Star Wars Millennium Falcon Manual [Hardcover]

In what may seem like deja vu the creative team of writer author Ryder Windham and artists Chris Trevas and Chris Reiff are back in the cockpit for another book exploring the inner workings of the most famous starship ever, the Millennium Falcon.

In September of 2010 this trio brought us the Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: A 3-D Owner's Guide, which was a really fun book put together by Becker & Mayer Books. The 3-D Owner's Guide was an over-sized heavy cardboard book that featured a layered cut-away of the Millennium Falcon, each page contained a "slice" of the ship showing certain systems and surrounding the cut away was text and images associated with the systems discussed. That book was designed for ages 8 and up, so as cool as it was it was designed for a younger audience and at 22 pages there was only so much information that could be included.

Random House Publishing's Del Rey imprint has taken a similar idea and put a new spin on it that gives a book that is both visually appealing for younger audiences and is detail rich for the more discerning nerd. Partnering with renowned automotive repair manual publisher Haynes, the Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: Owner's Workshop Manual is 125 pages of geek fun.

The book is crammed full of images from the films, production photos, and illustrations. While this full color book doesn't look like most Haynes manuals I have seen on the inside, the concept itself works to make the marketing gimmick make sense. If you have used a Haynes manual in the past, this book is of a better quality. It comes with a glossy hardcover and the internal pages are printed on a nice sturdy paper stock.

The only production issue that I have with this book, is the binding which causes you to loose some of the content into the hinge of the book. This problem is greatest on pages 36-39. Pages 36-37 feature a cutaway of the ship spread across two pages and pages 38-39 feature a two page floor plan of the ship, the problem is that both images are bisected by the binding. This would have been potentially solved by either having a fold out insert page at this point in the book, or tweaking how the image was laid out on the pages.

The book contains a ton of information, already released in the United Kingdom, here is the table of contents which is broken down into nine sections. (1) The History of Corellian Engineering & The YT-Series, (2) The Millennium Falcon, (3) Piloting a YT-1300, (4) YT-1300 Propulsion, (5) Weapons & Defensive Systems, (6) YT-1300 Engineering Systems, (7) YT-1300 Sensors, (8) Crew Facilities, (9) Size Comparison Chart.

This book gives you a ton of back story on Corellian Engineering, the YT series in general and the special modifications that Han Solo had made to the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. While it may not be a must buy for all Star Wars fans, if you are interested in spacecraft, design, art, or simply learning more about the Millennium Falcon, this is a book you will not want to miss.

If this book doesn't make you want to build your own Millennium Falcon, then I am not sure what will.

The Haynes Star Wars: Millennium Falcon: Owner's Workshop Manual will be released on January 31st, 2012 and has a MSRP of $28.00.

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The title is somewhat misleading as this owner's manual focuses on the Corellian Engineering Corporation's YT-1300 series with the legendary Millennium Falcon being the most famous (the Emperor says infamous) vessel having a major chapter. Besides the brief history of the corporation, the manual goes into depth with diagrams on the various YT-1300 models, a deep look at systems (piloting, propulsion, etc.), controls, weapons, crew facility and other floor plans, and other operations. There is also a section devoted to the modified Millennium Falcon operated by wanted preferably dead smugglers Han Solo a former Imperial pilot and Chewbacca the Wookie.

This is a great fun manual. Ryder Wyndham (see A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker) provides a well written text filled with fascinating details about the model while the photographs and art are incredible as the two Chris' show their talent and knowledge of Star Wars. Fans of the saga especially the original three New Hope movies will appreciate this entertaining entry as we will feel we are on board and even driving an YT-1300 vessel. Finally unlike politicians who insist ads by their attack Super PAC pals were not approved by them, this super packed manual is approved by Lucasbooks and a reader can see why.

Harriet Klausner

This is a great book, very well put together and very well researched. THe only problem I have with this book is that there is a great isometric drawing of the Millenium Falcon spread over two pages and some of the detail in the center gets lost. They should have done what we did in our book, the Jupiter 2 Technical guide, which was to provide fold out pages so that some of the detail doesn't get lost. They didn't provide any explaination over the discrepancy of the access to the quad laser turrets in the actual interior sets that were built that didn't show the little corridor that they depicted in their book in the movies. Oh well. It was a great book. They also could have included some more scenes of the interiors, either by way of photos or 3d rendering. But a great book overall.

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