Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View
I absolutely adored reading this book.
The first thing that pleasantly surprised me is the stories take place in chronological order. The very first story is written by the awesome Gary Whitta, author of Abomination, The Book of Eli and some Star Wars movie you may have heard about and is about the man who is strangled by Darth Vader after two lines in the movie. It turns out he is an Antilles, he has a history, hope and dreams and a willingness to die for a cause he believes in. After this first story I wanted to go back and watch A New Hope again and already felt like a whole backstory had been added to the canon.
Some were so friggin good it was get out of your armchair and cheer time. Pierce Brown’s Desert Son and Ben Acker and Ben Blacker’s Bump spring to mind immediately.
Brown’s first. A number of the final stories take place during the battle against the Death Star and whilst we see the fight from a number of perspectives including the commanders, the maintenance crew chiefs of the ships and other pilots the depiction of Biggs Darklighter’s final moments is spot on. I always thought of the character as a bit of a dud. He is one of the first to call game over the second he has a tie fighter on his tail, asks Luke if he’s alright but is not there when he needs him, even gets cussed out “Blasted Biggs where are you”, and in the final moments when a cool head was needed he was panicky and died yelling imploring the tie fighters to wait and begging Luke to be quick. It was not heroic….until I read Brown’s story. We learn a lot more about the closeness of his relationship with Luke and the protective feelings he has over someone he thinks of as a brother. He shows complete confidence in Luke’s abilities even ‘bigging’ him up to the other pilots and is so devastated by his failure to fulfil his wing man duties he stays to the end, all power on the engines and none on the rear deflectors. I also thought this particular story was the champion in terms of capturing the utter shit show that that final fight would have been for our beloved rebel pilots. The writer of the incredible Red Rising series has delivered again.
Bump is just downright hilarious and follows a particularly unlucky stormtrooper, attributing various moments during the movie to him to create a brilliant and subversive tale. You know the guy who didn’t need to see the identification because these were not the droids he was looking for? Well that bugged him the rest of the day because he was pretty bloody sure they were the droids he was looking for and he’s super worried about getting busted by the higher ups once his colossal screw up becomes common knowledge. It just gets better and better from there on in as we experience the potential hangover and consequences of being mind shagged by the force. The clue to his identity is in the title and this was one that genuinely had me guffawing in my armchair.
There is plenty more to enjoy, the conversations between the living and dead jedi were great fun, equally so the one about the guy that knows every form for getting out of every problem on the Death Star. That being said of course not every story hit the mark. A little too much time is spent in the cantina, I felt like every writer attached his or her story to the Greedo moment which worked once or twice but got a little bit tired, especially if like me you were reading story after story. There were a couple of mundane characters that were explored like the tiny machine in the death star the Chewie scares and the eyeball thing in the garbage. I was really hopeful for these two in particular but the stories didn’t quite satisfy because they were structurally frustrating or maybe just needed a second or third read.
This is a must read for Star Wars fans. I don’t know if these are canon but they certainly expanded my knowledge of the universe and having since watched the movie for what must be the 40th time, I saw and caught things I never expected to after all this time.
9/10
