Of all the Star Wars books (excluding graphic novels) I own, this one is perhaps the one I like the most. It truly is an Expanded Universe book that goes heavily into the Star Wars back story. It covers all the main planets (Tatooine, Hoth, Endor, etc.) from the original trilogy and has beautiful pictures that you can't see anywhere else that I know of. Along with the amazing images, a fictional author writes some kind of report on the planet and its environment that is detailed and surprisingly, makes the place come alive. I'm not sure how easy it is to track this book down nowadays, but it is one of the best ones a Star Wars fan can own.

A welcome surprise 4.5 Stars

Initially I took this for just another Star Wars artbook, but I was happily surprised by this Illustrated guide. Written as an 'In Universe' guidebook it gives various accounts of explorers, chroniclers, anthropologist and diplomats as they give their account of several well-known Star Wars planets. Among them were Tatooine, Coruscant, Dagobah, Hoth, Endor, Bespin, Yavin and Alderaan. Additionally fans of the expanded universe will notice a few hints to the larger Star Wars universe.

The real kicker however is the accompanying artwork of Artist Ralph McQuarrie, made famous by his contributions on the design and visual style of the Original three Star Wars movies. His work is just absolutely gorgeous and well depicted in multiple large scale, full colour pictures.

Summarized: Ralph McQuarrie with stunning art and cool Star Wars detail not easily found anywhere else.

Is it wrong to long for a fictional world so much it makes you want to cry? I'll admit, this book did that to me (especially Alderaan, sob.) Anderson's prose and Ralph McQuarrie's paintings brought the planets featured in the original trilogy to life in glorious, sumptuous detail. It's literal worldbuilding and I loved it.

This book, the "Illustrated Star Wars Universe", is one of the most beautiful books I have ever had the pleasure to read. It is full of pictures of different aspects of several of the important worlds in the Star Wars universe - such as Hoth, Coruscant, Tatooine, Alderaan, Endor - that, when complemented by the text, make this an easily readable and pleasant book.

The text that accompanies the artwork is top-notch in most cases. Although Kevin J.Anderson's work is considered to be of mixed quality by many Star Wars fans, in this book he does an excellent job of writing each planet's account "in-universe", from the perspective of different indviduals (such as a former poet and political activist from Alderaan, a rebel engineer on Hoth, and so forth).

The only weakness in this book is the description of Alderaan. It is described as a world largely composed of flowing grasslands with small seas, contradicting the blue image seen in the movies. This has a relatively harmless origin, dating back to a picture of Yavin 4 misplaced as a photo of Alderaan, and expanded upon in this text.

Regardless of the above, this is an excellent purchase choice for anyone interested in the Star Wars universe, or even just in some beautiful Star Wars artwork.

This book is great.

Very thorough exploration of the various planets and species in Star Wars filled with wonderful illustrations.

really liked it, surprised there were more pages than goodreads said, really submerges you into the realm of the star wars universe.

The blurb nailed it; this is a must have for Star Wars fans.

Not a reference book so much as an experiment in short fiction. Reams of Ralph McQuarrie concept art are recontextualized to serve as the springboard for fictive writings in a variety of genres: the Dagobah chapter is the diary of a scientist on a doomed research expedition to that treacherously damp planet, the delightfully satirical Coruscant chapter reads like a travel brochure offering biased information with a definite pro-Imperial slant for offworld tourists, and so on.

In 1995, when this book was released, there were no new Star Wars movies on the horizon, and so Lucasfilm had to get crafty if they wanted to push out a little profit. These McQuarrie paintings were not new by any means (most of them must have been around twenty years old) but I don't chalk up their reproduction in this book as crass commercialism since the book is of such a good, large-format quality, and since they share the page with inventive new writing of a legitimately good quality.

If you must own a Star Wars book, this is a great one.

Good book. The illustrations are beautiful and it is very well written. Great read for science fiction and star wars fans.

Okay so what do you do while you wait for your computer to repair itself - in my case grab a book and read.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while now - yes this is one of those titles I picked up over the years as it was going cheap but never really got round to reading it (its scary how many books I own that fall in to that category) Anyway having seen references to the book - but with a different cover - I thought I should give it a go.

Now one of the reluctancies for reading this is that there are SO many Star Wars books out there and only so much original material. When that runs out (or I wonder if the author cannot think of anything more and the publisher cannot afford any more) they start to recycle. This may come in the form of artwork, or storylines or even characters.

And this is where I start to lose interest - I think its not limited to star wars at all just that the sheer numbers draw attention to it. After all Ralph McQuarrie only did so many pieces - you are bound to find some repetition.

But not here - which I will admit surprised me. The book focuses on 8 of the most famous worlds from the original trilogy. You have here reused concept work along with brand new pieces. Although you can quickly guess which piece comes from where you dont really mind as they do work very well together. The text also is interesting and holds your interest.

Now with the ever increasing number of films being realised there is a constant stream of new information and I guess this book needs to be updated otherwise it will become quickly outdated (for example there is a chapter on Bespin the Cloud City. Now we are soon to see the Han Solo standalone film and I am sure Bespin will feature in it at some point but who knows).

However as a piece of sheer nostalgia its great (it even has that old book smell to it when you open the pages, how satisfying is that).

good book about star wars.