Member Reviews
Star Wars Canto Bight book review [written December 13th 2017]
Canto Bight is a star wars collection of 4 novella miniature short story books that takes place before the force awakens. The book however ties into The Last Jedi, with Canto Bight being a location that will be visited in the film. I would like to thank Del Rey for a digital copy of the book to read and review.
I'm going to go through each of the stories, give a small summary and my thoughts and review and overall at the end.
Rules of the Game- Saladin Ahmed;
Kedpin Shoklop is a over hundred year old non human salesman that comes to Canto Bight on a won vacation from his company. He is very excited at first, but as a new visitor and tourist he gets scammed quickly. He realizes he is part of an assassination attempt and everything goes wacky. Read the book to find out more. I really liked this story. It showed a lot of Canto Bight and the whole world of Cantonica. An aspect mentioned often is fathier races which is races of centaur like horse creatures that are gambled upon similar to podracing in Canto Bight. The characters are nice and they are mostly nonhumans which is different even for most star wars novels. There are callouts to a small green fellow that was in the Star Wars films, very much appreciated by me. If I must identify something wrong with the story, it isn't the best Star wars literature I've ever read, but I didn't expect that because I really just wanted an early read about Canto Bight before the last jedi. It is also noteworthy that this story gives reference to the next in a manner that shows they both take place at the exact same time. Which I find great that the authors communicated and connected the novellas.
A fathier on the set of last jedi
The Wine in Dreams- Mira Grant;
Derla Pidys is a sommelier, wine seller working on Canto Bight with the Grammus sisters, Thrawn like identical twins that manipulate the whole situation into a star wars worthy wacky masterpiece. Read the book to find out more. I found it to be quite fascinating and bold to have the whole story about wine selling. That made it a little more chill, but that doesn't mean anything because this is Star Wars and it is all wacky. This story at it's height quite reminded me of Mos Eisley and the bar, Ubialla's is an awesome location that should be included in a movie. One complaint is that the story is somewhat too descriptive and drags on about one place, item, or topic but that wasn't very bad. Anyways how could the story be bad when it mentions the Yuzzum of Endor making wine with the Ewoks.
See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Say Nothing- By Rae Carson;
This story was about a masseur on Canto Bight whose daughter was kidnapped by Big Sturgg Gana and has to go wacky to get her back.
I thought that the story really was most interesting, with canon aspects about Canto Bight and Star Wars that were cool. It was shorter than the others so a little less of a story. I will be honest the plot is somewhat generic. That said, it really is enthralling and kept me entertained. I wouldn't expect any less from the best franchise in the galaxy, Star Wars.
The Ride- John Jackson Miller;
From the author of A New Dawn is a story about the main purpose of Canto Bight, gambling. Kal has lots of debts and must pay them off and he meets 3 brothers that are possibly force sensitive that help him with that. This is my favorite story of the bunch. It is also the longest. I really like how everything mattered and came back around as well as huge connections with the other stories and the canon in general. There isn't much more I can say without spoilers, but the book had me going ooooooh.
In all this was a very entertaining collection of stories. All of it took place during one night and showed the details of Canto Bight and Cantonica. There were flaws and the story of the characters is still up in the air, but it showed Canto Bight and is the most epic way to prepare for the last jedi. I would rate it a 9.3/10. Thanks for reading my blog and stat connected.
(As a side note the official star wars wiki confirms that all of the main characters of Canto Bight will be in the last jedi in some capacity. :)