Last year, to honor the 40th anniversary of "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.," 40 storytellers got together to create short stories set within the timeline of the film.

The end result is "From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back," featuring tales told from the movie's side characters (droids, tauntauns, storm troopers, and more), and characters that could have been, laid out chronilogically from Hoth to Dagobah to Bespin.

My favorites of the bunch were:

"She Will Keep Them Warm" by Delilah S. Dawson, told from the POV of Murra, the head Tauntaun on Hoth's rebel base (though bittersweet as knowing their names makes the scenes on Hoth a little more heartbreaking).

"Wait For It" by Zoraida Cordova, told from the POV of Boba Fett tracking Solo.

"Ion Control" by Emily Skrutskie, telling the story of rebel Toryn Farr during the battle on Hoth.

"Tooth and Claw" by Michael Kogge, centered on reptilian bounty hunter Bossk who finds more than he bargains for while hunting down a rebel Wookiee ship.

Not every story was great, but enough of them were for me to enjoy this anthology very much. For fans of "The Empire Strikes Back," this book extends the enjoyment of the movie.

I'm giving "From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back," a 4.5 out of 5.

I really enjoyed these stories and getting glimpses of characters from other perspectives. There was some stories I enjoyed more than others but overall it was a fun book.

From a Certain Point of View is a collection of side stories related to the events of The Empire Strikes Back, my favorite Star Wars film. The stories are very hit and miss, there are some that were very strong and others that I found myself skipping. I did find it interesting that not all the stories were told from a human/person perspective, for example there was a story of a Wampa and a Tauntaun. I recommend reading the ones that interest you and not feel guilty about skipping some of the others.

Forever grateful for putting this book up on netgalley.

* I received an e-ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review via netgalley

Sadly didn’t download properly and now archived so can’t review, sorry , my fault , will definitely be buying though

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This would be a great read for any Star Wars fan and is full of creative takes on the Empire Strikes Back. The stories in this collection all use the film as their basis but take things from a different point of view. It's another fascinating experiment and is fun to get through.

As with all collections, some of the stories are more successful than others. However, it is always interesting to see a story you're so familiar with taken from a different angle. If you're willing to open your mind and detach yourself from the films a little, this is a fun reading experience.

I thought that this new edition of From a Certain Point of View was fine. Some of the stories were entertaining, but overall they did not have much new to say or any interesting viewpoints on Star Wars. It was still fun to read.

This is a must-read anthology for Star Wars fans. We are doing a rewatch of the feature films (including the Star Wars stories) and I read this book before I rewatched Empire. I knew what to expect because I read the previous volume on A New Hope, so I expected to read POVs from creatures and favourite characters but the space slug! Unexpected and so beautiful.

Some of the stories were great, and heartbreaking and beautiful. Some were really good and some I skipped--I really am not into the bounty hunter stories and there were quite a few in this volume. Though the Bossk one was oddly touching.

My favorites were:
Disturbance by Mike Chen--an insight into Palpatine and the heart of Darth Vader, pre-redemption.
She Will Keep Them Warm by Delilah S. Dawson, about the brave Tauntaun who helped to rescue Luke
There is Always Another by Mackenzi Lee--a fed-up but also tender Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Force spirit.
Right-Hand Man by Lydia Kang--the medical droid that attaches Luke's prosthetic hand is a philosopher, of course.

And my favourite:

This Is No Cave‎ by Catherynne M. Valente from the point of view of the silicon-based exogorth--otherwise known as the "Space Slug". I'm still shaking my head at the fact that this story brought me to tears.

I will definitely be rereading this volume (and reading it to my son! I've already told him Mark Oshiro's story about the Wampa, "Hunger", twice!).

This Star Wars short story collection has some of my favourite SFF authors. I love all the Star Wars stories and this book is no exception. The good thing about short stories is if you don’t particularly like one of them, you can move on.

I hope they release more of these collections in the future.

Another fascinating collection of short stories exploring the world of stars wars through the eyes of background characters. Some of my favorites in the collection were A Naturalist on Hoth by Hank Green, Amara Kel's Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably) by Django Wexler, This is No Cave by Catherynne M. Valente, STET! by Daniel Jose Older, and But What Does He Eat by S. A. Chakraborty, but every story is a wonderful deep dive into the stories happening offscreen during The Empire Strikes Back.

Any short story collection is a mixed bag, and the mixture in this collection tends toward the “meh.” You can only read so many stories about the evacuation of Echo Base, Vader force-choking an incompetent, or the chaos caused by Lando’s announcement that the Empire has taken over Cloud City before they all start blending together.

