{"id":57441,"date":"2017-10-04T22:12:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T05:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/?p=57441"},"modified":"2019-03-05T16:02:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T00:02:54","slug":"review-star-wars-from-a-certain-point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/review-star-wars-from-a-certain-point-of-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: This New Star Wars Anthology Book Answers Questions You Never Knew You Had"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I played with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com\/hitlist.asp?searchfield=&amp;eeshop=48&amp;utm_source=ee-blog&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=product\"><i>Star Wars<\/i> action figures<\/a> as a kid, I dreamed up new adventures for Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and the rest. I rarely wondered about characters around the edges who didn\u2019t make the action figure cut (at least, not in the late 1970s) &#8211; Captain Antilles, Aunt Beru, or the spy with the long snout who led the Stormtroopers to Docking Bay 94.<\/p>\n<p>But without characters like these, the <i>Star Wars<\/i> universe wouldn&#8217;t feel as rich and real as it does. So it\u2019s great to see them getting their due in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com\/prodinfo.asp?number=PRH5511478&amp;utm_source=ee-blog&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=product\"><em>Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View<\/em><\/a>, a new anthology of officially licensed short <i>Star Wars<\/i> fiction.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioned to celebrate the original film\u2019s 40th anniversary, these 40 stories are set in and around <em>Star Wars:\u00a0<\/em><i>A New Hope<\/i>\u2019s nooks and crannies. They take place just before or after the big movie beats, or just off camera &#8211; sometimes even <i>off-<\/i>off-camera.<\/p>\n<p>Individually, they are inventive, entertaining, and often surprisingly emotional. Together, they show us that in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, as in the real world, life is what happens when individuals\u2019 own stories intersect each other in surprising ways.<\/p>\n<h3>Previously Untold Tales of Robots, Rebels, and More<\/h3>\n<p>Whether you read the volume from start to finish, or dip in and out of it, you\u2019ll find something to enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of what I consider the book\u2019s highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Rae Carson\u2019s \u201cThe Red One\u201d<\/b> will make you pay special attention to R5-D4, the astromech Uncle Owen would have bought were it not for a \u201cbad motivator,\u201d the next time you watch <em>Episode IV<\/em>. Turns out the little guy\u2019s <i>true <\/i>\u201cmotivator\u201d was as good and pure as could be.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Both <b>Claudia Gray\u2019s \u201cMaster and Apprentice\u201d<\/b> and <b>Gary D. Schmidt\u2019s \u201cThere Is Another\u201d<\/b> delve into the power to transcend time and space that comes with becoming one with the Force. Gray reunites Obi-Wan with Qui-Gon Jinn, who has one final lesson for his padawan. And Schmidt brings the Force visitations full circle. In his story, the late Ben Kenobi brings Yoda an unexpected mission that sparks compelling \u201cWhat if?\u201d scenarios in readers\u2019 minds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>\u201cStories in the Sand\u201d <\/b>by Griffin McElroy and <b>\u201cRites\u201d <\/b>by John Jackson Miller show us that Jawas and Tusken Raiders dream of finding one\u2019s destiny as much as human teens stuck on moisture farms do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Mos Eisley cantina scene was arguably <i>Star Wars<\/i>\u2019 most talked-about sequence in 1977. It\u2019s only fitting several of that seedy establishment\u2019s patrons star in stories here. My favorites among these: <b>\u201cThe Luckless Rodian\u201d <\/b>by Ren\u00e9e Ahdieh, in which we find out that Greedo wasn\u2019t driven to track down Han Solo <i>solely <\/i>by greed; and Chuck Wendig\u2019s<b> \u201cWe Don\u2019t Serve Their Kind Here,\u201d <\/b>which unveils the real reason Wuher the bartender dislikes droids.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In <b>\u201cLaina,\u201d <\/b>Wil Wheaton spins a story about a single father who is fighting in the Rebellion. He only wants to get his baby daughter to safety. It\u2019s raw and riveting and, with a single word, skewers your heart more savagely than any lightsaber could. Curse you, Wheaton!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Creative connections to newer <i>Star Wars<\/i> canon pepper the stories. For example, Gary Whitta\u2019s<b> \u201cRaymus,\u201d <\/b>begins precisely where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/2017\/01\/11\/review-rogue-one-novelization\/\"><i>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story<\/i><\/a> ends, and rings a haunting change on that film\u2019s last line of dialogue. Meanwhile, at the other end of <em>A New Hope<\/em>, E.K. Johnston\u2019s<b> \u201cBy Whatever Sun\u201d<\/b> (co-plotted with Ahsoka Tano voice actor <b>Ashley Eckstein<\/b>) catches up with a character from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/2016\/11\/07\/book-review-e-k-johnston-ahsoka\/\">her 2016 novel <i>Ahsoka<\/i><\/a> at the medal ceremony after the Death Star\u2019s destruction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Picking a single favorite story from this anthology feels as impossible as fighting a probe with your helmet&#8217;s blast shield down. If pressed, I might make <b>\u201cAn Incident Report\u201d <\/b>by Mallory Ortberg my pick. I don\u2019t want to spoil it. Let\u2019s just say Ortberg mines the Empire\u2019s bureaucracy for an astonishing amount of humor.<\/p>\n<p>(Also notable for its laugh-out-loud factor: Tom Angleberger\u2019s<b> \u201cWhills.\u201d<\/b> It will forever change how you read <em>Episode IV<\/em>\u2019s opening crawl.)<\/p>\n<h3>Why Collectors Will Love This Book<\/h3>\n<p><i>From a Certain Point of View<\/i> will delight anyone who\u2019s seen <i>Star Wars<\/i> more times than they can remember and still loves it at least as much as they did the first time.<\/p>\n<p>This collection of stories celebrates the same impulse that drives collections of action figures or movie memorabilia: the desire to feel (as Jot the Jawa in McElroy\u2019s story feels) that we are \u201cnow a part of something,\u201d no longer simply passive observers, but participants.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_57484\" style=\"width: 478px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-57484\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-57484\" src=\"http:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/from-a-certain-point-of-view-cover-760x1024-468x630.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"468\" height=\"630\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-57484\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Source: StarWars.com<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><i>What\u2019s your favorite story from this anthology? Tell us about it in the comments section below!<\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Entertainment Earth, Inc. its owners, officers, employees, affiliates, subsidiaries, partners, vendors, customers, or licensors.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I played with Star Wars action figures as a kid, I dreamed up new adventures for Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and the rest. I rarely wondered about characters around the edges who didn\u2019t make the action figure cut (at least, not in the late 1970s) &#8211; Captain Antilles, Aunt Beru, or the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,3794,390,389],"tags":[3316,4726,3145,34,3648,419,1962],"yst_prominent_words":[5954,5945,20580,41224,41220,32132,41223,41219,5899,7441,20579,41222,38937,5780,5779,19734,6276,41221,5825,5781],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64014,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57441\/revisions\/64014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57441"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=57441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}