A lone wanderer with a red lightsaber faces down a group of bandits led by a Sith to help save a village… and that’s just where Star Wars Visions: Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon starts.

(Okay, wait. I’m sorry. The Ronin isn’t completely alone. He’s also aided by B5, aka: Hat Droid, aka: the best droid in the entire galaxy. We know no droid king but the droid in the straw hat whose name is B5-56.)

Ronin is not like any Star Wars book you’ve read before. It’s bold. It fully embraces the Japanese cultural influences that have long underwritten the galaxy far, far away. It grabs you by the heart and never lets go until the final page and even then, it will keep its grip on you well after you set the book down to go about your day. Ronin is the sort of Star Wars book that could have only come from the Visions project and from an author like Candon and we, as fans, are all the more fortunate to get to read it. Continue reading →