Solo: A Star Wars Story: Tales from Vandor

by Jason Fry

Follow an adventure in the Star Wars universe in this first-person narrative from one of the characters in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
 

Learn about the smugglers, scoundrels, gangsters, pirates, and plunderers from Solo: A Star Wars Story—including Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian—in this unique in-world journal straight from Fort Ypso on the snowy mountain planet of Vandor.

Genres: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2018

About the author

I am the author of The Jupiter Pirates series published by HarperCollins -- visit the official site at http://jupiterpirates.com.

In addition to Jupiter Pirates, I've written or co-written more than 30 novels and short stories set in the Star Wars galaxy, including The Essential Atlas, The Essential Guide to Warfare, The Weapon of a Jedi, and the Servants of the Empire quartet.

I spent more than 12 years at The Wall Street Journal Online, where I wrote or co-wrote the Real Time and Daily Fix columns. My non-fiction work has appeared on ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, Poynter.org, Deadspin and Baseball Prospectus. I blog about the New York Mets at Faith and Fear in Flushing and live in Brooklyn with my wife and son.

Reviews

[Richard Dominguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun read with lots of little back stories about Han and other Star Wars characters.
Well written in journal format by a bartender, the reading is easy and well paced for a quick enjoyable read. The illustrations are fun and the book includes several pullout pages with diagrams,maps and Imperial ads.
While the book gives plenty of nods to the Star Wars canons it also provides plenty of fillers to the characters lives and adventures.
This is a great way to become more familiar with Star Wars for readers of any age.

[Alyson Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book: Solo: A Star Wars Story: Tales From Vandor
Author: Jason Fry
Rating: 3 Out of 5 Stars

This is one of the few origin story books that I have read. While I did enjoy the movie, Solo is not the highest ranked movie for me. I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that Hans Solo is not a character favourite of mine-I know…I know….

While I do think this is a good edition to the Star Wars world, I don’t think it really added to the overall arc of the story. I think had it gone into a little bit more detail on what we were reading. I felt like so many of the things that were talked about in this book were kind of short on and just didn’t go into the detail that I was looking for. I felt like we were just getting an overall view instead of the deep dive that I was looking for. Yes, I am fully aware that this is directed more toward the middle grade audience, but still. I think that even middle grade students are going to be looking for more than what we got in this volume.

I was looking for a little bit more detail on the characters were meet in Solo and getting to see more of their backstory. I know the movie does a pretty solid job with this, but I would have liked to have seen just a little bit more from this book. I think the author is relying on the movie to fill in this holes. However, there are things in the movie that aren’t always the clearest on screen. Sometimes we turn to the written word to give us a chance to really see and understand more of what is going on. This is what I have come to expect from the Stars Wars books. It allows us to see some things that are going on behind the scenes and adds to the overall story. It gives us a chance to get into the mind set the characters a little bit more.

I did like the foldouts and other interactive features in this book. It made the book stand out and I think that is what really added to this. By having these interactive features, it makes you feel like you are in the world with the character and experiencing everything with them. You are pulled in and given this chance to see the world that we have come to know and love from the movies.

Anyway, I didn’t love this one, but I didn’t hate it by any means. I would have liked to have just gotten a little bit more from it.

[Katriena Knights · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fold-outs were cool. My favorite part was the bits at the end where some of my favorite older EU titles got re-canonized.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

So I loved Solo, I love world-building/lore, and I love Jason Fry. So I am pretty darn biased towards this kind of book.

But this was a fun little romp through the world of Vandor through the eyes of Midnight, a bartender at Fort Ypso. It's a quick read with fun nods to a lot of Star Wars history and some truly entertaining bits.

I only wish that it had more on the background aliens/characters that inhabited the fort. It spends 90% of its time on the main characters from the film and I was personally hoping for a bit more about the others that we see, particularly the others from the sabaac table... (not sure that is up to the author at all... new Star Wars seems a lot less interested in the specifics than "old" Star Wars. There are aliens from The Force Awakens that we still don't have species names for so I think on some level the powers that be want to leave things more vague...)

Anyway, it is a fun read, definitely worth it - especially for readers much younger than myself.

[Ahdom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting perspective on some of the characters and events from Solo: A Star Wars Story. However, the format and info was not enough to be very entertaining. I did like a few of the anecdotes within, providing potential extra background for a few characters. This was a quick enough read, but skippable unless you are a Star Wars Canon completionist.

[Eva B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was cool! I thought it would be Han Solo's in-universe journal, but it ended up being told from the perspective of a bartender on Vandor. It didn't really give me any more information, but there were some cute references to non-canon stories, like The Padawan Menace.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a quick short read which fills in a few gaps and also has a lot of nice nods to the old Expanded Universe.