STAR WARS: LEGACY of VADER - THE REIGN of KYLO REN, VOLUME 1 by Charles Soule (Author), Luke Ross (Illustrator), Stefano Raffaele (Illustrator), Derrick Chew (Cover Art)

Published in 2025 by Marvel Universe.

Synopsis

Legacy of Vader is set between Episode VIII and Episode IX. Kylo Ren was embarrassed by Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode VIII, but he has still consolidated control of The First Order.

This collection consists of six installments, each describing the consolidation of his power or his investigation into the pre-Vader life of Anakin Skywalker. He is looking into his grandfather's life because he wants to really know what made Vader so powerful.

So, Ren travels to Mustafar, Tatooine, and Naboo with Vader's former bodyservant leading the way.

My Review

Kylo Ren's style as he takes over The First Order is ridicuously flamboyment. For example, he demands that Hux (his main rival for control of The First Order) build him a proper throne, But then, he heads off to study Darth Vader and leaves everything behind for weeks and weeks. Hux hates him with a passion and Kylo Ren should have been aware that being gone for all of that time is just asking for trouble.

Oddly, Hux just uses that time to do nothing to secure his own alternate power sources in The First Order. Instead, he just builds Kylo Ren's throne. Hux is nothing in this story but a toady, not the conniving monster shown in the movies.

The fifth installment in this series is simply bizarre. It makes no sense - just some sort of ego stroking on the part of Kylo Ren. It's completely bizarre behavior.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5 (barely.) It can be found on Amazon.com here: Star Wars: Legacy of Vader - The Reign of Kylo Ren, Volume 1. 

SCANDALOUS WITNESS: A LITTLE POLITICAL MANIFESTO for CHRISTIANS (audiobook) by Lee C. Camp

Published in 2020 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Read by Trevor Thompson.
Duration: 6 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged.

I heard Lipscomb University professor Lee C. Camp on Voxology, a Christian religious podcast with a more progressive bent. One of the hosts made multiple references to this book and how he had read it multiple times and referred to it often. The interview was good, the discussion was lively and I immediately burned my monthly Audible credit on this book.

Scandalous Witness consists of 15 propositions about Christianity, politics, and American history. I had no problem with Camp's propositions or his conclusions, but I did realize one very important fact - the hosts of the Voxology podcast are very, very good at creating interesting conversation.

There is nothing wrong with this book and its conclusions - I heartily endorse almost everything he says. The problem is that I found it to be a tedious read and I only finished it out sheer stubborness precisely because I had used my monthly Audible credit and I didn't want to waste it.

Maybe it's because I have read a lot of serious books along this vein like Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes du Mez, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta, and The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess that cover these topics. Even a more political book like John Fugelsang's Separation of Church and Hate covers a lot of this same material in confrontational manner.

There is nothing wrong with this book - I just found my mind wandering way too often. A good place to start if you haven't thought much about these topics.

His fifteen propositions are:

Proposition 1: History Is Not One Damn Thing after Another

Proposition 2: The End of History Has Already Begun

Proposition 3: American Hope Is A Bastard

Proposition 4: Christianity Is Neither A Prostitute Nor A Chaplain

Proposition 5: The United States Is Not the Hope of the World

Proposition 6: The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian Nation

Proposition 7: How Christian Values, and the Bible, Corrupt Christianity

Proposition 8: Every Empire Falls

Proposition 9: Christian Partisanship is Like a Fist-Fight on the Titanic

Proposition 10: Hostile Forces Have a Role in the Unfolding of History

Proposition 11. Christianity Is Not a Religion; Christianity Is a Politic

Proposition 12: Liberal Political Puissance Is Not the Goal

Proposition 13: Exemplary Political Witness Is the Goal

Proposition 14: Christianity Is Not Counter-Cultural

Propositions 15: Christian Engagement Must Always Be Ad Hoc

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. 

LUCAS WARS: THE TRUE STORY of GEORGE LUCAS and the CREATION of STAR WARS (graphic novel) by Renaud Roche (Author), Laurent Hopman (Author), Jeremy Melloul (Translator)

Published in 2025 by 23rd Street.

Lucas Wars is the story of how the first Star Wars movie came to be made. I've read and seen videos on this story before, but I found this graphic novel to be particularly entertaining and informative. I also really enjoyed the illustrations - they are a simple style but capture the look of the real people involved in the story and the scenes from the movie(s).

It starts with George Lucas in high school and ends with the negotiations for The Empire Strikes Back. The story includes the horrible car accident that made him get serious, his film school education, the making of THX 1138 and American Graffiti, his marriage, and the many, many revisions of what would become Star Wars.

I mention the revisions because he had so many of them. His first scripts would have been so long and so complicated that if they had been made into movies they would have been trilogies. Lucas's friends and his wife encouraged him to keep trimming down the story and focusing it. 

20th Century Fox kept getting updated scripts that were radically different and they started to doubt - and they kept doubting until the movie started to fill theaters and became the phenomenon that older Star Wars fans remember. 

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended for any Star Wars fan.

This graphic novel can be found here: Lucas Wars: The True Story of George Lucas and the Creation of Star Wars.

