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There are few things in publishing that have brought me as much joy as the STAR WARS: FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW collections. From the initial announcement of the first one, these short story collections have meant a whole lot to me.

I especially love the way Del Rey (or now, Random House Worlds) handles the promotion of these books, releasing the list of authors involved, then slowly releasing some info about some of the characters that are highlighted in the books.

Like, I could never fully explain the thrill of finding out that Sarah Kuhn (one of my favorite authors) had written an Ewok story for the latest collection to celebrate the 40th anniversary of RETURN OF THE JEDI!

I FUCKING LOVE EWOKS!!! Like so so much. And they really get their time to shine in this one!! More on that later, I’m sure.

Like any short story collection, you’re bound to love some stories more than others. It’s just how it goes. And now that all three of these incredible collections are published, I think it’s probably still the first one, for A New Hope that’s my favorite. Which is odd since that’s my least favorite movie of the original trilogy. But yeah, there was so much magic in that first volume & not many days go by that I don’t think about Rae Carson’s “The Red One” or Daniel José Older’s “Born in the Storm” and many more.

Anyhow! If you’re reading this review & don’t know about the FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW collections, they follow the chronology of a Star Wars movie, with 40 different stories (to celebrate 40 years of the original trilogy) and tell stories of some of the minor/background characters on the screen. Some of these stories will 100% make you watch certain scenes in the movies with a completely different perspective & it’s just astounding, really.

I’m just going to highlight a few of my favorites from this one, and while I’ll try my best to avoid being spoilery, sometimes half the fun of these stories is discovering who they are about & if you want to skip this next part to preserve that vibe for yourself, I get it!

-Thea Guanzon’s “Dune Sea Songs of Salt and Moonlight” is, in keeping with that title, a sweepingly epic love story, and has me really excited about reading her debut fantasy novel, THE HURRICANE WARS

-Saladin Ahmed’s “The Plan” is a definite contender for my favorite story in this collection. I think it was in one of the interludes in one of Chuck Wendig’s AFTERMATH books that we got a bit of a deeper look at Malakili, the rancor keeper at Jabba’s Palace. But here we get essentially his origin story, which is brutally sad. He had an extremely traumatic childhood, and his ability to bond with animals truly saved him. This one is really short, but just beautiful.

-One of the wildest & most unexpected stories is “Everyone’s a Critic” by Sarah Glenn Marsh, about Salacious B. Crumb! This was hilarious & put such an interesting spin on that wacky monkey-lizard.

-There are several Ewok stories in this (as it should be), but definitely it was Sarah Kuhn’s “The Ballad of Nanta” that was my favorite. And by favorite I mean, it shredded my heart into tiny little pieces. Oof. If you think about the saddest scene (as far as the Ewoks are concerned) in Return of the Jedi, this is the story of those two Ewoks and just…my heart could just barely take it. I’m a huge fan of Sarah Kuhn & this is an incredibly special story.

-I had BIG FEELINGS about Adam Lance Garcia’s “The Veteran.” This is one that doesn’t actually tie into anything onscreen in ROTJ, but it’s an amazing story about Dexter Jettster (a character who has really gotten a lot of time to shine lately in Star Wars books & comics) surviving in some pretty rough conditions in the lower levels of Coruscant. He meets a really cool young woman named Vekin Menez & this story, maybe more than any of the others in the collection, really felt like it could have been a full-length novel. Something about this post-war version of Coruscant really captivated me.

-There’s not much I could reveal about Mike Chen’s “Brotherhood” without spoiling it. I love that they went with this title, the same as his recent Star Wars novel, BROTHERHOOD. It’s a cool little nod to Claudia Gray’s Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon story “Master and Apprentice” in the first FACPOV collection…she would later go on to write an Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon novel called MASTER & APPRENTICE. Needless to say, “Brotherhood” is about Anakin & Obi-Wan and it’s fucking gorgeous. If Anakin Skywalker means anything to you at all, this is an essential read.

As I skimmed through this, there were so many more I wanted to highlight! This was so much fun to read & I’ve adored all three of the FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW collections! I will forever recommend these collections as a killer starting point if someone was looking to dive into Star Wars books for the first time. There’s such incredible and diverse groups of authors involved & the stories are so magical!

May the Force be with you!!