This is a great Star Wars book, but after waiting several years for it, my expectations of it grew huge, hence the 4-star rating.
This book is being released now pretty much to bring all the new Star Wars readers who are starting with the New Jedi Order series up to speed on all the Bantam books and comics, and it does a very good job. Although it does focus just a little too heavily on the movies, that's come to be expected.
But where this book really comes in handy to Star Wars fanatics like me is the little between-the-scenes stuff, filling in details about what was happening politically and in the big picture between the books.
This book is also filled with a bunch of incredible (and a few not-so-incredible) illustrations by Bill Hughes. These illustrate key scenes and characters which we haven't seen before. What this book does not try to do is fill in what was happening day by day like so many online timelines, rather it sticks to a history-textbook like feel so that we get the "whole picture" instead of a bunch of little unrelated incidents.
Also, this is good because Kevin Anderson's writing style and Wallace's previous writing experience are more suited to this. While Anderson's SW novels seemed condescending at times because he made everything too obvious, here that's the point.
I definitely recommend this book to any star wars fan, new or old.
