20 Books Along the ‘Journey to The Force Awakens’ (UPDATED)

EW.com had the exclusive reveal this morning about the upcoming plans for the lead-up to The Force Awakens, which will consist of at least 20 books, including YA novels, adult novels, stickerbooks, comics, and more. While they won’t be filling in every gap in the post-Return of the Jedi era (thankfully), they’ll be your chance to start getting hints on where this new era of storytelling just might go.

Del Rey’s only officially announced adult novel is Star Wars: Aftermath, which has no author attached or any hint on it’s placement in the timeline. It’s a slightly ominous title to say the least and will probably make up for it’s generic title with exciting content fans have been chomping at the bit for since the EU reboot. No word on the novelization yet, though. Update: Aftermath has a release date of September 4th and a mostly vague blurb, but it’s definitely set not too long after RotJ:

The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor and his powerful enforcer, Darth Vader, are rumored to be dead. The Galactic Empire is in chaos.
Across the galaxy, some systems celebrate, while in others Imperial factions tighten their grip. Optimism and fear reign side by side.
And while the Rebel Alliance engages the fractured forces of the Empire, a lone Rebel scout uncovers a secret Imperial meeting…

In the YA category are the previously uncovered books following main characters from the original trilogy and one likely introducing new characters:

Cecil Castellucci (author of Tin Star) will write Moving Target, an adventure following Princess Leia; Jason Fry, who earlier wrote Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, will be the author of The Weapon of a Jedi, about Luke Skywalker; Claudia Gray, author of the Evernightseries of fantasy books, will write a book titled Lost Stars; and Greg Rucka, a comic book scribe and writer of the Atticus Kodiak novels, will pen Smuggler’s Run, a Han Solo tale.

I’ve not heard of any of the new authors, but at least Jason Fry is recognizable and a solid author on the list. He’s currently also writing the Servants of the Empire tie-in series to Star Wars Rebels.

UPDATE 2: The synopses for the above YA novels have been uncovered by Florian. Luke and Han’s novels will take place in the currently crowded timeframe between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, while Leia’s will fall between ESB and RotJ. Lost Stars will introduce us to two new characters, Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell, who have fallen in love and on the opposite sides of conflict between the Empire and the Rebels. Their book is the only one to have a portion of the story take place post-RotJ, but they are all guaranteed to be hiding hints and clues for TFA.

Marvel has at least two TFA tie-ins, one titled (rather obviously) Journey to the Force Awakens and another preview story told explicitly from C-3PO’s point of view. I’m actually really looking forward to reading the latter, for some odd reason I can’t explain. And last but not least, of course there’ll be storybooks, stickerbooks, and the like to fill out the rest of the promised 20 books.

But there was a big lack of release dates with this announcement, so when can we start to expect to see these stories on shelves so we can drain our wallets? Florian, founder of German fan-site Jedi-Bibliothek, has an extensive post (put together two weeks ago) over at MakingStarWars.net which details the three stage launch of all this upcoming material, with the expected start to be in September. More news likely to come at Celebration Anaheim next month.

Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.

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20 Books Along the ‘Journey to The Force Awakens’ (UPDATED)

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