Trauma ward. Dying for all the damage details on everyone’s favorite pan-fried villain? You’re in luck, ’cause Becker & Mayer has announced Darth Vader: A 3-D Surgical Log. Written by Dan Wallace with art by Chris Trevas (who has designed Vader’s underwear) and Chris Reiff, it sounds like it’ll be in the same vein as Millennium Falcon: A 3-D Owner’s Guide.
Actual nonfiction. StarWars.com has a look inside Bonnie Burton’s The Star Wars Craft Book, which is coming out in March.
The blogside. Authors Troy Denning, John Jackson Miller and Joe Schreiber just wrapped up their joint stint on Borders’ Babel Clash blog.
Your moment of zen. A reader over at the romance novel blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books reviews The Courtship of Princess Leia. She is amazingly kind to it.
Ah yes, the Courtship. Good old times. Well, not really, but I kind of liked Dathomir breathing life back into… Uh… It was Luke, right? Haven’t read that one in ages. And even when I did it was probably only once. I do remember though that Han actually won the planet in a game of Sabacc to in turn win Leia’s heart, which is a pretty nice way of playing to his strength. And showing that Leia sort of replaces the Falcon on Han’s list of love.
Which isn’t really deep or anything but for a writer who ended up penning Jedi Apprentice it’s not too shabby.
I really liked Courtship back in the day, but I was a lot less critical and picky before I actually started trying to write books myself. I sort of have to wonder at it, because it isn’t really a romance novel, but at least the reviewer does give it a fair shake.
I keep saying that some day I’m gonna go back and re-read all of the Star Wars books from the nineties. I expect that it will be a glorious experience. And also tacky.
Aaron: I wouldn’t give Wolverton too much credit for JA, even if he ‘wrote’ the first one.
Doyle: It was very much marketed as a romance, though – have you seen the original cover? (They changed it for the PB.) And that title? Pity the poor, faked-out H/L fans.
The Smart Bitches reviewing COPL is kind of like us reviewing that Jediism book this weekend: We’re not a Jedi religion blog any more than they are a sci-fi one, but it is obviously of interest to their readers – check the comments. Readers are readers, and someone liking romance novels doesn’t preclude them from having dabbled in Star Wars or SF/F. Have we learned nothing from the leather butt fantasy trend? ;)
Dunc: Oh. Wow. I never had seen that cover, no. Actually I think that it’s a lot better, but I’m sort of a minimalist when it comes to that sort of thing. I also loved it when Struzan was allowed to do more than translate stuff from a bunch of film stills for these books.
And you make a good point about cross-readership. It’s something that I forget about from time to time, no matter how much I try not to. Call it graduate school starting to rub off on me in ways that I don’t like.