New Star Wars Books Lead Up To The Force Awakens

It’s been a long time since ‘Return of the Jedi’… but the thirty-two-year- gap between ‘The Force Awakens’ and its predecessor will be filled with a slew of new books.

According to Entertainment Weekly, at least 20 new ‘Star Wars’ books will be available this autumn… and they’ll fill the gap between ‘Return of the Jedi’ and ‘Star Wars VII’.

“At least 20 new books—from novels for adults and teens to storybooks and stickerbooks for younger kids—will be released this fall to fill the gap between 1983’s Return of the Jedi and this December’s The Force Awakens,” they revealed.

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“Those hoping to find out what Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo have been up to for the past three decades will find it first on the page, with Disney Worldwide Publishing and Lucasfilm Press confirming that the titles will be filled with Easter eggs foreshadowing events in J.J. Abrams’ Dec. 18 movie.”

Of course, the promise of ‘Star Wars VII’ Easter Eggs is enough to get even the most casual ‘Star Wars’ fan hooked already… but what can we expect?

“It’s a way to introduce the heroes and villains of that original trilogy to a new audience that might not be as familiar as the audience that went and saw the films when they first came out,” said Executive VP of Disney International Publishing, Andrew Sugerman.

Obviously, these aren’t the first ‘Star Wars’ books we’ve ever seen… but after Disney took over the galaxy far, far away, it’s a welcome addition to the new canon. After all, the much-loved Expanded Universe has already been stricken from the records.

But these new books will be a part of Disney’s new story… and might even fill in the blanks between the original and sequel trilogy.

But one big question remains – what will we learn about ‘Star Wars VII’?

“The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily, heavily guarded storyline. To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program,” he said. “The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces. Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: What could a location mean, or what could a character mean?”

It certainly sounds as though we’re going to get a lot of connecting material before ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ debuts at the end of the year.

“Cecil Castellucci (author of Tin Star) will write Moving Target, an adventure following Princess Leia; Jason Fry, who earlier wrote Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, will be the author of The Weapon of a Jedi, about Luke Skywalker; Claudia Gray, author of the Evernight series of fantasy books, will write a book titled Lost Stars; and Greg Rucka, a comic book scribe and writer of the Atticus Kodiak novels, will pen Smuggler’s Run, a Han Solo tale.”

But will we get any hints towards the events of ‘Star Wars VII’? For now, we’ll have to wait and see.

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ heads to cinemas on 18 December 2015.

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Picture Credit: Lucasfilm