Star Wars today announced several books to tie-in to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge coming later this year!
The headliner is a new novel written by Delilah Dawson entitled Black Spire, which will release on September 3, 2019. The description for this novel that has been released says that, “In this novel, a prequel to the Disney Parks experience, General Leia Organa dispatches her top spy to Batuu in a desperate search for Resistance allies.”
I fully expect that the top spy Leia dispatches is Vi Moradi, for a couple of reasons. First of all, she first appeared in Dawson’s previous Star Wars novel, Phasma. In that book, she was a Resistance spy who was captured and interrogated aboard a Star Destroyer by Captain Cardinal concerning the history of the First Order’s mysterious Captain Phasma. It would make perfect sense for Dawson to return to one of her character creations, especially if she’s going to write a book about a Resistance spy. It just fits too perfectly. And secondly, it seems that Moradi is going to have a role in the park opening up later this year too, which would mean that she has a history with Black Spire Outpost on Batuu. I’m definitely expecting that this book will be about Vi Moradi’s mission for the Resistance, and it’d be pretty cool to explore her character further. As for the timeline, all we know is that it’s a prequel to the theme park experience coming to Disney Land and Disney World later this year, which is to be set sometime after The Last Jedi. So it’s definitely possible that this book could still be set sometime concurrent or after the events of TLJ, as it would make sense for Leia to be sending out spies searching for any allies to the Resistance.
Though Black Spire is the biggest feature announcement here, it’s not the only book. Also coming later this year is a young adult novel entitled A Crash of Fate, which will be written by Zoraida Córdova and is scheduled to be released on August 6, 2019. The description for this novel reads, “In this Young Adult novel, Izzy and Jules were best friends until Izzy’s family abruptly left Batuu when she was six. Now she’s back, and Jules, the boy who never left, is unsure what to make of her. While on the run from vengeful smugglers and an angry pirate, the two friends will come to terms with who they are, and what they mean to each other.”
I’m not exactly sure what to make of that, but I’m willing to give it a try! I’m mainly curious to see how it fits in with the larger Star Wars universe (is the pirate Hondo?) or whether it’s just a random story told at this location (which I highly doubt). But either way, it will surely serve to add more background, character, and understanding to Batuu.
And lastly, there’s the book Star Wars: Myths & Fables, written by Grant Griffin, which will be released on August 6, 2019. The description for this book reads, “In this middle grade novel, hear the thrilling space tales, fables, and myths that are told in a galaxy far, far away. The book features two stories that take place on the remote Outer Rim world of Batuu, plus many other untold tales from the edge of the galaxy, lushly illustrated in a style that pays homage to real-world children’s classics.”
You can actually read an excerpt from this book if you head to the Star Wars website’s announcement of it, and it seems that this will be in the same category of The Legends of Luke Skywalker – that is, these stories may or may not have happened and might be elaborated a bit, but they’re real in-world legends that have spread in the canon universe. I’m not a huge fan of those kinds of storytelling when it comes to Star Wars books, but I do find it an interesting idea to tell stories that are the myths and legends in the Star Wars universe, just like we have some in ours (like about King Arthur, for instance).
These three books add to the comic mini-series announced last week, as well as future stories including a kids comic series and a cookbook teased by StarWars.com. So it sounds like we should expect more stories than just the ones that have already been announced, which are quite considerable already. I think it’s really cool how Lucasfilm is developing an entire backstory about this planet that we’ll get to visit, and while I’m sure you won’t have to read these to enjoy the park, doing so will give a much fuller and richer experience and will help with the immersion into the Star Wars galaxy.
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