Lit Books Star Wars: Battles that Changed the Galaxy -Jason Fry, Amy Ratcliffe, Cole Horton, & Chris Kempshall

Overwhelm, underwhelm, why is no one ever whelmed.

 

Stay whelmed.

 

Lol, I'm going through the Young Justice craze right now

 

Where are you up to?

 

Reading fanfiction. I've only been able to see the first two seasons and I have to share the television that has Netflix but I know what happens. Gotta look out for Tim Drake

 

What would be the most galaxy-changing battles which aren't in the films? (Aside from the obvious Battle of Jakku)

 

The Battle of Kur (from Light of the Jedi) and the Battle of Kuat (Blade Squadron: Kuat) come to mind. The battles of Atollon and Lothal from Rebels are both fairly important as well. Too many to count from TCW but perhaps Kamino and Mandalore? From the comics, definitely Mako-Ta, possibly Vrogas Vas as well due to the high number of Rebel losses.

 

I'd probably include Umbara as well from TCW, and the Malevolence campaign. Cymoon-1 seemed important.

 

I'll tell you how you know if this books lives up to the hype or is just a "book about the movie".

If any of the previews they release reference a skirmish from The Mandalorian.
If they are going to put the raid on Gideon's cruiser on par with Endor or Exegol, then what they really want is to give every fan a page with their favorite fight from the screen.

If they do that...it's just a picture book that they'll stuff with glossy captures from every show they can. But it also means they will gloss over anything not from a movie or series (maybe Jakku gets lucky...they'll still get a page of wrecked Star Destroyer pictures in there from TFA)

This smells an awful lot like that Family at War book.

There will always be something for fans to dig up in there, but I suspect revelations are not the purpose of this publication.

Been wrong before, though.

 

It will live up to the hype if it offers great writing, interesting and informative maps, relevant illustrations, and we learn new things and see whatever battles it covers from a fresh perspective. (Even if it only covers battles from the films, and honestly, this being a DK book that's probably the direction it will go in. Kuat or Vrogas Vas would be enormous fun to see, but that might be an unrealistic expectation.) Like I said in the Skywalker: A Family at War thread, it doesn't always have to be about big "new lore" dumps, although I suspect we'll get those here, too.

From the description I still think the best way to think of this is as an "unofficial update" to On the Front Lines, with coverage of the newer movies, deeper dives and analysis of the battles from the films (plus Jakku), and fun new new maps to dig into.

Also, one of the authors is a real-life military historian. That's pretty cool IMO.

 

Star by Star's Battle of Coruscant comes to mind here.

 

Same with The Unifying Force's battle at coruscant.

 

The 7 Battles of Ruusan.

 

I prefer illustrations over screenshots from the films, but even if it is just screenshots the authorship behind this makes me confident. In regards to "big revelations", I'm not expecting to get a 4 page outline on who or what exactly Snoke is. But just going into more detail about strategies and commanders involved in these battles can be fun.

I doubt there will be anything in regards to The Mandalorian. It would it be hard to justify an in universe author having a bunch of knowledge on what the secretive lone wolf mercenary got up to. But more importantly there's no big wartime battles involved.

I'm thinking it will probably focus on battles from the film, but to be fair that is a lot of content. You've certainly got to include Naboo, Geonosis, Coruscant, Scarif, Yavin, Hoth, Endor, Jakku, Starkiller Base, Crait, and Exegol. (Maybe also Mimban and some ROTS battles like Mygeeto or Kashyyk). 240 pages may be a lot, but that's that's at least 11 sections that are spoken for.

I could be wrong though. On the Front Lines (authored by Dan Wallace, who like Jason Fry worked on The Essential Atlas), managed to include the battles of Christophsis and Ryloth in addition to the battles from the live action films. Another Dan Wallace book, The Rebel Files, mentioned the "Vader Down" arc from the Marvel comics.

Major battles outside of the films? As far as New Canon goes, there aren't that many. Sullust and Kuat are the only two that come to mind.

 

The liberation of Lothal might count.

 

Atollon would definitely be interesting as it was technically the first major engagement between the Rebels and the Empire, and they lost badly.

3 Nebulon-Bs, 1 Quasar Fire, 6 CR90s, 1 Hammerhead, 2 GR-75s, 3 Dornean gunships, all but 4 A-wings and all but 2 Y-wings destroyed.

 

If their scope does indeed include battles outside the films, Mako-Ta from the "Hope Dies" arc is a must-have in terms of important battles of the Galactic Civil War. Vrogas Vas is less so, but it would certainly be an interesting battle to see a write-up about just based on all the wild cards, non-standard tactics, and general weirdness - Luke intentionally ramming Vader's TIE; Vader singlehandedly decimating entire squads of pilots and troops; Aphra ramming Karbin with her ship (not Karbin's ship, mind you, Karbin himself), etc.

Also, how about the Battle of Galitan and all its related skirmishes?

 

Apart from Jakku, I doubt they will do much with any battles outside the movies and TV shows.

 

I really want to see the Battle of Kuat.

 

The book got mentioned today in Star Wars News

 

And here's the SW.com article.

I like the look of this. That Scarif map is nice; hopefully there are more for other battles in the book. As much as I think we'd like it to cover more battles than it's likely able to, this looks good, and nice to see the likes of Vrogas Vas and Felucia.

 

This looks great. There's already a few new nuggets of lore in the preview pages.