The Illustrated Star Wars Universe is written like a travel journal, with beautiful concept paintings from Ralph McQuarrie.

Eight planets are featured, namely Tatooine, Coruscant, Dagobah, Hoth, Endor, Bespin, Yavin and Alderaan.

Each journal entry is written from the perspective of a Star Wars character. It's a nice touch providing that on-the-ground feeling. They talk about the inhabitant's culture, way of life, traditions, planet's climate and creatures. There are interesting stories sometimes, for example in the paragraph below, which is supposedly written by Senior Anthropologist Hoole:

Tuskens make no distinction between males and females, and only the clan elders keep records of the sexes, so that they can arrange marriages. (As one can imagine, some rather embarrassing mistakes have been made, unfortunately.)

Much of the art work has appeared on other Star Wars books, notably the "art of" series. So there's really nothing much new here except for the writeup.

This book is for the must-know-it-all Star Wars fan, or as the book says, the true collector.

Thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn