Book Review: The Wildlife of Star Wars

February 9, 2010 by Parka

Although you may not feel it from the cover art, this hardcover is actually texture-pressed with scale patterns from a creature I can't identify. It's a nice touch — pun intended.

This is a field guide to the wildlife from the Star Wars planets. It's organised by planets and the included ones are Tatooine, Hoth, Dagobah, Naboo, Bespin, Endor, Yavin 4 and Coruscant. There's a short introduction describing each ecosystem — fiery, freezing, vaporous, etc.

The illustrations are actually sketches drawn with pencils and colour markers, supposedly by a zoologist in the field, but is actually from Terryl Whitlatch. They are all wonderfully detailed showing the creatures in their natural habitat, be it hunting, caring for their young, chilling out, or — gasp! — on sale at some market on Coruscant. The attention to skin textures is very nice. You can almost get a feel just by looking. Beautiful colours also.

Besides the paintings are field notes filling in on information like feeding patterns, mating habits, herding instincts and defensive mechanisms of these fascinating beings.

I didn't know that the giant space slug is really that huge at 900 metres until I looked up the size of a blue whale for comparison, which is 33 metres. The space slugs gets nutrients from asteroids and you can see how the intestines work. Some of the designs you'll see are inspired by Earth animals. The Opee Sea Killer has characteristics from lobster (shell), frog (long sticky tongue), anglerfish (that glowing forehead tip) and the arowana (breeding little dudes in the mouth).

Some of the designs might look a bit far fetch but hey, this is Star Wars, this is science fiction. I guess anything goes but many are believable for the most part, in art and concept.

This is a very good book for all fans of Star Wars and animal art.

How I wish Avatar had a book like this.

Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more art books for review.

Country-specific Amazon links for this book:
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