Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Files by Jason Fry
| Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Files by Jason Fry | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: Heavily pictorial, and both thoughtfully intelligent and suited to the young fan, this is a really good background/tie-in title to the biggest sci-fi film of the season. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 64 | Date: December 2016 |
| Publisher: Egmont | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781405285032 | |
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Out of several books I've seen to tie-in to the seventh official cinema movie in the Star Wars universe, this – and the resulting review – is the greatest source of spoilers. What you get is a surprisingly mature look at the background and events to Rogue One for such a juvenile book, with some fine stills photographs, and a volume that introduces all the main characters and gears you up to understand and enjoy a lot of the events of the film. So if you don't want to know those in advance, look away now. But certainly consider this as a purchase for reading once you've watched it.
We're looking at Operation Fracture. On a remote planet, in a particularly religious location, seem to be connections to a man who knows more than is healthy about the Imperial weapons programmes, including one needing a surprising source of rare crystals that can be used in energy enhancement. The documents in this book are the intelligence reports and character profiles of the people involved in the Operation, which aims to prove certain identities, and capture specific people, all in the hope of recovering key, galaxy-saving knowledge. And, besides the aforementioned profile photographs, and some small sections regarding the vehicles that are new to the franchise, that is all you get.
Which makes this title all the more impressive. This is definitely designed to be a 'non-fiction' book, but one of course from a wholly fictional world. It is purely the case reports, and nothing else – no editorialising, no background to which side we should be favouring, and certainly no dialogue. The closest thing to a conversation, in fact, is one page where someone suggests the intel about the alleged superweapon is a trap to reveal sources and paths of Rebel information smugglers, and the following page that says it must be followed at all costs – Operation Fracture must be undergone, and all that that entails.
What that does entail is definitely left to the big screen experience. What we get here is nothing like the moving image, and is certainly background to the movie. It doesn't feature any of the action from the film, as such, and from my educated guess (ie I haven't seen it yet) this is just a discussion of material involved in the first third of the cinema story – ie what I would deem as allowed in my own plot summary. Of course, the end of the story is not completely alien to us – you might have seen the Internet sites flagging images leaked from the Rogue One sequel – they appeared on home VHS several decades ago, don't'cha know, under the original title Star Wars. Funny, that.
But the end of my little tale is that this is a book well worth considering. I liked the manner it had, of absorbing itself into the Star Wars universe, and letting the reader have a pure glimpse of what might actually being passed from one Rebel leader to another. I think it fell short a little at times – my adult eye sought a bit more regularity in the presentation, more uniformity in what amount to similar files. But the pages are lively enough with the strong visual sense, nothing too essential is given away, and the book goes no way towards dumbing down the Rebel concerns in presenting the worries of the film's adult, battle-hardened characters to its primary school audience. It's not high literature – which you knew without me – but this is a very good tie-in volume.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Star Wars: Galactic Atlas by Emil Fortune and Tim McDonagh is heavy on the detail for a similarly youthful audience, but covers a lot of galaxy with it.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Files by Jason Fry at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Files by Jason Fry at Amazon.com.
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