To me, the more memorable stories focused on what main characters were doing/thinking when off-camera. Perhaps some of the ones from the “everyman”/”everystormtrooper” point of view would have stood out if there hadn’t been so many of them (and let’s not forget the compulsive need to check the “woke” box by having all 3 or 4 instances of (non-explicit) sex/romance be LGBTQ). Overall, if you’re a big Star Wars fan, you may enjoy this collection, but (as with many thematic anthologies) you should only read a story or two at a time to keep the “didn’t I just read this?” feeling at bay.

There were a lot of stories, some good and some not so good. I enjoyed the concept and it introduced me to a lot of authors who I know I will like their other works. Definitely recommend to any Star Wars fan.

Great contributions all around with standout stories from multiple authors such as Zoraida Córdova. I would recommend this book to any Star Wars enthusiast.

From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back which is a series of Star Wars short stories set during The Empire Strikes Back but told from the perspective of background and side characters. Most of the stories I liked. However, I feel like there was too much focus on Hoth and Cloud City. There was also more focus on characters that show up in other Star Wars media that I'm not familiar with which in turn caused me to not know what was going on in some stories. Great for fans of Star Wars and those who like to see different takes on beloved stories and franchises.

Another 40 stories from the perspective of minor characters, again marking 40 years since a Star Wars film's release. But this Empire volume faces problems the New Hope book didn't. Most obviously, the locations; where that had the Mos Eisley cantina, with its "everybody comes to Rick's" antecedents, the second film's main locations are a hidden base on an ice-world, an asteroid field, a deserted bog-planet...none of them exactly ideal for passing trade, at least not until you get to Cloud City. Intersecting with that, a decent variety of stories fitting this brief will necessarily involves a certain amount of humanising the unseen functionaries and faceless soldiers of the Empire – and in the three years between books, there's been a rise in ACAB and related sentiment which, for all that it's understandable, seems to have left an awful lot of the writers here, especially early on, intent on writing stories from the perspective of the good guys. Meaning the first phase of the collection is a real slog, with story after story about various mostly interchangeable Rebel spear-carriers, all freely spiced with the same supposedly inspiring lines about how important hope and the little people are to a revolution. All of which was done so much better and more economically in Rogue One, something only emphasised by the frequent references to that film – which never do as well at webbing the film more fully into continuity as Kieron Gillen's run on the Star Wars comic, instead serving mainly to remind the reader of the extent to which they're plodding through superfluous retreads. Yes, there's some amusement to be derived from the idea that everyone on the base knows Han and Leia are into each other before they do themselves, but even that isn't a patch on how what felt like a third of the stories in the first volume found one excuse or another to mention Han shooting first. But otherwise...the writers seem so desperate to avoid humanising the Imperials that they would rather give the tauntauns and wampa beast a level of sentience which makes the Rebellion seem barely preferable (though the former story, by Delilah S Dawson, almost excuses itself simply for the delightful line about "squeaking taunlets"). Still, at least they bring variety. You could happily lose most of the Rebel stories, especially Gary Whitta's in which the young Leia gets a leaden speech that would be much more at home in the Abrams films. Keep RF Kuang's Against All Odds, whose gunner serves as a lens on the real horror of life under Imperial rule*; the rebel too inept for most duties who still saves the day all the same in CB Lee's A Good Kiss, because that best encapsulates the theme that even the smallest serve; and Hank Green's A Naturalist On Hoth**, which does exactly what it says on the tin, and as such fulfills the book's brief of providing a genuinely interesting new perspective (I particularly enjoyed the naturalist's position on the Force: "I've never felt it, but I can see all of the folds and crevices where it must hide"). Use some of the slots saved to tell the story from the perspective of a snowtrooper, an AT-AT pilot. These needn't be versions that make them the hero, of course not; you can show a dupe, a monster or a pawn, or even someone realising their mistake too late, as when Charles Yu gives us the dying thoughts of force-choked Admiral Ozzel. Hell, even the bathos of the line about "Vader's not-so-great track record as a manager of people" has its place.

