I simply adore this book.
Would you believe it if I told you that of 40 stories I only disliked two? That's just insane quality control, Props to whoever edited this because that's a very impressive thing for an anthology.
Every Glup Shitto you could possibly think of is in these pages alongside some fan favorite characters that didn't appear in A New Hope but still manage to be relevant to to plot of the movie. I won't get into specifics about who makes the cut so you can be plesantly surprised by them too.
A surprising amount of these are absolute tearjerkers, you will cry over characters that only got a few seconds of screentime. It truly makes the Star Wars Galaxy seem like a much bigger and yet part of a large overarching story at the same time.
Now just let me get the two stories I didn't like out of the way.
I didn't care for "Rierin". Rirerin is a complely orginal character which kind goes againest the spirit of the collection. This is made worse by the fact that she has the personality of a piece of bread. Seriously out of all the female characters, no all the characters in Star Wars, she is the most boring one. (That I can think of, there's likely another that slipped entirely out of my mind.)
What are her motivations you may ask?
She wants to get offworld to become a warrior because her tribe wouldn't let women fight. Good for her but I've seen the whole "woman wants to become a warrior but society won't let her" trope way too many times for it to have remotely any impact on me anymore, sorry.
The whole story is her robbing a certain sandcrawler and finding a crystal.
That is it.
No growth for her character, no devealopment, no confrounting her tribe, her goals remain the exact same only she now has a valuable rock.
It's boring filler but to it's credit, it's not that long to be more than a annoyance.
The secound one I disliked was "Of MSE-6 and Men"
The story is told from a mouse droid's perpective (in lines of code which sometimes made it hard to tell what was going on) as it witness a affair between a stormtrooper and an imperial officer that is implied to be Tarkin.
I don't have a problem with Tarkin being attacted to men but rather with the idea that boarderline sociopath could genuinely love anyone. He left his own brother to be eaten by wild animals for goodness sake, nowhere has he even shown any capity for compassionate thought.
Not only that but upon seeing a holo of the trooper, he remarks right in front of another imperial officer "he's beautiful." WHAT!? Even if he had emotions, why would he openly admit this? Why would Tarkin of all people be open with his emotions? That's giving his enemies lots of oppertunity for blackmail.
The story ends with the stormtrooper being killed in the rebel's attack which leads Tarkin to vow revenge. What was the point of that? Did he really need a reason to hate the rebels? Are we supposed to feel sorry for someone who commited genocide? Why does it matter when Tarkin gets incintenrated a few minutes later?
To the story credit, the stormtooper in question is quite likeable and funny, I just feel like I would have liked it better if it had been another Imperial officer.
Anyway the other stories are still bangers and I highly recommend checking it out, perferably watching a new hope at the same time.
Goodbye and may the force be with you.
