Star Wars Readers Companion Review

A Christmas present I received this book has been MIND BLOWING to read.

I don't know where to begin....

If you would've asked me a month ago who had 2 thumbs and knew the most about the Expanded Universe, I'd have held both thumbs up and told you "THIS GUY!"

Pablo Hidalgo just took me to school.

I can't write all I want to because that would take up several pages and last over 4 months worth of posts. So let me tell you (in short) what I've learned:

1) The Clone Wars story line is a disaster, thanks in part to the "longer than expected" running Clone Wars series. The biggest descrepencies deal with time issues. Meaning the first few seasons of the show took place in a 4 month period. This is what I expected but it was eye opening to see it all laid out for the first time ever. Quite a feat!

2) Marvel Comic story lines were a big part of the Expanded Universe. I knew the authors grabbed one or two things from them but I never knew it was so much more than that! Since the Marvel Comics were one of the earliest conceptions of the further adventures of Luke and the gang, Dark Horse, Bantam Books and Del Rey gathered much information from them to pad stories of their own. I could list all the occurrances, but that  could take weeks.

3) I thought I had every short story ever printed....I don't. This book showed me 5 short stories I never knew existed. Most of them can thankfully be garnered from Amazon at a fair price though one looks like it'll cost me dearly. Star Wars: Imprint was a short story that was ONLY published in the 2009 Star Wars Fan Club Membership Kit. Looking on Ebay the 2010 complete kit goes for $55 and it didn't even have a short story so it's safe to say the odds of me getting my hands on that one are nil.

But I won't despair! With my new found Star Wars knowledge I feel even more powerful in the Forced than before!

So should a Star Wars fan buy this book?

YES.

For beginners it'll give you a good idea on where you should start depending on which era you'd like to read about. The book divides the Star Wars novels into eras in a time line which is easy to follow and understand.

Intermediate readers will enjoy it if they want to read new books but aren't sure which ones they'd like to start with. Though they do not give reviews for awful or awesome books they do provide a short synopsis of the novel for you to look over and consider. I love this because it provides a great refresher for advanced readers such as myself.

Also for Advanced readers it provides some "behind the scenes" and "did you know" knowledge of books you've read. Plus short stories you never knew where available!

The book covers every magazine short story as well as place it in the time line. AMAZING.

While reshuffling my Star Wars books in order I can now include the magazines in order as well!!! (Making Megan even more ashamed to walk around with me in public) I also discovered I'd missed an entire children's book that had come out way later than expected. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!

Anyway, all is good now and the books I needed should be arriving any day now.

Ok, that's all the geeking out I'll do for today. Maybe more post on this incredible book in the future. Who knows....