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The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons (Star Wars)

The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons (Star Wars)

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $13.57
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Reference
Review: Although it is not officially a supplement, I found this book indispensable for gamemastering in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. The fact is, there really isn't a better resource for finding new places to visit in the Star Wars Universe. Even if you're not into the RPG scene, however, this member of the 'Essential Guide' series is an excellent read.

For some of those, namely the hardcore fans that have read every single Star Wars thing ever published (I cannot claim this title, as I've only read about half of it all) this book might seem a bit redundant. All of the locations are taken from either film or literature, so if you've read all the literature it follows that you'll have seen all of the 100 worlds depicted here at least once. Nevertheless, it is useful to have all of this information in one place, in case you forgot just which world the Ugnaughts come from (Umgul) or how to spell "Mrlsst." The Star Wars Encyclopedia and Guide to the SW Universe have all of this information as well... somewhere. The problem is you have to remember what you were looking for to find it. This book simplifies matters if you just have to know, but can't recall any of it.

For those who are NOT hardcore fans or could care less that Wild Boetays can be found on Garos IV, you probably won't find this guide more than moderately amusing. The other ones in the series (Characters, Vehicles and Vessels, and Weapons and Tech, to name a few) might be more diverting. But for those who are serious about Star Wars (you know who you are) the Guide to Planets and Moons is a really cheap thrill.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Awesome Book!!!!
Review: Definitely worth the money. This book is the best out of the "Essential Guides" books. A must by for all Star Wars fans!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best!
Review: Ever read a star wars book or are watching the movies when someone says a planet you've never heard of like Dantooine? or Dathomir? Well if you have this book is perfect for you, and everyone else that loves star wars and the creatures and planets of those far off planets.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome baby!
Review: From Alderain to Dathmorir, from Kashyyk to Mrlsst, this book has them all. It tells you the species, language, system, and points of interest on a given planet.(Except Earth)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This book has it all!!
Review: From Alderain to Dathmorir, from Kashyyk to Mrlsst, this book has them all. It tells you the species, language, system, and points of interest on a given planet.(Except Earth)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great new planets and other cool places.
Review: I think this book has a very interesting veriaty of planets, moons, and asteroids. The pictures are very detailed, and the places histories are amazing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An enjoyable read.
Review: I thought that this book was quite well done. I liked all the pictures and the text was allright. Though I will not rant and rave about this book being the best, (if you want reaaly good, go read I, Jedi), I thought it was a very good effort. Some of the pictures were silly and almost useless, but some like the Drall and the Selonians were interesting to see. I also finally learned what Lando does in Tanaab. It's worth bying.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is by far one of the best StarWars books ever made.
Review: I was very impressed by this book. If your a real StarWars fan you need this book. It gives you 101 different planets and a discription of each one. In the front of the book there is a time line of what has happened through out the StarWars universe for the last 25,000 years. It also tells you the species that live on each planet, and the language that they speak. Along with that, the terrain, points of interest, and ths system the planet is in.The one page summery of the planet discribes what the empire or the republic had to do with it. On the pages you'll also find a picture of the species and other life on the planet as well. I hope you buy this book because it is a lot of fun to read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very nice book to have
Review: If your a Star Wars fan, then you would like this book because it tells about planets that are heard about in books and comics, that you would not know anything about other wise. A very good infromation book for Star Wars.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The best "essential guide" yet
Review: Of all the "essential guides" to the Star Wars universe (characters, vehicles, technology, planets), this is the best effort to date. It brings a truly unifying view to all the elements of the Star Wars saga- films, books, comics, RPG, etcetera. Not all these tales are of the same caliber, of course, and some are downright embarrassing to include in the canon. The Guide to Planets and Moons does the only thing possible: it treats all authors' creations with equal merit, and gives a very fair survey of the 100 most important (debateably so) inhabited worlds in the Star Wars galaxy. The survey runs the gamut from the ubiquitous (Tatooine) to the uncommon (Kashyyyk) to the utterly obscure (Khomm). It includes mention of known characters native to these places and the role each world has played thus far in the events of the ever-expanding Star Wars timeline, thus working as a sort of "Cliff's Notes" for the convoluted saga. The most appealing thing about this approach is that the text is blessedly free of footnotes referring the reader to the hundred-odd abovementioned sources. (These are, however, appendixed at the back.)This creates a feeling of "wholeness" of the saga, which the complete Star Wars library often seems to be lacking.

I nonetheless have one or two complaints. Daniel Wallace's text has an annoying tendency to get melodramatic- Da Soocha V, for instance, was "[devastated] with the speed and fury of burning starfire. In a flash the Pinnacle Moon was no more." Wallace would have been wiser to assume that his readers were fairly hip fans who had already read Dark Empire II, along with most of the other source material. If he had simply kept to the facts of Star Wars "history" instead of trying to recap other authors' adventures in a paragraph or less, the text would have been much more enjoyable, in my estimation. (This is a also a glaring flaw in Andy Mangels' Guide to Characters, by the way.)

Artistically speaking, I agree with my fellow fan from West Des Moines: color illustrations would have been nice, but you can't have everything. (They would also have tripled the price of the book!) I met Brandon McKinney once, and he's a swell guy whose work I admire. Most of his detailed character drawings in this book are excellent, blending his own visual interpretations smoothly with those of previous artists (Dark Horse et al). Some of them, unfortunately, tend too far towards the comic-book look, especially where there is a lack of film-based photo reference to work from. I'll give Brandon the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to the insane schedule illustrators are often forced to work under.

Overall, though, this book rocks. If "The Essential Guide to Droids" is this good, I'll buy it in a Coruscant minute!


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