I picked up a Star Wars book after a long time. This is the first book of the Dark Nest Trilogy, set after the completion of The New Jedi Order series.

A new species is starting to colonize the Galaxy, near the borders of Chiss space – a species with a collective mind. A collective mind that can influence and absorb the will of some Jedi. As the younger Jedi Knights of the New Jedi Order go and answer the Colony’s call, the elders – Luke, Mara, Han and Leia rush to their side in the interest of preventing war and restoring sanity.

Although the book starts off a tad slowly, the plot gets really interesting; and had me totally absorbed. A number of subplots, including one where R2D2 is trying to hide something from Luke make the story really interesting. What I like most about Star Wars books is the ever greater challenges that the authors come up with for the Jedi – and that the solutions to these are always complex and never black and white. Let me stop before I give away the plot.

In fact, I’d always like to remember how I read this book – I finished it off by sitting in a coffee shop (Gloria Jean’s at Raffles City Tower) for three and a half hours with a blueberry cheesecake and a cup of coffee. Something I hadn’t done in a long time – sipped caffeine and got myself a sugar high while being totally absorbed in a galaxy far, far away and reminding myself what I often forget – reality is overrated.

Oh, and Star Wars fans of extended universe fiction can rejoice – although this book is the first in a trilogy, it actually has a reasonably decent ending and a conclusion, though of course there are enough loose threads. Some Star Wars trilogies are notable for ending bang in the middle of a sentence. I’m looking forward to reading the other two books.

Rating: 4 / 5

If only we could hear a slightly modified version… “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve Rebel scum…”

…according to the BBC.

“If you sell me off I shall become more expensive than you can possibly imagine.”

(Click for larger image)

To me, the best part about the exhibition was the artwork. On display were dozens of pencil sketches and colour paintings which conceptualized the characters and places in the movies, much before the movies were filmed. One could see the character of the galaxy come alive in these depictions. One of my favourites is below, you can see more here.

Then, of course, there were ships, items and characters from Star Wars depicted as models. One of the best was a very imposing model of an Imperial Star Destroyer.

At the end of the day, there was a lot of tempting stuff to buy, but it turns out that we’ve become old enough to resist the power of the dark side. We couldn’t however, resist the opportunity to play with the ultimate Star Wars collectible – the Force FX lightsaber. Here’s Ravi a.k.a. Mace Windu.

You can browse through all the photos on my Flickr photoset.