The Secrets Of The Galaxy Guide Books Review

These are by far my favorite Star Wars books. The secrets of the galaxy guide books written by Daniel Wallace, are in-universe styled books for particular professions or organizations. These include; The Jedi Path, The Book of Sith, The Imperial Handbook, The Rebel Files, The Bounty Hunter Code, and The Smuggler’s Guide. Each one takes a look into the profession/organization and how they operate in some fashion or another, and written by in-universe characters. Each one has its own style to it, where one will read like a history book, such as The Book of Sith, and another will be a tactical guide book with tips and tricks of the trade, like The Bounty Hunter Code. Each one also has side annotations written by characters, like Mace Windu in The Jedi Path. I absolutely love this style of writing and it gives me an immersive feel, as if I were a bounty hunter in the galaxy reading the book. Each one also has its own special vault if you purchase the deluxe editions. The vaults are all unique and some have lights and sounds to them, and they fit the theme of the book very well. And they have special goodies with most of them too. With the deluxe edition of the books, the Star Wars logo is removed from the book, and the books have a higher quality feel. For instance, with The Book of Sith, the standard edition I believe is a canvas red book, with the Star Wars logo printed and embossed onto the book. Whereas the deluxe edition is a red leather, or synthetic leather, with just the book title embossed onto the cover and feels like you’re holding an actual book from the Star Wars universe. These books are incredibly awesome and I would highly recommend them if you like having an immersive feel into Star Wars. The last one, which was The Smuggler’s Guide, was released in 2018. So they are a little dated by a few years from writing this. But I will give a review on each one of these books.

The Jedi Path: This book is written like a school book for a Jedi student. It includes teachings on Jedi philosophy, lightsaber forms, lightsaber crystals, the ranks of the Jedi, the categories of Jedi paths like Counsellor, Guardian and Sentinel and their roles in the order. I believe this book is now considered legends material. In fact I think they all are, other than The Smugglers Guide and The Rebel Files. But the Jedi path gives an in depth look into the force and being a Jedi and their roles within the galaxy. And really gets you to feel like you’re a padawan beginning your journey on the Jedi path. There’s a couple little fun gimmicks within it as well. And in the deluxe edition it comes with quite a few goodies.The vault itself has nice sounds, and raises the book up out of the vault with a blue glow surrounding the books platform. 

The Book of Sith: This is one of my favorites of the collection. This one reads almost like a history book, written first hand by the Sith of the time for each chapter/section of the book. With entries from Sorzus Syn, Darth Malgus, Darth Bane, Mother Talzin, Darth Plagueis, and Darth Sidious. And each one delves into a different style of writing. For instance Sorzus Syn is talking about them fracturing off and their exilement and finding Korriban, Plagueis’ entry is about his scientific research and Maglus’ section is a tactical guide and journal of one of his battles. So each section is very unique and unlocks different ideological understandings of the Sith and its origin and how it progressed over the years. And it feels like a source of wisdom, knowledge and power at your fingertips, unlocking the secrets of the darkside. Which fits well with the vault of the Sith holocron it comes in. This book also includes a few awesome goodies, including a red kyber crystal. The vault opens up one of the triangular faces of the pyramid shaped holocron, and pushes the book out with nice sounds and a red glow emanating from the entirety of the translucent red case. 

The Bounty Hunter’s Code: This is another favorite of mine. This one is a guide book on being a bounty hunter, giving you tips of how to pursue a mark, gear and tools to assist in hunting your quarry, how to navigate and survive the galaxy and be a ruthless bounty hunter. It also includes information on contacts, and guild rules and organizations of subdivisions of the guild. By the end of it, it makes you feel like you’re ready to go out and hunt your next bounty prepared for anything. This also includes a separate section in the back about the mandalorians, specifically written by the Death Watch. And talks about Mandalorian culture, their armor and Death Watch and its goals specifically. With the vault edition you get a second book of Cradossk’s memoirs, “Making a Killing.” Which is a small booklet written by Cradossk. This vault includes a kamino saberdart, a wanted poster, Boba’s bounty hunting license, and has enough space in the vault for you to also put some small trinkets of your own in. This one has less lights and sounds than the previous two, but it lights up a little and has a keypad that you have to insert your key card into to open, which is included on the bottom of the vault. 

