From a Certain Point of View

Short story collections are interesting things to read. Often they are difficult to read in one go due to jarring contrasts in style and content. From A Certain Point of View has to be one of the easiest to read short story collections that I have ever encountered as its concept of taking background characters from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and fleshing out their backstories means if you are familiar with the movies you are already fully ensconced in the world and can recognize and easily imagine the scenes behind the stories being told.

As always with any short story collection there is some unevenness to the quality but overall this is an impressive collection and the gems in it really do shine. My personal favourite was Ken Liu's which puts a desk jockey's perception on how to avoid the blame for not targetting the escape pod that contained C3PO and R2D2 - the bureaucracy behind the empire must have been huge and this is an amusing take on it.

There are some inconsistencies where two different authors have taken different characters from the same scene which are a bit annoying, but honestly that is my main criticism. I look forward to the next collection for the Empire Strikes Back

Review Update
So, I'm looking at my Goodreads list for the year and it shows this is the longest book I've read this year. Except I didn't finish it. Then I came across it on Libby and decided to give it another go. Fortunately, I remember where I left off.

I let this go just at the point where the book transitions from Tatooine to the Death Star. I have to admit that I liked the stories after Tatooine better. There are only so many perspectives of watching Han hook up with Luke and shoot Greedo I care to read. In the end there are some really good stories and some that didn't grab me. And now I can know I honestly read that whole book!

Original review:

There were stories I really liked in this book. However, it quickly felt like another Tales From... book. Some of the characters I didn't care about and reading the full story was work. Many of the stories didn't resonate with me. I found myself falling asleep reading regularly. I was committed to finishing, but after failing to get traction on the fourth borrow from the library, I think I need to put it aside. Maybe it's time for me to move on from Star Wars books. They were good friends and I enjoyed them 20 years ago, and part of me wants to relive those years, but I am finding that this universe no longer holds the place it once did.

This book is a homage to the secondary characters in a new Hope and exposes a mixture of perspectives. From the force allowing the tale of an adoptive mother, the intricacies of a Star Destroyer bureaucracy, the aftermath of a Stormtrooper not able to find the droids he was looking for, Imperials finding love in unusual places, many rebel stories about engineers, pilots, a consular on a diplomatic mission, and “a card player, gambler, scoundrel. You'd like him”.Low Ground:The book takes a sweet, lovely time getting out of Tatooine and in particular the cantina, reminiscent of [b:Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina 353479 Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina (Star Wars) Kevin J. Anderson https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1383261295s/353479.jpg 343687].High Ground:I hate [a:Wil Wheaton 37075 Wil Wheaton https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1356706649p2/37075.jpg] the same way I hate Pixar for Coco, for the mechanic who sent her daughter away to a safer place.All the familiar places and faces around A New Hope and the force.

As someone who didn't expect too much from this book, I was really pleasantly surprised. A lot of the stories here were really great, and managed to make me care for certain background characters in a really short amount of time.

Talking about characters - ever wanted to know the stories of the Mos Eisley Cantina Band? Captain Antilles? Biggs? The stormtroopers who were told “These aren't the droids you're looking for”? Hell, even Qui-Gon Jinn and Yoda? You get all of that and more!
Some of the stories do end up being a bit eh, but everything else more than makes up for it.