Where ‘Star Wars: Canto Bight’ falls well and truly flat on its face is in its strapline ‘Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi’. Seven little words that utterly void this collection of four novellas of any resemblance to creative storytelling. In a galaxy as rich and varied, as it is far, far away, it verges on the intolerable. Set solely in the eponymous city situated on the world of Cantonica, the four writers aim to cook up a city as glistening and vibrant as Las Vegas but pull off the kind of interest levels reserved for our very own Skeg-Vegas.
The first story follows a killer for hire as he tricks a dim-witted bystander into becoming the walking bomb that will take out his hit. What that equates to is something akin to Forrest Gump meets Leon, with a ridiculously obvious dénouement.
The next tale is an ‘adrenaline pumped’ fifty pages charting an over the table deal for the galaxies’ finest bottle of vino – ‘The Wine of Dreams’. By adrenaline pumped, read ‘drip-fed on your death bed’. Trying to tell a story about something as Earthly as wine, while still using phrases such as ‘a crisp, astringent note’ and ‘the nose’ in the Star Wars universe, really jars (jars binks).
It’s at this point two further things start to grate. Firstly, Canto Bight is described in nearly every paragraph and by every character as ‘a shining city with a dark underbelly’ or ‘a place of dreams that hides dark nightmares’ etc. etc. Ad infinitum. Secondly, unable to mention even half-known background characters, for fear of spoiling even a nugget of the upcoming film, the writers result to name-dropping every place or species you can think of. Alderaanian trees, wine from Kashyyyk, Ewoks, Hutts and even the Mon Calamari Ballet get a mention. Each and everyone sticks out like a stop sign reminding you ‘Hey this is a Star Wars story, remember?’ Each story tries to weave characters from each story into another, but when such characters are either unlikeable or forgettable, it’s hard to get excited when they stroll past a table in the background of another story.
The third novella charts a masseuse using his incredible massagey massaging skills to extract information from the criminal underground (Every golden city with an overground has one) and the fourth follows a ‘high stakes’ card game. Do yourself a favour and read Thunderball and Casino Royale instead.
The four authors are at the top of their game elsewhere in literature, but here, barely manage to scrape Canto Bights’ filthy underbelly (see, gets irritating doesn’t it?). Perhaps more dispiriting is that this was put in front of the fabled story group and given the thumbs up. There are hundreds of infinitely better Star Wars books out there, even if they have been consigned to ‘Legends’. Stories that haven’t been squeezed so tightly into the cinematic canon that they can barely breath: even if they do drop a moon on Chewie’s head. Seek them out instead of reading this, just pray we never see Star Wars: Journey to Mara Jade.
STAR WARS: CANTO BIGHT / AUTHOR: SALADIN AHMED, MIRA GRANT, RAE CARSON, JOHN JACKSON MILLER / PUBLISHER: CENTURY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
