Club Jade

We’ve already seen the blurb, but now io9 has the cover for John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi! It’s pretty standard, but nice and simple: Glad to see not every cover we’re getting this year is photoshop trickery!

And here’s that blurb again, because why not:

Tatooine—a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders. A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy.

Known to locals only as “Ben,” the bearded and robed offworlder is an enigmatic stranger who keeps to himself, shares nothing of his past, and goes to great pains to remain an outsider. But as tensions escalate between the farmers and a tribe of Sand People led by a ruthless war chief, Ben finds himself drawn into the fight, endangering the very mission that brought him to Tatooine.

Ben—Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero of the Clone Wars, traitor to the Empire, and protector of the galaxy’s last hope—can no more turn his back on evil than he can reject his Jedi training. And when blood is unjustly spilled, innocent lives threatened, and a ruthless opponent unmasked, Ben has no choice but to call on the wisdom of the Jedi—and the formidable power of the Force—in his never-ending fight for justice.

Kenobi will be out in hardcover on August 27. Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that July 9th’s Crucible will contain an excerpt from Kenobi.

The blurb for John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi is up on the Random House catalog, Star Wars Books reports! And here it is:

Tatooine—a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders. A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy.

Known to locals only as “Ben,” the bearded and robed offworlder is an enigmatic stranger who keeps to himself, shares nothing of his past, and goes to great pains to remain an outsider. But as tensions escalate between the farmers and a tribe of Sand People led by a ruthless war chief, Ben finds himself drawn into the fight, endangering the very mission that brought him to Tatooine.

Ben—Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero of the Clone Wars, traitor to the Empire, and protector of the galaxy’s last hope—can no more turn his back on evil than he can reject his Jedi training. And when blood is unjustly spilled, innocent lives threatened, and a ruthless opponent unmasked, Ben has no choice but to call on the wisdom of the Jedi—and the formidable power of the Force—in his never-ending fight for justice.

The book will be out in hardcover on August 27, and we ought to be seeing the final cover soon.

We’ve got details this morning on the forthcoming Rebels series, most notably a brief blurb for Martha Wells’ still-untitled Leia novel:

Nebula Award finalist Martha Wells makes her Star Wars debut with a brand-new classic Star Wars: Rebels adventure starring Princess Leia and her new friends, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, in the time just after the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope!

Princess Leia Organa is on a mission for the Rebel Alliance when Imperial forces attack. Now she, Han, and Luke are on their own, working with pirates and dealing with traitors as they race the clock to protect the secrecy of a crucial meeting of Rebel conspirators!

The listing also gives us (presumably tentative) dates for the other books in the series: March 2014 for James S. A. Corey’s Han book and January 2015 for Kevin Hearn’s Luke novel. (via)

John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi also gets a blurb:

In this original novel set between the events of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi comes to the aid of the residents of Tatooine during his exile. But he struggles with his new mission when he realizes that protecting Luke Skywalker-the last hope of the galaxy-means setting aside his compassion and his Jedi warrior training, for the future of the galaxy lies not with Obi-Wan Kenobi, but with a mystical desert recluse known only by the name of Crazy Old Ben.

There’s also a listing for William Shakespeare’s Star Wars (with the cover and a few interior pages.)

Audio For you audio drama fans, Big Shiny Robot has unearthed Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell a ye olde (scripted by Brian Daley!) tale that takes place between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

The blogside. EUCantina debuts a new column, with a look at what they’d like to see in Kenobi (some Clone Wars spoilers.) Meanwhile, Bria’s Waru Express has pulled into Tosche Station with The Thrawn Trilogy.

Interviews. There’s a real surplus of them since we last checked in, with new writers (Martha Wells, Tim Siedell, Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman) old writers (Kevin J. Anderson) and of course Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, co-writer of The Last Jedi, which came out yesterday.

Speaking of The Last Jedi… The reviews! NJOE, EUC, Jedi News, Lightsaber Rattling, Roqoo Depot and Bry/Megan at Knights Archive are all fairly positive, while Bria at Tosche Station is unimpressed.

Comics. Preview Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day offering, and behold a Legacy variant cover. Also, James has his reviews of the most recent comics: this week’s Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan #3 and ,a href=”http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/49301″>Agent of the Empire: Hard Targets #5 and Brian Wood’s Star Wars #2.

Congratulations to your publicist. Forbes, of all publications, profiles Dark Horse and their role in making licensed properties cool for comics. There’s some interesting stuff from a generalized viewpoint, but despite use of the term ‘expanded universe’ it’s more focused on video game tie-ins than things like Star Wars and Buffy.

Del Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss updated fans on Facebook today with a few release dates. Martha Wells’ untitled Leia novel is the first of the Rebels series to drop, with an October 29 release. (Erich mentions that it’s moving up a week, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time they’ve given us a date publically.)

Meanwhile, John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi moves up a whole month, from September 24 to August 27. As always, our book release schedule has been updated!

Release dates. Time to pencil in John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi for September 24th. Our book release schedule has been updated. (via)

Scoundrels. EUC interviews Timothy Zahn about the book. And Zahn writes about creating a puzzle at the official site. (Don’t forget our own interview and coverage of his talk at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy.)

Digitally… Dan Wallace writes about the new eBook version of The Jedi Path, which came out last week.

Oh dear. Tor’s Emily Asher-Perrin has a guide on where to start in the Expanded Universe. They’re about 50% fairly sound choices… but I wouldn’t recommend Courtship as a starting place for anyone, let alone someone looking for ‘romance.’ Nor would I inflict the Jedi Academy Trilogy, The Crystal Star or Shadows of the Empire on innocent newbies. (Naturally, there’s plenty of debate in the comments.)

In the wake of yesterday’s update on the Correy Solo novel, we have updates on two more highly-anticipated books.

Martha Wells wrote about her Leia-centric Rebels book, saying that the book is set two years after A New Hope and that it’s “about 75-80% Leia’s POV”

And John Jackson Miller revealed on Twitter that he’s finished Kenobi, which has been tentativly annouced for a fall release.

Well, here’s the big news out of New York Comic Con: John Jackson Miller is moving up to the big leagues with a post-Revenge of the Sith novel tentatively titled Kenobi. And the Rebels series announced at CVI continues with a Han Solo novel from new-to-the-EU author James S. A. Correy, aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, whose Leviathan Wakes was recently nominated for a Hugo. They’re a big get for Del Rey!

On his blog, Miller describes Kenobi as “part epic western, part high-stakes drama, part romance.” You can get a closer look at Scalf’s preview art on his DA. (via) The book will be a hardcover and is currently scheduled for Fall 2013.

Also revealed: Golden’s Sword the the Jedi series will also feature Jag (well, obviously,) Ben Skywalker, Allana and Tahiri. And there’s still no word on Kemp’s duology, but Frank Parisi promises “It will f’ing blow your minds!” (Riiight.) And, finally, Crucible is not the big 3′s last adventure, it’s just going to “change them forever.” Thanks to @DelReyStarWars and avgoins for the live tweets!