The Imperial Handbook: This one I personally don’t have the vault for. The vault has a few lights on it, and makes some sounds, it opens quick and you have access to the book right away. The Book of Sith and The Jedi Path opens slower and does take a little bit before you get the book. So if you like the speed of getting your book, then it might be for you. The vault is adorned with the Imperial cog and is a half cylindrical shape. I believe the only extra goodie included is a metal imperial flight pin. This book reads like a field manual and manifest. It’s mostly about Imperial inventory of equipment and types of Imperial equipment. This includes blasters, vehicles, ships, transports, military personnel, and more. There’s lots of numbers within this book in reference to how many troops are in a squad or a garrison, how many garrisons are deployed to a certain base, how many bases are stationed where, what troopers are within the garrisons, how much equipment is dispatched to particular bases or situational missions, and more. This book doesn’t really focus on the front lines, or the training of an Imperial cadet or anything of the sort similar to that. It’s more a backend account of inventory of various Imperial armaments, troopers, ships, etc. It does have some strategy included in it, but this isn’t its primary focus. I think the book would have been better if it was split into sections of Imperial hierarchy, rather than by branch. If it focused on the inventory management and personnel, and base listings, etc in one section, and then had another section for basic training of a Stormtrooper and surviving the frontlines, and day to day life of being a soldier in the Empire, maybe even including a journal entry of a Stormtrooper while deployed. I feel that would have been cool. Or if they also included a report from commanding a Star Destroyer and what it takes to do that. That would have also been cool. But this is still a fun read nevertheless. 

The Rebel Files: I also do not personally have the vault with this one, as I find the vault itself the most underwhelming of the collection. You have to manually open it, and it opens like a lockbox or binder, then there is a projector inside that displays the death star on a panel of the box that opens up. The goodies included in this are inside the book and are all paper based, like arrest reports, a Kuat ad, an evacuation plan. The book itself is like a collage book. Most of the pages look like they are taken from several files and pasted all within a singular book. The book includes galaxy maps with safe routes to travel to bases, mission reports, rebel inventory lists of weapons and vehicles, reports of various rebel cells, letters from different commanders to each other of current reports, listings on Imperial personnel, and much more along these lines. Overall this book is a decent and fun read, and does feel like a hodgepodge collection of rebel documents gathered together and you have it in your possession to use as you will. 

The Smuggler’s Guide: This is another one of my favorites. The entirety of this book is written by various smugglers, pirates, scoundrels and the like. It gets stolen, found or purchased by each new writer, such as Han, Lando, Hondo, and many more. Some people have multiple entries as the book landed in their possession a few times over the course of their life. And this book serves as a personal journal for whomever has it in their possession at the time. Each entry talks about a different topic. For instance Hondo talks about being a pirate and a big score he has his eyes on, another entry will be about gambling tricks and Canto Bight. I think my favorite entry though is by Platt Okeefe, who had her own smuggler’s guidebook, which was an RPG book released in 1997. Her entry was giving advice on smuggling, what illicit items sold the best, where to acquire them, contacts to work for, places to hide and lay low, and general tips. Really cool stuff. Overall the book is really fun and gets you to feel like somehow this book has now ended up in your possession, the next scoundrel to own it. The vault is fairly simple, but really cool. It doesn’t have motors like The Jedi Path or Book of Sith, [skip next part if you want it to be a surprise on how it opens if you’re interested in getting it.] but it opens up by unlocking it, twisting the circular lock on top, then you are looking at a shallow container with some paper goodies sitting in there. Admittedly I was bamboozled at first when I didn’t see the book right away. And thought it was very clever that the book was hidden underneath the false bottom of the container, that opens up and has nice violet lights around the inside as the book is revealed. 

Overall all these books are amazing and really pulls you into the universe to either get a glimpse at the organization or the people within them. And can make you feel like you yourself are a part of that organization. These are really fun books, and you can get some cool bonus items with the deluxe editions, and I highly recommend them to any Star Wars fan. If you’re interested in checking any of these books out I will link the standard editions below, as unfortunately the vault editions are out of print and were a limited run. So if you want to find any of the vault editions, you will have to get it second hand. Ebay has them quite a bit, and Amazon also sometimes has them. But below are the standard editions.