‘Star Wars – The Essential Reader’s Companion’ – Hidalgo, Trevas & Carlisle (Titan Books)

Some books defy analysis because they are so well written that you can’t stop thinking about them in order to come up with any kind of conclusion. At the other end of the scale, other books defy analysis as they are so poorly written as to be unreadable. ‘Star Wars – The Essential Reader’s Companion’ sits firmly in the middle of this chain but I have to say that my feelings towards the book are more negative than positive…

You see, ‘The Essential Reader’s Companion’ may look lovely on the coffee table (some lovely illustrations inside as well) but all it amounts to is a collection of synopses for every Star Wars novel written to date. Well, give or take a few books I guess. What can I say about that…?
Each synopsis is very detailed (a good overview of each story) but that’s about it really and surely any Star Wars fan thinking about picking this up will have a large chunk of the actual books already. That surely punches a large hole in the objective of ‘The Essential Reader’s Companion’ (being a handy reference guide). I personally had a little trouble remembering certain events in Timothy Zahn’s ‘Vision of the Future’ the other day. I could have picked up the ‘Reader’s Companion’ (yay for review copies!) but you know what? I just picked up my copy of the original and found what I needed to know.

That is my big problem with this book, it just feels redundant before it’s even had a chance to sit on the shelves for a few days (it was only released a week ago). It’s not telling us anything that we didn’t know already; it feels like a cynical attempt to fleece fans of a little more of their money. I’m a big reader of the ‘Daily Mash’ and one of their articles described ‘Star Wars’ as ‘the memory of a franchise now consisting largely of insults to its memory’. Books like ‘The Essential Reader’s Companion’ just confirm that for me…

If you have a massive collection of ‘Star Wars’ books (that you’re not going to read) and you’re looking to make some space then ‘The Essential Reader’s Companion’ would be a great way to free up room and keep a vague guide to each book. If you don’t have all the books and want to fill in some of the gaps then I guess this book could do a job there as well. Other than that though, I see no reasons to get yourself a copy of ‘The Essential Reader’s Companion’; not when most of this stuff is online anyway…