Once we're off Hoth, thank goodness, the book livens up no end. There are still morals to be found, of course there are, but the diet is varied with bounty hunters, villains and more. Seth Dickinson, being Seth Dickinson, obviously opts for an Imperial protagonist who deep down is wondering whether the devil's bargain was worth it: "In the end, the Empire would not be about tactics and procedures and logic, it would be about the empty cruelty of men like Vader. It would be fear for fear's sake, power without purpose, symbol without meaning, nothingness, nonsense...There is no restraint or principle at the center of the New Order. And that is why people admire it. the Empire does all the things that people secretly believe should be done with power." Somewhat lighter is Django Wexler's story, told as a guide for new TIE pilots by Howlrunner's girlfriend Amara Kel, explaining how readily 'cloudflies' die by crashing into shit or trying to be heroes – "There aren't that many rebels, but there's a whole galaxy full of stuff to smash into." And just as one of the most memorable stories in the first volume was from a writer I already like, Nnedi Okorafor, taking the unexpected viewpoint of the trash-compactor monster, so here Cat Valente excels with a story of the epic life of the bloody great monster in the asteroid belt, existing on a scale against which the rise and fall of empires barely registers – yet still touched by the events of the film. This was one of many times when I was aware that my knowledge of the expanded universes old and new is patchy, so in many cases I can't say how much of these writers' work is pure invention and how much is working from elements already established in canon; other examples range from the poetic (Wookiee spaceships being crafted from wood in a manner recalling Dan Simmons' Templars) to in-jokes (bounty hunter Bossk's native language is called Dosh). One nod I did recognise, and love, was when Cavan Scott, not a writer I generally think of as audacious, brings back Jaxxon the giant rabbit from the old comics – and then compounds it by giving him a backstory crossover with Black Krrsantan from Doctor Aphra. By that point the film, and thus the spine from which all the stories hang, has reached Bespin, where once again the book does start to contract somewhat – Lando's announcement that everyone should evacuate came to feel like an old, familiar friend as it threaded through so many of these pieces. And I remain less than wholly convinced that Cloud City needed a knock-off Emperor Norton. But by that point there'd been so much good stuff along the way, from Obi-Wan's Force ghost wearily realising that even death is no escape from having to deal with Skywalker drama, to a terribly poignant piece following L3 and the other mechanical sentiences inside the Millennium Falcon (and until reading this, I totally hadn't registered how the plot of Solo tied back to C-3PO's Empire line about how the ship "has the most peculiar dialect"). Curiously, those mismatched machine minds, despite being in prime Murderbot territory, are not the Martha Wells story, but are adjacent to it – she opts for Ugnaughts instead. It all wraps up with another outright piss-take of a check-in on the Whills, where I'm not nearly versed enough in the lore to get the big joke, but can still enjoy enough of the little ones along the way (especially the ones confirming the Holiday Special as canon). So yeah, on the whole I'm glad I read it, I just wish I'd been a little more steely about skimming Hoth.

*Inevitably, his memories of ubiquitous surveillance and deliberate cruelty grinding people down "to believe that all you can hope for, all you are allowed, is to scrape by from day to day solely for the prospect of swallowing down the next ration of clumpy, gray gruel" double neatly as a summary of my expectations for 2020s Britain.
**Which in turn suggests the extremely short story A Naturist On Hoth.

(Netgalley ARC)

A fantastic follow up to the original ‘From A Certain Point Of View’, this collection tells some of the events in The Empire Strikes Back from the perspectives of several of the minor or unknown characters. Admiral Ozzel makes an appearance, reminiscing about things in his life as he is slowly murdered by Darth Vader. Yoda gives us his view on Luke Skywalker from his home on Dagobah. Obi Wan Kenobi expresses his frustration and despair about forever being linked with the Skywalker family and their legacy. Even several of the creatures in the film get their own chapters, telling events from their point of view and thoughts. My only problem with the book is that once again, like it’s predecessor, it focuses on certain events a little TOO much, concentrating on one certain event while bypassing and ignoring others that could have been written about. But this minor quibble aside, I recommend this book t9 fans and non-fans alike. There’s so much to enjoy here and I can’t wait for the next volume.

I picked up this book because I love short story collections and I love Star Wars. Plus, the authors in this collection include some of my absolute favorites!

Even knowing that the Empire Strikes Back can get boring and drag on at times, I was still surprised at how much as I had to push through the initial 1/3 of the book (Hoth). There are just some things you can't make exciting.

That being said, there were some amazing short stories in this collection. I love seeing the background characters get some recognition. It was fun to try and figure out where these characters exist in the actual movie. And there were short stories about characters/creatures that I would never have thought to write a short story about. I did not come across a single short story that I hated, which is hard to do in a collection. And there were quite a few I really enjoyed!

