Degrees of Affection

*5+++ Stars*

*The Gush*

I was unsure of the price tag but after receiving The Jedi Path Vault edition from my husband for our anniversary (cuz Star Wars brought us together), I'm so glad I waited as all the extras really do enhance the reading experience.

The "vault" is really neat looking and the sounds, lights, and movements that happen when you press the button are pretty cool. Even for someone looking rather closely at thirty. I'm a little concerned about long term use, and so this will probably not be a book I read often or will keep it out of the vault, but it is pretty cool.

And the book itself? It reminds me a bit of the two Hogwarts textbooks released a few years ago with student notes, jokes, and comments written in. I liked those then, and I like this now. The book works on two levels. First is the book itself and the information gathered within. For hardcore Jedi fans, none of this will be new and exciting information. Everything in here is meticulously culled from the hundreds of books, movies, tv show, etc. that the universe has spawned. New, blinding bits of information is not what this book is about. What it is about is pulling all this information from it's divergent points together into a cohesive narrative. This it does very well. The book is informative without loosing it's enjoyability. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, thought it was laid out very well, and did learn a few things along the way.

The second level is the comments left by many familiar Jedi as they leave their mark on something that shaped the way their lives turned out. These range from Qui-Gon Jinn's few but poignant notes, Kenobi's rebuttals, Anakin's worrisome contradictions, Yoda's wise asides, and Luke's more prevalent remarks of things he's found left over from this time period, or thoughts on the changes the Jedi have seen since the book's creation. There are others that are even more worrisome than Anakins'. Dooku leaves his mark, with many clues as to where he was led aside and the red slashes of Darth Sidious as he leaves clues of just how thoroughly he decimated the order. A further bonus that comes with this particular edition are the artifacts that are 'preserved' within it's pages. Everything from a patch Anakin was given by a Jedi fighter pilot to Qui-Gon's Padawan braid, from a map of the temple to a napkin from Dex's with Obi-Wan's lightsaber design on it: all lend the book a further degree of authenticity as if the book has now been passed down to us on it's travels through the years. Wonderfully put together.

*The Rant*

My only problem with this thing is how do you read the thing without stuff dropping out of it?! Some of the pieces from the Sith Holocron are kept in the thing, not the book but here, everything is in between pages. This not only causes them to fall out at the most inconvenient times, but also causes some of the pages to bend in odd ways. As someone who doesn't even use certain styles of bookmarks because of what they do to the spines of books, this is quite unnerving at times. Still, minor and what the pieces add more than make up for the problems I have with them.

*Conclusion*

If you are a diehard Star Wars fan...I'd suggest the Vault version of this book. It is pretty awesome and well worth the (rather steep) higher price. If you are buying this for child or are a collector of many different shows etc., I would suggest getting the cheaper version of this as the book itself is quite neat. All in all, I'm glad I got this and it is well worth a look.