Master & Apprentice
The partnership the films took for granted, finally shown being built.
An independent fan reading log
Every book. Every era. In order.
One reader working through the whole Star Wars shelf — canon and Legends — one book at a time, and writing down what actually holds up.
Star Wars has been a publishing programme for longer than most people reading this have been alive. That is roughly six hundred novels, several thousand comics, two continuities that disagree with each other, and a reference shelf that will happily tell you the tonnage of a freighter nobody has ever cared about.
The plan here is simple and probably unwise: read all of it, in a deliberate order, and write down what each one is actually like. Not what the marketing said. Not what the fandom decided in 2009. What is on the page.
From the log
Featured reviews
All booksThe books I would hand you first, in the order I would hand them over.
Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
How one miner decided a thousand Sith were nine hundred and ninety-nine too many.
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
Fifty years of Sith project management, and it is riveting.
Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi
A publishing initiative disguised as a disaster novel, and mostly the better for it.
Star Wars: The Living Force
All twelve Jedi Councillors leave the Temple. It goes about as well as you would expect.
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
The novelization that is better than the film it novelizes.
Thrawn
Zahn rebuilds his own creation for a new continuity, and finds a better story in the climb.
Star Wars: Kenobi
A Western about a man who cannot help himself.
The log, moving
Latest reviews
All reviewsMost recent write-ups, newest first — not the hand-picked set above.
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
The novelization that is better than the film it novelizes.
The New Jedi Order: Traitor
A prisoner, a teacher, and the most radical thing anyone has written about the Force.
Master & Apprentice
The partnership the films took for granted, finally shown being built.
Star Wars: Lost Stars
Two friends join the Imperial Academy. Only one of them stays.
Heir to the Empire
The book that proved Star Wars could live on a shelf instead of a screen.
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
Fifty years of Sith project management, and it is riveting.
New here?
Start here
All reading routesThree honest answers to "which one do I read first", depending on who is asking.
You have never read one
Three books, three eras, no homework, no wiki tabs. Each one stands entirely on its own.
You have only watched the films
The novels that fill in the gaps the films left, without asking you to have seen six seasons of television first.
You want the whole thing
Publication order for the current continuity, or the full in-universe chronology if you would rather read history forwards.
New section
The comics database
The databaseEvery Star Wars comic ever published, catalogued at series and issue level — 221 series across 11 publishers, 1888 issues indexed so far, canon and Legends labelled throughout.
Marvel Special Edition Featuring Star Wars
Treasury-sized reprints of the six-issue film adaptation, printed at roughly twice comic-book size — the largest Star Wars comics ever sold on a…
Star Wars
The first Star Wars comic: a six-issue adaptation of the 1977 film that immediately became an ongoing, and then spent nine years inventing what a…
Marvel Super Special (Star Wars issues)
Marvel’s magazine-format showcase carried two Star Wars issues: the complete Empire Strikes Back adaptation in 1980 and the complete Return of the…
In-universe history
Browse by era
All erasLucasfilm sorts the saga into nine eras. This site charts all nine and adds three subdivisions of its own, because it turns out that is a genuinely useful way to find your next book.
Dawn of the Jedi
The deepest past on the shelf — a time before the Jedi Order existed, when Force users on the Deep Core world Tython called themselves Je’daii and…
The Old Republic
Four thousand years of Jedi and Sith tearing the Republic apart and rebuilding it, over and over. This is the era of the Great Hyperspace War, the…
The Rule of Two
After Ruusan the Sith are believed extinct. In fact one survivor rewrites the entire order around a single rule — always two, a master and an…
The High Republic
The Republic at its confident peak and the Jedi at their most numerous, expanding into an Outer Rim that has not asked to be expanded into. Wholly…
Fall of the Jedi
The last years of the Galactic Republic, from the Invasion of Naboo to the execution of Order 66. A Republic too large to govern itself, a Jedi…
The Clone Wars
Three years of galaxy-wide war between the Republic and the Separatist Alliance, both of them being played. It is the single largest body of Star…
Reign of the Empire
From the Declaration of the New Order to the theft of the Death Star plans: nineteen years of consolidation, purges and scattered, uncoordinated…
Age of Rebellion
Four years from the theft of the Death Star plans to the Battle of Endor — the span of the original trilogy, and the point from which the entire…
The New Republic
The long, difficult peace after Endor: a young government, an Imperial remnant that refuses to die quietly, and a galaxy learning to govern itself.…
The New Jedi Order
The Yuuzhan Vong War: an extragalactic invasion on a scale the shelf had never attempted, conquers Coruscant and forces Luke Skywalker’s young Jedi…
Rise of the First Order
The sequel-trilogy era in current canon: a successor state built in secret in the Unknown Regions, a New Republic that will not believe in it, and a…
The Legacy Era
The end of the road for Star Wars Legends: a second galactic civil war, a Solo twin who becomes a Sith Lord, an ancient entity called Abeloth, and a…
Guides, retrospectives, opinions
Latest from the desk
All dispatchesNever a rumour, never an unsourced scoop. Anniversaries, reading guides, and clearly-labelled arguments.
Why I am cataloguing the whole saga
A launch note: what this site is, what it will never do, and how a reading log ended up with a filing system attached.
Where to start with Star Wars books
Four honest doors into a shelf that has been growing since 1976, depending on which part of the saga you already like.
Canon and Legends, explained without the headache
What Lucasfilm actually announced on 25 April 2014, what stayed canon, and why a Legends book is still a real book.
How to read the Thrawn novels without losing the thread
Two continuities, one character, and a nine-book spine. A practical order for anyone starting from zero.
The High Republic: publication order versus chronological order
Three phases that travel backwards and then forwards again. Here is why publication order wins anyway.
How to read the X-Wing novels
Ten Legends books, two authors and one squadron: a practical route through the series that made Wedge Antilles a lead character.
