At Least 20 New STAR WARS Books Will Be Released This Year
Want to know what Luke, Han, and Leia were up to in between Return of the Jedi and J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Well, now you don't have to wait until December 18th to find out. Star Wars will hit bookstores and e-books in a big way in 2015: EW reports that Lucasfilm is releasing at least 20 new books - "from novels for adults and teens to storybooks and stickerbooks for younger kids" - this year that will fill in story gaps between Return of the Jedi and Abrams' new movie, dropping Easter eggs and clues that foreshadow what happens in the new film.
All of these new books have been vetted by Lucasfilm's story group, so they will all be considered canon alongside Star Wars Rebels, The Clone Wars, and the six live-action films. Apparently this entire project - which has been dubbed Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens - was pretty tough to pull off, considering the writers were all working with the writers and directors of future Star Wars films (including the standalone movies) to make sure that everything lined up properly.
“The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily, heavily guarded storyline. To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program,” says Andrew Sugerman, executive vice president of Disney Publishing Worldwide. "The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces. Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: What could a location mean, or what could a character mean?"
Though this is still a work in progress, there are a handful of new titles that have been confirmed for release: Del Ray's Star Wars: Aftermath, Marvel Comics’ Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens, and a story told from C-3PO's perspective. New novels will retell the events of the original trilogy through the eyes of some of the supporting characters (though we don't know which ones yet), while Lucasfilm is also reaching out the young adult crowd with novels that focus on Luke, Leia, and Han to introduce a younger generation to those characters. And here are some of the other novels we know are coming out:
Cecil Castellucci (author of Tin Star) will write Moving Target, an adventure following Princess Leia; Jason Fry, who earlier wrote Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, will be the author of The Weapon of a Jedi, about Luke Skywalker; Claudia Gray, author of the Evernight series of fantasy books, will write a book titled Lost Stars; and Greg Rucka, a comic book scribe and writer of the Atticus Kodiak novels, will pen Smuggler’s Run, a Han Solo tale.
Sounds like fans better clear their reading schedules for the next year if they want to properly consume all of the canonical references and hints to what's coming in The Force Awakens. Looking forward to reading these books?