Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters - Information on Characters of Star Wars
Written: Jun 12 '02 (Updated May 14 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Information on well known and lesser known Star Wars characters.
Cons: Not enough information on some characters.
The Bottom Line: Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters has all kinds of information about Star Wars characters. Fans of Star Wars should enjoy this book.
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| dragonfire88's Full Review: Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters |
I am a fan of the Star Wars movies. I have been ever since I saw Episode IV many years ago. I did see Episode II on opening weekend, but I decided not to write about it since there are so many reviews of the movie. I know who all the main characters from the movies are, but I don't know all of the minor characters who show up briefly in the movies. I've never read any of the Star Wars books or comics, so I have no idea what happened in those, or what new characters showed up. I have had some questions about some things. Episode II did answer some of them, but I still have more questions about what happened to some characters and things like that. After seeing Episode II, I was in the bookstore and came across this book, Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters. I flipped through the book in the store, and decided to buy it. I'm really glad I got this book.
General Information About the Book
This book is a paperback. It is larger than most paperback books, being about the same size as a magazine. The dimensions of the book in inches are .57 x 10.89 x 8.53. The book has glossy pages with full color illustrations. Daniel Wallace wrote the text for the book and Michael Sutfin did the illustrations. The book was originally published in 1995, with the name Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters. In April of 2002, a revised edition of the book was released, covering the characters from Episode I, Episode II, and The New Jedi Order book series. With the revised edition of the book, the title was changed to Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters.
Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters (from now on I will be abbreviating the title of the book to SW:NEGTC) is a bit different from most of the other books I own. There is no plot. It isn't a fictional story, but there is information about fictional characters in the book. The book is full of information about approximately 150 characters from the Star Wars series of books, comics, and movies. All of the well known characters from the movies are included in the book, as well as many characters that were new to me. Some of those characters were involved in events that took place during the time period of one of the five Star Wars movies, but I don't remember seeing them in the movies anywhere. It is possible that I overlooked them. Also, I believe some of the events that are described in this book took place in another part of the galaxy during the time frames of the movies, so they were left out of the movies. Some of the other new characters were from the Star Wars comics and The New Jedi Order book series.
The information about the many characters in the book spans many years. Things are covered about characters who lived thousands of years before the events in the movies take place. Those characters somehow played a part in the history of the galaxy that helped to lead to the events that happen in the movies. SW:NEGTC does cover some of the events of Episode II, so there are spoilers in the book for those who have not seen the movie yet. Events that take place up to twenty three years after the end of Episode VI are also discussed, so you can find out what happened to your favorite characters.
SW:NEGTCM does just gloss over some things that I am thinking will be shown in Episode III. We do know the ultimate outcome, that Anakin turns to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader, but we don't know yet exactly what leads up to him turning to the dark side. There is a lot about Anakin/Darth Vader in the book, and it covers things throughout his life, including things that happen in the years between the movies. The book doesn't go into a lot of details concerning what will happen to him in Episode III. It does mention that he turns to the dark side, but that is really it. So there are no spoilers for Episode III in this book.
SW:NEGTC contains a table of contents which lists all of the characters that are covered in detail in the book. There are also a few other things in the book like author and illustrator acknowledgments, a pronunciation guide, introduction by the author, a time line of the history of the galaxy, a section with a small amount of information on some other characters, and a bibliography.
TIME LINE
The time line covers two pages in the book. The first entry is 25,000 years before the Battle of Yavin. That is the battle when the first Death Star was destroyed. I didn't know the name of that battle before reading this book. I never paid any attention to those things in the movies I guess. Some of the events in the time line include exploration of space, wars, settlement of planets, and events related to the history of the Jedi. The time line ends twenty seven years after the Battle of Yavin with the fall of Coruscant to invaders from another galaxy. I thought that the information in the time line was very interesting. I would have liked if the time line was a bit more detailed with more information about characters and events.
Here are a few examples of events covered in the time line.
*2,000 BBY (Before Battle of Yavin) - A rouge Jedi turns to the dark side and starts the Sith Order
*1,000 BBY - The Sith are thought to be eliminated. One survivor goes underground, founding the Sith Order that is in the movies. Only one master and apprentice.
