Star Wars has been around for a long time - 44 years, to be precise. This anthology was released to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars has had its ups (KOTOR, the Timothy Zahn books, Rogue 1) and its downs (The Phantom Menace, the holiday special, George Lucas getting ideas) over the decades. This book was a refreshing dive back into classic Star Wars, and a welcome reminder of why the universe has been so huge for so long.
When I saw the tagline of “40 stories celebrating 40 years,” I expected an anthology in the traditional sense. That isn’t what we have here. This is actually a retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, but from … certain points of view. Han, Luke, and Leia are side characters in this anthology. It’s a big galaxy, after all, and the Rebellion is a lot more than just the three of them. The first story in this book is told from the perspective of the low-level Imperial Navy technician who, when reviewing footage from probe droids, flagged Hoth for her higher-ups as worth a closer look. The last story is told from the perspective of 2-1B, the medical droid who gave Luke his prosthetic hand. In between we get a whole range of perspectives, following along the story of Empire.
Some of the perspectives we get will be familiar to movie-watchers (Wedge, Boba Fett, Admiral Piett). Others might be familiar to fans who have delved into the expanded universe (Bossk, IG-88, Rae Sloane). Some were made out of whole cloth (Lando’s personal chef) or imagined from random extras in the film (the dude who cut between Han and Leia when they were arguing in the corridor of Echo Base). And some were simply startling (I’ll admit I never gave any thought to what the giant space slug’s thoughts on events were).
Some stories were heartbreaking, some were interesting, some were exciting, some were hilarious (I feel like if I had thought about it I would have realized that Echo Base would have been rife with will-they-or-won’t-they gossip about Han and Leia, but the idea of a betting pool? Genius!). None of them disappointed me.
The author list is impressive, and includes a number of /r/Fantasy favorites: Catherynne M. Valente, R.F. Kuang, Seth Dickinson, S.A. Chakraborty, Martha Wells, and Django Wexler, to name just a few. And a good chunk of the proceeds for this book go to charity, which is nice.
In the end, I think, the best praise I can give was that this book reminded me of just why the original trilogy is so awesome. It made me want to track down the similar anthology they released for A New Hope a couple of years ago, and keep my eyes open for the Return of the Jedi version they’ll presumably be releasing in a couple of years. In the meantime, I’ve got to go make popcorn and watch the movies.