESB and Bad Batch after ROTS, we won't be getting anything during the movie era (32 BBY to 35 ABY) for a long time yet.

 

There’s two upcoming Thrawn books, and Ronin might take place during that time period, not to mention all the things in the works that we don’t yet know about.


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Indeed never underestimate what in terms of the long game does Lucasfilm or publishing have on the pipeline,

 

I think we can take the Mandalorian book cancelations to indicate that all the TV activity is creating so many moving parts in basically the whole PT-ST era that the Story Group's responsibilities in keeping other canon sources in line are going to have to ramp up. To the tune of pulling stuff that's already announced.

I don't think it's going to be blocked out to the same extent as the ST caused while it was ongoing, but I think it's going to take a while before they get together some new guidelines. Which honestly makes it a very good thing that the High Republic is up and running while that happens.

 

I mean i think if anything the cancellation of books also means that they are gonna be policing things a lot more heavily now that they did during the ST era. Probably wait till the TV activity is more locked in before going forward with any books with a few exception like High Republic or Thrawn stuff.

Probably also means Acoylte isn't gonna have that much crossover with the current High Republic book material if they are still full steam ahead of it.

Which i think is smart given how things got a little messy early on. This is a way better model to go for.

I mean as much as I want the Snoke origin novel, I feel like whatever Mando is setting up, while may not tell that story, is gonna be laying down some big foundation for what the ST era will become moving forward. And not just with Snoke but with a lot of stuff.

Plus the fact that comics feature mostly Luke, Han and Leia OT era either indicate they have no real plans for the OT Trio anytime soon or at the very least they are gonna just keep their stories contained to the OT until further notice. Letting a bigger Medium like TV (My guess animated) tell that story when the time comes.

 

Just bought the book.

Unspoiler review but it's kinda amazing how seamless books like this make the entire Saga seem...Like it comes off cohesive when done through stuff like this.

 

That's good to hear.

 

any new intel or lore in it? Rereading the movies sounds rather pointless to me without added angles or content