A new Clone Wars book is hot off the presses and it delivers instant action for fans of the beloved Star Wars series. Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is an anthology of stories based within existing stories. Each story explores the point of view of a character from the series including Anakin, Ahsoka Tano, Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Captain Rex, Darth Maul, Count Dooku and others.
The book of short stories was written by 11 different authors who drop the reader directly into stories that fans of the Clone Wars will be familiar with. The stories feel, at the same time, both familiar and new. It’s like learning additional details from a historical event that you thought you knew everything about.
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is similar in scope to From a Certain Point of View, a collection of 40 short stories published to honor to the 40th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope. However, while that book presented a point of view of an ancillary character from the film, the Clone Wars book gives the reader access to the inner thoughts of primary characters. That works really well for this book.
One of the best aspects of the Clone Wars series was the in-depth character development. Unlike the films that must carefully compress character development into a couple sentences or a montage, the Clone Wars gave fans unprecedented access to characters. That’s what makes this book so good. We get even more insight into how these characters felt and acted within these existing stories.
A WORK OF ART
The book itself is beautiful with colorful cover and character illustrations for each chapter based on the character profiled. The Moscow, Russia-based illustrator, Ksenia Zelentsova, painted the cover and character renditions in a dreamy, actiony watercolor that captures the essence of each character.
The authors of the stories include Lou Anders, Tom Angleberger, Preeti Chhibber, Zoraida Córdova, Sarah Beth Durst, Jason Fry, Yoon Ha Lee, Rebecca Roanhorse, Anne Ursu, and Greg van Eekhout. If you are an avid reader of Star Wars books over the past few years, you probably recognize some of the names of the contributors.
Most of the authors have written Star Wars booked targeted to the teenage fan demographic. This is appropriate because Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is written for the young adult market. While some of the Star Wars book titles in this genre can be annoying at times for mature readers, this book doesn’t suffer from that. The tone and narratives feel consistent with the Clone Wars animated series.
This book is also lighter in volume, clocking in at 352 pages. In contrast, From a Certain Point of View had 496 pages in print form.
STAR WARS AUDIOBOOKS RULE!
The printed version of the book is attractive, but I am a loyal fan of the Star Wars audiobooks. The narrated Star Wars books have been a great way to experience the stories for a long time. The quality of experience in the Star Wars audiobooks got even better after the Disney acquisition. In addition to fantastic narration, the audiobooks feature sound effects and familiar scores from the franchise’s films and TV series.
The audiobook for Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark uses voice actors from the Clone Wars series to bring the stories to life. We’ve got familiar voices including Corey Burton, Nika Futterman, Olivia Hack, Matt Lanter, Catherine Taber, James Arnold Taylor, and Sam Witwer.
THE NIGHTSISTERS
One final thing to share about the book is an original story about the Nightsisters: the family of witches of our favorite sith-wannebe — Ventress. She’s a villain that people can relate to. A character who is not necessarily evil, but driven by loss to do bad things.
The Nightsister story is titled “Bug,” which is written by Dave Filoni’s wife E. Anne Convery. The story is both haunting and touching, which pretty much sums up Ventress and the Nightsisters as characters. The story takes place on a remote planet where a little girl called Bug by her less-than-loving parents gets to know a strange female with pale skin who takes a room in the inn. “Bug” takes place after the “Massacre” episode where the Nightsisters are wiped out on Dathomir. And likely before the events of the Ventress-centered book Dark Disciple.
We learn more about what happened to the order and about its history. We also learn that the visitor is searching for someone. And that’s all I’m going to say, except that this story alone is worth the price of the book (or audiobook) for Clone Wars fans … and especially for fans of the Nightsisters and Ventress stans.
Even though the book is targeted at teenage readers, the content is mature enough and interesting enough to hold the attention of any Star Wars fan. Reading this book is like catching up with an old friend. You get to relive the past while making new memories. Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is definitely worth the read.
