The Starbird Files

Anticipation for me was high, not because I was expecting a lot of announcements (I wasn’t), but because I’ve been to two Celebrations before and had a great time but it was just me & my wife, Debra. This time around I was going to know a bunch of people because of Star Wars Sessions as well as folks from Instagram. On Thursday I went to the ExCel, probably too early to meet Sessions people. But it was fun to hang around and soak up the atmosphere, there were some cosplayers, people going in to collect their badges. Met up with my friend Jimmy from Kansas, then Matt & Luke from SWS, Luke aka One Quarter Portion aka the King of Wales, and others before we headed to Seven Dials Market to meet more people and eat. It was a fun appetizer to the weekend to come. The Session crew at Seven Dials Market Day One I arrived at about 9am and joined the queue for admission at 10am, I pulled out my copy of Cataclysm and immediately someone started talking to me about the High Republic. This ...

Phase II of the High Republic is here and with it comes hype, expectations, a new time period and new authors. I do have worries about this new phase, not the new authors but leaving behind the characters and time period we are used to, and the fact it feels like it’s been a while since Phase I finished, would I still be into the project as much? My other worry was because of the delayed UK release of Path of Deceit and Convergence being my first review copy from Del Rey, I received both books on the same day so I decided to read Convergence first in order to get this review out promptly. How would that effect my reading experience? Phase II is set 150 years BEFORE the events of Phase I, and the story is set on the twin planets, E’ronoh and Eiram who have been at war for decades and focuses on a ceasefire hanging by a thread on the the proposed marriage of Xiri and Phan-tu the children of the respective ruling families. The Jedi, Republic officials, Xiri and Phan-tu must win over the p...

If like me you weren’t really paying attention to NYCC there was a lot of Star Wars publishing news to catch up on, so I went hunting for all the news and collected it here for you too! Let’s begin with High Republic News There were cover reveals for wave 2 of the Phase II Cataclysm by Lydia Kang (Adult Novel, April 2023 Del Rey) Quest for Planet X by Tessa Gratton (Young Reader, April 2023 Disney Lucasfilm) Path of Vengeance by Cavan Scott (YA, May 2023 Disney Lucasfilm) There was a new book announced, a YA Anthology announced for July 2023, featuring stories connecting to all three phases, written by all the HR authors - Zoraida Córdova, Tessa Gratton, Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Lydia Kang, George Mann, Daniel José Older, Cavan Scott and Charles Soule. There was another new book announced, The Edge of Balance: Precedent the first manga revealed for Phase II by Daniel José Older & Tomio Ogata (Viz Media May 2023). Burryaga will return in children’s book ‘Yoda & the youngli...

Shadow of the Sith is one of the most anticipated Star Wars books of recent years, with a lot of pressure put upon it by many to explain events in the sequel trilogy. So did it live up to expectations? For me it does, not that I expected it to explain everything - we have plenty of time to explore and fill in the intervening years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Let’s not forget that it took    9 years for us to learn why the Clones turned on the Jedi so easily (season 6 of the Clone Wars in 2014). There are two main threads to the story, Lando trying to save Rey’s family from Ochi of Bestoon and Luke’s discovery of a mysterious dark side user. The book is littered with connections to all parts of Star Wars canon, the Acolytes of Beyond first mentioned in the Aftermath trilogy play an important part, Luke goes to Tython which we saw in the Mandalorian, a young Enric Pryde (TROS) makes an appearance as does Shriv Suurgav who first appeared in Battlefront II. T...

This morning the moment we’ve all been waiting for finally arrived, and I have to say straight out of the gate that I absolutely loved it, and having Ewan McGregor back is really special. Getting into the episodes, I would have liked more sad Kenobi, but what we got hit hard so I’m pleased, and I think we’ll gradually get more throughout the series. Ben has restricted his use of the force in order to hide and fulfil his duty and see him fighting his urge to help repeatedly. We see him try to commune with Qui-Gon several times but he is unlikely to succeed in his present state not fully connected to the force and he strains to save Leia, as if using a muscle he has long neglected. But perhaps as the series progresses and he uses the force more, reconnecting, he will eventually see his old master. I saw several people (including Star Wars Sessions) suggesting that Leia being in danger would be what got him to leave Tatooine and Luke, but I have to admit I did not think this would happen,...

It’s a little over a week and a half since the final episode of The Book Of Boba Fett and there has been a lot of varied opinions in that time, so I’ll try to keep my review fairly short. As I let the series sit with me, the more I have looked back on it as a really enjoyable experience.   I really appreciated that this was a smaller story (for the most part) that didn’t play into the greater state of the galaxy, and focused on Boba Fett and his motivations. I enjoyed the structure of the show with the bacta tank flashbacks being one of the strongest elements for me, especially Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine where Boba learns the value of having a tribe and we got great insight into the culture of the Tuskens. There was of course a lot of critique of the Mods (and the chase), but after getting used to the idea of them they really grew on me.  What seems to have really got people talking were the two ‘non Boba’ episodes, personally I really enjoyed ‘The Return of the Mandalo...