Alien Archive: A Guide to the Species of the Galaxy by Katrina Pallant and Natalie Clubb
Alien Archive: A Guide to the Species of the Galaxy written by Katrina Pallant and Natalie Clubb, illustrated by Tim McDonagh
Wow!! This is an absolutely beautiful book! The order in which everything is presented is a little odd (I'll discuss that more in a bit), but the overall look and feel of the book is, in a word, stunning. The art is gorgeous and the pages are super thick, both lending a very old timey feel, like an ancient tome that needs to be treated with reverence. And the content is about 150 pages of pure gold. Tons of trivia is packed into each species' run down including content from "The Clone Wars," "Rebels," and various ancillary literary works. And both sentient and non-sentient species are covered. I mean it is all included. I felt so vindicated reading through this because I knew exactly what was being referred to for the most part. It's so nice to have my completionist attitude be rewarded!!
So now that I've praised the book to the nth degree, let's talk about the parts that didn't quite work all that well. The set up is this: The Graf Archive located on Orchis 2 and run by Deputy Director Xoddam Lothipp has come across "an old journal full of sketches, annotations and more than a few tall tales from a mysterious traveler." The identity of the author is unknown but is thought to potentially be the "famed Ithorian artist, Gammit Chond." The Introduction goes on to say that snippets from this journal will be paired with "data entries from our scientific records" and that over 200 aliens will be covered. (I told you this book was magnanimous!) So my problem lies with the journal snippets. They all take place during important and familiar galactic events...meaning this journalist was always in the right place at the right time. He ventured to places before bad things happened and was always there when the story that we know and love was taking place. For example, he talks about the Kubaz he ran into who was a spy for the Empire, but he also talks about meeting Ahsoka on Lothal and how Ben Quadinaros's podracer malfunctioned, putting him out of the competition. It was just overly convenient in that he had ventured to places after significant events occurred there but also before other significant events had occurred and the timelines didn't always match up. This just doesn't make any realistic sense to me at all. I mean it was super fun to read! Don't get me wrong there. But I kept getting pulled out of the book by thinking, "Wait, he was around for that, too?!?"
The book was separated into 3 main sections: Dry Habitats for about 100 pages, Wet Habitats for about 35 pages, and Aerial and Space for about 10 pages with a Dejarik game piece breakdown at the end. But the weird thing was that the Dry Habitats section included a large number of aquatic or semi-aquatic species since certain individuals of these species could be found in dry habitats such as Chalmun's Cantina on Tatooine, Niima Outpost on Jakku, or Jedha. Even Coruscant is included in the Dry Habitats section which I thought extremely odd. Oh well, the sections just overall didn't work for me but luckily the content itself was beyond amazing!
Since this was a book found in the Graf archive, it would be unfortunate if it didn't include one of the coolest species from the Adventures in Wild Space middle grade series about Milo and Lina Graf. Well, check out the awesome depiction of the Agarians above!! These were a fungal sentient species present on Agaris that helped Milo and Lina rescue their parents from the Empire! I am so loving how such an underrated book series has become so incredibly prevalent throughout all Star Wars canon. The connectivity is crazy beautiful.
So although super weird organizationally, this book was gorgeous to behold and included a vast breadth and depth of information that is unparalleled by anything else that's been put out there on species. I absolutely loved this reference book and recommend it 100%!!
So now that I've praised the book to the nth degree, let's talk about the parts that didn't quite work all that well. The set up is this: The Graf Archive located on Orchis 2 and run by Deputy Director Xoddam Lothipp has come across "an old journal full of sketches, annotations and more than a few tall tales from a mysterious traveler." The identity of the author is unknown but is thought to potentially be the "famed Ithorian artist, Gammit Chond." The Introduction goes on to say that snippets from this journal will be paired with "data entries from our scientific records" and that over 200 aliens will be covered. (I told you this book was magnanimous!) So my problem lies with the journal snippets. They all take place during important and familiar galactic events...meaning this journalist was always in the right place at the right time. He ventured to places before bad things happened and was always there when the story that we know and love was taking place. For example, he talks about the Kubaz he ran into who was a spy for the Empire, but he also talks about meeting Ahsoka on Lothal and how Ben Quadinaros's podracer malfunctioned, putting him out of the competition. It was just overly convenient in that he had ventured to places after significant events occurred there but also before other significant events had occurred and the timelines didn't always match up. This just doesn't make any realistic sense to me at all. I mean it was super fun to read! Don't get me wrong there. But I kept getting pulled out of the book by thinking, "Wait, he was around for that, too?!?"
Since this was a book found in the Graf archive, it would be unfortunate if it didn't include one of the coolest species from the Adventures in Wild Space middle grade series about Milo and Lina Graf. Well, check out the awesome depiction of the Agarians above!! These were a fungal sentient species present on Agaris that helped Milo and Lina rescue their parents from the Empire! I am so loving how such an underrated book series has become so incredibly prevalent throughout all Star Wars canon. The connectivity is crazy beautiful.
So although super weird organizationally, this book was gorgeous to behold and included a vast breadth and depth of information that is unparalleled by anything else that's been put out there on species. I absolutely loved this reference book and recommend it 100%!!
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