The New Essential Guide to Characters (Star Wars)
by Daniel Wallace

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Book Reviews of The New Essential Guide to Characters (Star Wars)

Book Review: Hits away! They did it again!
Summary: 5 Stars

While all major characters got huge updates that brought them up Troy Denning's Star by Star, it adds to the list with a bunch of Expanded Universe characters. Sadly, two of my favorites, Nomi Sunrider and Tionne Solusar, have been removed. Don't get me wrong, this is a great book, Dan Wallace really outdid himself with the breadth of his research and Michael Sutfin's beautiful color art is, well, nothing short of spectacular. Plus characters that we know little about, like Darth Bane who started the new Sith, has his own bio as does Shira Brie- the original red haired, green eyed Emperor's Hand from Marvel Comics, circa 1982. The updates are wonderful, because a lot of people may not have read all of the Expanded Universe novels for one reason or another, so it's nice to get up to date histories to fill in the blanks.

All of the important move characters are here- from Anakin Skywalker to Zam Wessel, from Chewbacca to Luke Skywalker, the latter of which gets the single largest entry. However, I must question the logic of sacrificing pages for minor characters like Owen and Beru Lars, Lobot, and Nien Nunb- yes, they were in the films, but who cares? They're minor characters at best when their pages could have been used to include more characters from the Tales of the Jedi series of comics, or the current Star Wars Ongoing series. I mean really, do we need pages devoted to Captain Obvious himself, Ric Olie? Not likely. Despite a few questionable choices for characters, the New Essential Guide is still a first rate publication.

Michael Sutfin's art is truly wonderful in most cases. There are a few illustrations where it seems a little flat or an unconvincing representation, such as Anakin Solo's picture- Sutfin made him too young looking. I didn't care for Dash Render, Isaard or Daala's pictures much, but that's peanuts compared to the other really great pictures in the book. Wallace's text is clear, concise and a breeze to read. He said he had a blast writing it and I only wish I had been able to come through for him and find a copy of the Japanese version that he wanted before LFL did.

The first of the New Essential Guides, it's completely in color and if the rumors I have heard are true, the following books will also be in the same format and Del Rey plans to release a book or so a year until they are all up to date. Given these books such great sources of data, well written and researched, bringing them up to date with the current films, novels and the New Jedi Order seems to be about the wisest decision they can make.

Summary of The New Essential Guide to Characters (Star Wars)

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