*896 BBY - Yoda is born
*350 BBY - Trade Federation is founded
*32 BBY - Battle of Naboo - events in Episode I
*22 BBY - Battle of Geonosis
*0 BBY - Battle of Yavin
*3 ABY (After Battle of Yavin) - Han Solo is captured by Boba Fett
*4 ABY - Battle of Endor
Body of the Book
The majority of SW:NEGTC is made up of descriptions of characters from the Star Wars movies, books, and comics. The characters are arranged in the book in alphabetical order. The name of the character being described, like Adrimal Ackbar for example, is at the top of the page in large white letters in a small rectangle which has a purplish background. There is a full color drawing of the character in a light grey rectangular box. Some of the character drawings are larger than others with some character having a second picture. There is some basic information about the character in the box next to the picture. There is a pronunciation for the name, the species, the sex, hair color, eye color, height, and home world. Some of the characters only have one page of information. A few have three pages, and many have two pages.
The information on the characters covers events from before, during, and after the Star Wars movies. There is a lot of background information on some characters that explains how they can be to involved in some events. Events in the lives of Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker after the end of Return of the Jedi are talked about. Many of the characters, like Darth Bane, were new to me. Darth Bane was a Sith Lord 1000 years before the events in the Star Wars movies occurred. There were many Sith Lords then. He was a bit arrogant and didn't finish his training. Something happens - the book does say what, I'm just not going into specifics about it - and Darth Bane ended up being only living Sith Lord. He thought that there had been too many Sith Lords before. He decided that from then on there would only be two Sith at a time - a master and an apprentice. Darth Bane was the first Sith Lord to have Darth in his name. He started the tradition of giving the name Darth to each new apprentice.
There are three pages of information about Anakin/Darth Vader. There is a little more about his childhood, but nothing more about his birth. Anakin's turning to the dark side is briefly mentioned, but no specifics about what finally turned him are covered. People who have seen Episode II know that Anakin moves dangerously close to the dark side over the course of the movie. According to the book, that was not the first time he skirted close to the dark side. There were a few other incidents during Anakin's training in the years between Episode I and II when he seemed to flirt with the dark side. Obi-Wan knew about at least one of those incidents, but he still continued to train Anakin. Some of the other Jedi that helped to train Anakin at the Jedi temple thought that he was very reckless. Why in the world did they continue to train Anakin as a Jedi after those events? I really don't like Anakin.
After the last of the detailed character information, on someone called Zuckuss, there is an Appendix. The Appendix contains some paragraphs on other notable characters in the Star Wars galaxy. One of the characters included in this section is Bail Organa, the man who raised Leia. It seems like there should have been a bit more about him since he did raise Leia, and he was important with the rebel army, but there is just the one paragraph.
After the Appendix, there is a Bibliography that lists all of the Star Wars books, movies, comics, and games. Each one has a code based on it’s name. For example, AOTC is the code for Attack of the Clones. For each entry, the date it was released is listed. For the books and comics, the publisher is listed. For the games, the company that released the game is listed. These things are listed in alphabetical order. After this list, there is a list of all the characters that were discussed in SW:NEGTC followed by the codes for the books, movies, comics, and games they appear in. I had to keep flipping back to see what title the codes were for. I think it would have been nice if there had been a list of the books in the order that the events took place in them. That way, people who would like to start reading the Star Wars books at the beginning, would know which book to start with.
I found that additional information on the well known characters, as well as the new characters, was very interesting. I never knew there were so many more characters involved in the Star Wars stories. I'm now interested in learning more about some of the characters and events. I've never read any of the Star Wars books before, but now I am really thinking about reading them. I really want to know more about many of these characters and some of the events they were involved in. I just have to figure out which book to start with.
SW:NEGTC is well written, and for the most part, easy to understand. The only thing that really gave me any problems was some of the strange names of some of the characters, species, and planets. I did think it would have been more helpful to have it listed someway in the character information which books and movies the characters were in, but that wouldn't really work since some characters, like Luke, are in so many of the books and movies. The illustrations are very good. Some of them did look just like the actor that played one of the characters, but others looked just a tad different in some way I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I really enjoyed reading SW:NEGTC and learning about new characters and events. I thought the book was very interesting. Nothing about the book bored me, and I read about every single character in the book. I can't keep them all straight in my mind right now, but I can always pull the book out to double check just who someone is. Some questions I had about some things were answered by this book. I think fans of the Star Wars movies, books, and comics would enjoy this book. SW:NEGTC would be a good book for people who would like to learn more about their favorite characters, or who are interesting in learning about new characters in the Star Wars galaxy.
Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters
Daniel Wallace - Text
Michael Suftin - Illustrations
Ballantine Books, 1995
Revised edition, April 2002
Paperback
221 pages
$24.95 US
$37.95 CAN
ISBN # 0-345-44900-2
Recommended:
Yes
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