If you're a star wars fan I highly suggest you read this.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc. All opinions are my own.

This volume of short stories marks the 40th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back and it makes for an interesting tribute. I suspect the target audience is the Star Wars aficionado, rather than the casual fan with little knowledge of the wider universe.

Each tale offers a different perspective on the events of the film, such as Rebel fighters on Hoth, captive tauntauns, medical droids or characters from the film. Some are dynamic and vibrant stories, some are just the thought process of a force ghost that or a someone's inner monologue which struggles to qualify as a proper narrative.

It's a long volume, at over 500 words. I definitely felt that it could have been a lot more selective. I can only read so many stories in a row about people escaping Hoth or Cloud City, all of them explicitly meditating on the same themes of hope and heroism.

Highlights for me included the opening two stories, Eyes of the Empire and Hunger, plus This is No Cave, which is truly heartbreaking.

Full review available on my blog (link below).

From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back is a collection of 40 short stories commissioned for the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back's memorable debut long long ago. It’s a second such venture, after a collection of stories centered around New Hope met with fans’ enthusiasm and quite solid approval – and we all know what a rowdy and unruly and spoiled bunch SW fans usually are 😉.

I haven’t read the first collection, but buoyed by the fond recollections of the Anderson’s anthology Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and seeing as The Empire Strikes Back remains my favorite SW movie of all times (not that it had any real competition recently), I decided to give this one a chance. There is a solid representation from well-known authors, such as Martha Wells and Django Wexler to Seth Dickinson, Catherynne M. Valente and S.A. Chakraborty, as well as a whole slew of authors completely new to me. This collection, apart from the strong nostalgia factor and a big dose of curiosity topped by healthy mistrust of anything SW-Disney 😉, represented a chance for me to check out some new names and their writing chops.

However, as simple listing of the authors and their stories’ titles has taken me nearly 300 words, I decided to review them in a slightly different than usual mode: as with short stories collections, I will give each story a rating – but this time, I will endeavor to describe every story in 5 words or more (well, usually more, as you’ll see).

Kiersten White, Eyes of the Empire 6/10
Eye-opening Moment for an Empire Drudge
Mark Oshiro, Hunger 3/10
Wampa’s Food Has a Saber!
Emily Skrutskie, Ion Control 7/10
All Bets Are Off on Han-Leia Romance
C.B. Lee, A Good Kiss 3/10
Everyone Can Be A Hero, aka Not This Again
[...]
Tom Angleberger, The Whills Strike Back 10/10
Very Short, Very Funny!

A few final thoughts on this collection. First of all, the idea of amassing 40 stories for the 40th anniversary, while theoretically pleasing, in this case clearly backfired; a few really solid, highly entertaining and even thought-provoking entries are simply drowning in the sea of mediocrity. Less is more! And it also pertains to the problems with understanding the concept of a short story as opposed to novella, and in some cases results in serious structural issues: some of these stories practically beg to be more fleshed out as we get only a bare-boned sketch of a novella.
[...]
That said, there are a few very good, well plotted and enjoyable stories, adding to the lore in unexpected, welcome ways. The ultimate stand-outs for me were Dickinson’s The Final Order, a perfectly structured and executed short story packing more suspense into its few pages than the all the rest of the collection, and Angleberger’s The Whills Strike Back, which was sly, self-aware and tongue-in-the-cheek funny. So, as usual with anthologies, From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back is a mixed bag of treats and tricks –the majority of the stories is utterly forgettable, but there are some that will stand the test of time. Pick up the good ones if you can!

Written truly for the Star Wars fans, this book was one had to have & was SO thrilled I was approved for thanks to NetGalley & Random House! My teen has been a Star Wars fanatic since birth, and it just grows as he gets older, so it is a true treasure when I get asked to read and review something I also get to share with him!

With all short story collections, there is something for everyone and a wide variety of styles. Some stories we absolutely loved, others were just okay but overall it is a great read for any fan who loves a good behind the scenes from the plotlines we already know and love. I like to consider these as samplers to discover new bits and pieces of the authors, and who I NEED to read more from. I'm a total sucker for the stories that dive into unknown characters and their side of this incredible journey!

Some of our favorites? A Good Kiss by C.B. Lee / Rogue Two by Gary Whitta / Wait for It by Zoraida Córdova

Thank you for letting me add this treasure to my collection, it's truly something special to be a part of the Star Wars fanbase and celebrate 40 years of The Empire Strikes Back!