Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters by Daniel Wallace

Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters Reviews

• 
  Hazel

  The New Essential Guide to people you probably already know. This book probably has the unfair disadvantage of being the least interesting and least useful in the Essential's series due to it's subject matter. Everybody remembers the characters. Planets and moons, vehicles and vessels, weapons, even droids are more interesting. They're more ambiguous, It's nice to have little manuals on the less memorable aspects. It's cool to read the specifications of a starfighter, to see diagrams of luke's lightsaber. To try to memorize the little bibbits we should already know. To use the vehicles as references to create our own cool designs. But we know the characters. We can tell you, whats happened to them throughout their life. And for the aspects we don't know it's far more interesting to go out and find the book they're in and read that.
  
  This book was written in 2002 really an inopportune time, badly chosen. This is before the end of the New Jedi Order series, and before Revenge of the Sith came out. This means the book only has partial information of these events. We had been waiting for new guides for years, we could have waited a bit longer for more complete information.
  
  The artist uses a variety of styles from accurate representations of characters from the movies, to comic-book like portrayals of others. These are pretty good for the most part, but often he leaves us asking "what is with that outfit!" or "What is with that facial expression." His portrayal of the Yuzzan Vong is not the worst I've seen, but I would not consider it very accurate. I also have to wonder at the images of some of the aliens, which not having read any comics I've not seen images of. They just don't seem to fit with what I have in my mind from the books. We also have to wonder at his reducing Han's age from the movie to meing in his teens-20's especially when he is of course displayed so closely to his chjildren and wife.
  He has also chosen to deviate from the images of Kyle Katarn and Mara Jade, who we also have had real actors for. I have no real objection to this I jut wonder why he has chosen to do so.
  
  The author claims the book is written in an in universe survey of some of the most well known people. This generally is seen briefly at the beginning, occasionally with a bad joke, and then just turns into a quick run through based on book, comic, movie, game in chronological order. This make the book an uninteresting read, as it is so disjointed and encyclopedic. They wanted to limit the book to a certain length and have it be a mix between the two. They should have either made it a true encyclopedia, or had it be a true in universe piece and given it more space to go through the characters lives.
• 
  Jeremy Stephens

  Although this is out of date, this book has a lot of interesting information about various Star Wars characters.
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  Maksym Vasyliev

  От і добрався я до цієї книжечки.
  Отже, приблизно через два роки від покупки я дістався до цієї книги. Відразу хочу сказати, що очікування себе виправдали. У книзі зібрані короткі біографічні відомості більшості відомих мені по фільмах персонажів, а також жменьки персонажів з розширеного лора з якими я був радий познайомитись. Про них розказано у приємній манері, історії про персонажів перетинаються та частково дублюються. Також при читанні мимоволі помічаєш зв'язок у порядку розміщення персонажів, наприклад, читаєш ти про мисливця за головами, що працював у дуеті, і ось, на наступній сторінці ти вже читаєш про його напарника. До речі, хочу зауважити, що книга створена відповідно до "старого", не діснеївського канону (наприклад Бена Соло тут немає, а "замість" Хана Соло помер Чубака).
  Підбиваючи підсумки, хочу сказати, що книга досить-таки цікава і дозволяє "юніорам" ознайомитися з лором ЗВ на початковому рівні, рекомендую!
• 
  Action Jackson Buth

  So much background and lore disclaimer this book is pre "Disney star wars" so most of it will not be cannon
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  Scott Roberts

  I'm a big fan of Star Wars.
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  Theresa

  amazing what i did not know about these characters