Genre: Sci-Fi Age Range: Adult Star rating: 4 stars Series: yes/anthology
Synopsis:
Forty years. Forty stories.
In honor of the fortieth anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope, this collection features Star Wars stories by bestselling authors, trendsetting artists, and treasured voices from Star Wars literary history. More than forty authors have lent their unique vision to forty “scenes,” each retelling a different moment from the original Star Wars film, but with a twist: Every scene is told from the point of view of a background character. Whether it’s the X-wing pilots who helped Luke destroy the Death Star or the stormtroopers who never quite could find the droids they were looking for, Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View places the classic movie in a whole new perspective, and celebrates the influence and legacy of the unparalleled cultural phenomenon, Star Wars.
Synopsis taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here.
Review:
This is the sort of anthology that you can tell the writers had an absolute blast writing as they took the iconic film and put their own spin on it. I honestly don’t recognise most of the authors, but I think that’s to be expected. It was super cool when I came across names I did recognise though. The stories are more or less arranged in the order the scenes happen in the film, which helps you recall the actual scene referenced.
There are so many references to other films (Episode VII and Rogue One had been released by then, so they’re both mentioned), tying it all up (and getting around the fact that Lucas didn’t know there would be any movies beyond it at the time).
My favourite stories were the ones from the perspectives of people within the imperial machine. I loved the one about the paperwork – probably my favourite in the lot (I think I like what that says about me?) It was just such a funny snapshot of the bureaucracy keeping it all going, dismantling the towering menace to people trying to get around procedures and grapple with frustrating forms.
The other Imperial stories were also a lot of fun. From the incredibly done-with-this-form incident report about everything that happened on Tatooine to a droid carrying messages between two people on the death star carrying out an affair. Then there was the general war room scene, with added politics.
Predictably, the most commonly written about moments were the cantina on Tatooine and the fight around the Death Star. Those are some of the bigger moments in pop culture, with so many characters around to look at. However, I did get a little frustrated by the end of the fourth Cantina story, as it was looking at the same incident from yet another perspective, and they didn’t really feel like they were adding anything at that point.
I have THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW sitting next to me, but I might hold off for a day or two, as I have just watched the movies back to back (prompted by reading this), so don’t want it to feel too same-y.
Read my reviews of other books in this series:
Sifa Elizabeth Reads 