Book Review: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi
Six years after the first From a Certain Point of View anthology hit shelves, we have finally reached the end of the original Star Wars trilogy with From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, 40 short stories from the points of view of the side characters, background characters, and the nameless given names, lives, loves, and struggles.
Like the first two anthologies that make up this literary trilogy, FACPOV: ROTJ follows the story of the film in loose chronological order, making only brief contact with the actual events of the film in order to give them context.
One very unexpected highlight of the book was that every single one of my favorite characters got an indirect mention of some kind. Every. Single. One. With the exception of Obi-Wan Kenobi, of course, who featured far more prominently.
But really, this speaks to the larger trend of Star Wars publishing, and illustrates why it is the books that are home to some of my favorite, and arguably the strongest, Star Wars stories being told right now. All the stories are part of the same larger canon, its true, but the books always feel less encumbered by what the general audience may or may not be familiar with, and are freer to reach around the expansive timeline for references, dip into other stories - in other mediums, even - to borrow characters whose presence is a foregone conclusion, but who it’s nice to see included all the same. These aren’t just Easter egg mentions, they are the pulling together of threads that we already know form this large Star Wars tapestry, weaving them into a single, coherent picture.
The stories are, in turn, funny, heartbreaking, and thoughtful, each told in a unique voice, and all feeling right at home in the galaxy. Many of them focused on love - romantic, familial, platonic - in some capacity, but what surprised me was how many of them were romantic in nature, relatively speaking. Call me jaded, but there’s never enough of that for my liking in Star Wars, except, of course, in publishing.
To wrap up, I offer a list of my Top 10 favorite stories in the anthology, in order of their appearance (because ranking in order of preference will give me hives)
Dune Sea Songs of Salt and Moonlight by Thea Guanzon
Satisfaction by Kristen Baver
My Mouth Never Closes by Charlie Jane Anders
From a Certain Point of View by Alex Jennings
The Man Who Captured Luke Skywalker by Max Gladstone
The Ballad of Nanta by Sarah Kuhn
The Extra Five Percent by M.K. England
The Chronicler by Danielle Paige
The Veteran by Adam Lance Garcia
Brotherhood by Mike Chen
From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi is out August 29. Special thank you to Random House Worlds for the advance copy for review purposes.
