SF/F Anthology Review: Canto Bight (Star Wars) by Saladin Ahmed, Mira Grant, Rae Carson & John Jackson Miller https://t.co/dRWMKIgZbx Short Review: 6.5 out of 10 (1/3)— garik16 (@garik16) January 5, 2018
Short Review (cont): A collection of four novellas taking place in The Last Jedi's casino world, Canto Bight, has 2 good to very good stories and two stories that are simply eh. On average it's fun, but doesn't make as much use of Star Wars as it feels like it should (2/3)— garik16 (@garik16) January 5, 2018
Canto Bight is another anthology released as part of "Journey to The Last Jedi" series of Star Wars books, although unlike the other books in the series (such as "The Legends of Luke Skywalker"), it was released basically around the same time as the film. It's an anthology of four novellas all set in the casino city/planet featured in a small part of The Last Jedi - the titular Canto Bight, with each of the four novellas written by a decently well known SciFi/Fantasy author.
As with many anthologies, the stories are hit or miss. Of course since there are only four novellas in this whole anthology, the fact that half of the stories are kind of "misses" is a bigger problem than it would be in a wider anthology (such as From a Certain Point of View). If you're looking for a new Star Wars work to start with in the Star Wars canon, this isn't where I would begin. But if you've run out of other Star Wars works, the Canto Bight anthology is kind of fine.
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In Rules of the Game by Saladin Ahmed, a naive tourist comes to Canto Bight and winds up, while getting conned by every con artist in town, getting caught up in an assassination plot against a local police agent.
In The Wine in Dreams by Mira Grant, Derla Pidys, a Sommelier known across the galaxy, comes to Canto Bight to buy a legendary bottom of wine from the mysterious Grammus sisters, who claim to be from a different dimension. But Derla is not the only being seeking the famous wine and others might kill for a taste....
In Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing by Rae Carson, an alien masseuse known as the best on Canto Bight has his adopted human daughter, an indentured girl working the kidnapped by the most connected mobster on Canto Bight, forcing him to use skills he has once forsworn as he take desperate measures in order to save her life.
In The Ride by John Jackson Miller, a professional gambler is forced to come up with a fortune in money within the span of 24 hours, only to find himself following a trio of the most moronic gamblers of all time....with an incredibly lucky streak.
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Two of these stories are excellent. Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire)'s story is an excellent tale of a con using the Star Wars universe and I'd really enjoy seeing the main drivers of the story, the Grammus sisters, in future stories. Rae Carson's story is probably the best of the four stories, as it feels the most like a Star Wars story, integrating parts of Canto Bight that we see in The Last Jedi with the story of an alien being trying to save his adopted human girl, interacting with gangsters and arms dealers who are operating within the bounds of the Star Wars universe.
That said, when doing an anthology in another creator's universe - such as Star Wars - one of the major rules for the writer should be simple: Your story should depend upon that setting. If the story could work perfectly well outside of the Star Wars universe, it's kind of pointless. That's kind of the problem with two of the stories. The Rules of the Game could be set in like 1930s Atlantic City or Las Vegas.
And The Ride could be set in any casino city in any setting, and has a bizarrely pro-gambling for fun message. No seriously, the story could be best seen as having a message of "Don't professionally gamble or use a mathematical system to gamble, but rely on luck and just have fun gambling!" It's.....odd.
The later stories in the book (Hear Nothing and The Ride) refer to characters in the prior stories, although you could read these novellas in any order. And I did really like Hear Nothing. But overall, there's a lot of meh in this book. I suspect part of the problem is that we don't really spend enough time in The Last Jedi - unlike say the Mos Eisley Cantina - and see so many damn creatures that there isn't really any interest in the reader learning anything about those characters. Whereas the old Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina made it clear which cameo-ed alien was the topic of each story, I'd have no clue which aliens in the movie are being shown here. So it's just a Star Wars setting that never leaves a single planet, which is not really ideal for showing off the Star Wars universe.
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