Star Wars

I was pleasantly surprised. How do you tell stories when the new post RotJ canon is still in flux? Liu pulls a clever trick and couches all of Luke's tales in narratives that range from unreliable to over-awed. It makes for a fun and wide ranging group of short stories. Not a lot of lore, but enough bits of interest to tide you over until The Last Jedi.

This book is a 3 star in terms of enjoyment, but seeing it as a middle grade book, I really liked what its doing. It's also such a Ken Liu book, which maybe explains the low rating because Ken Liu does not write in a style that screams Star Wars, hahaha. This is a Canterbury Tales-style story about a bunch of people on a ship who trade stories about Luke Skywalker. I think this book handles the concept of hero-worship and stories we tell about figures and how that shapes us collectively (something Liu always delves into), and whether the story someone tells about us is more important than what actually happened, very well. It's something that I don't feel a lot of media for younger audiences really gets into, especially in a fun and lighthearted way, and I think this book has a lot to offer to kids and teens about how the world can be viewed differently by others, and how stories shape our entire worldview.

I will say though that this book definitely peaked with the first story for me, which is about a conspiracy theory where the entire original trilogy events were propaganda put out by the rebellion and that Luke Skywalker was actually a part of a band of thieves and con artists who accidentally became mascots of the rebellion. This story was absolutely hilarious, and none of the other ones held as much magic for me as this one.

We haven't had many new canon books focused on Luke yet (except for Heir to the Jedi, which we don't talk about). I think his stories will be free roam as soon as The Last Jedi releases, but until then, we get very, VERY, small tidbits.

This one doesn't really add anything to the overall canon, or to the character of Luke himself. What has this book confirmed once again? Luke is a pretty good dude.

The stories (or “legends”) told here though, have to be taken with a grain of salt. This is established as the first story sort of retells the start of A New Hope, and refers to Luke as “Luke Clodplodder”. Other stories are about the characters in this one talking about their experience meeting Luke, and they all range from “really?” to “cool”, but nothing that really stands out. I for one refuse to take the “Jabba's Palace” story seriously, while I did like “I, Droid” a lot.

A fun and surprisingly short read, but not a required one.