WHERE BUZZARDS FLY (A Chick Bowdrie story) (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Originally published in a pulp magazine in 1948.
Originally published in book form in 1983.
Originally published on audio cassette in 1986 by Random House Audio.
Re-published by Random House Audio in digital format in 2008.
Performed by multiple actors / multicast performance.
Duration: 50 minutes.
Unabridged.

Legendary Western writer Louis L'Amour's work has been packaged and repackaged in so many ways over the years. There is so much of his writing to work with - short stories, novels, series of novels, and more. 

At some point, someone decided to break up his short story collection into small audiobooks that would fit onto a single cassette (about an hour.) In the 1980s and 1990s it was pretty common to edit what would have been 10 hour audiobooks down to fit onto a cassette or two or three.

If you look at some of my early reviews, you can find a few of these abridged audiobooks and I am constantly complaining about poor edits and lost content that makes the story confusing. I think the publishing industry thought that people wouldn't listen to long audiobooks - a thought that we now know is completely wrong.

You can see why Random House took advantage of the multitide of Louis L'Amour short stories during those days to create one cassette audiobooks - you could tell the whole story without making confusing edits and you could make some money on the individual short story. They used to sell these cassettes at truck stops.

This story was performed by multiple actors, like an old-fashioned radio play. L'Amour insisted that the stories be done this way so that they would offer more value for the listener and at one point there was a syndicated radio show featuring these stories.

Synopsis:

In Where Buzzards Fly, Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie is on the case near the border looking for the men who killed and robbed a group of Mexican bandidos who had earlier robbed a church in Mexico. Their bodies were left where they were killed. Bowdrie heads to a nearby ranch where he knows the rancher and has always been welcome to stay the night and eat a meal or two.

The rancher and the ranch hands suggest he go to the nearest town to ask around and what he finds puts his life and the life of a beautiful young woman at risk.

 My Review:

Most people think of the Sacketts when they read a Louis L'Amour series, but my first L'Amour novels were all about Chick Bowdrie and his hammerhead roan horse. 

As far as mysteries go, this one is pretty basic. Bowdrie keeps his eyes open, follows some people around and stumbles upon the truth. That makes sense to me - he's a rough and tough brawler with a heightened sense of justice and decent tracking skills, not Sherlock Holmes. 

The radio drama format was well done.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Where Buzzards Fly (A Chick Bowdrie story) by Louis L'Amour.

STAR WARS: DARK DROIDS (graphic novel) by Charles Soule (Author), Luke Ross (Illustrator), Leinil Yu (Cover Art)

Published by Marvel Universe in 2024.

Star Wars: Dark Droids is a collection of the first five comics in an extensive Dark Droids story arc. 

The basic story goes likes this: A group of Imperial droids and soldiers encounter a self-aware droid in the form of a tiny disc. This would be between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The disc attaches itself to an imperial droid and takes it over. Then it takes over another droid and another and another. 

The self-aware droid is known as The Scourge. It quickly spreads through both Imperial and Rebel forces - even taking over C3PO!

As it spreads, it tries to bring together a union of droid and organics in order to truly be able to control the galaxy. When it discovers that the force exists and can only be controlled by biologics, it redoubles its efforts. Then, it discovers that there is a a force user that is already a mixture of organic and mechanical parts - Darth Vader.

My Review

I liked the idea of this story, but it has a basic problem - this threat is so big that it threatens to overthrow both the Empire and the Rebels at the same time. It is a bigger threat to each of them than they are to each other. It is like a virus that spreads quickly and could literally kill everyone. 

Yet, there is no mention of any of this immense threat and the trauma it would cause in Episode VI. 

I appreciate the difficulty of creating a story arc that fills in the middle of two movies that were made more than 40 years before that poses enough of a threat to the main characters to make it interesting, but you can't actually hurt them too much. For example, we know that The Scourge doesn't effect Princess Leia because she is alive, intact, and healthy in Episode VI. 

*****Spoiler Alert*****

The Scourge is so big and so dangerous that it actually kidnaps Darth Vader when he is out of his suit receiving medical treatment on Mustafar. If it is that much of a threat, it would have actually changed the events of Episode VI. Everyone would have scrapped their droids out of fear.

*****End Spoilers******

To sum up, nice idea, but the bad guy is overpowered and it is poorly placed in the timeline. I really liked the art, though.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. I am NOT reading other parts of the collection. This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Star Wars: Dark Droids.

EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green

Published in 2025 by Listening Library.
Read by the author, John Green.
Duration: 5 hours, 35 minutes.
Unabridged.

Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2025)

Audie Award for Narration by the Author and Nominee for Non-Fiction (2026)

Normally, John Green writes YA fiction, but this is his second non-fiction book in the last five years. His first non-fiction book was an excellent series of essays called Anthropocene Reviewed. His second non-fiction book is an in-depth (but still, fairly short) look at the deadliest disease of human history - tuberculosis.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, Green gives a quick history of the disease that has killed 1 out of every 7 humans that has ever lived (yes, that is truly an amazing statistic) and even in the modern world, tuberculosis kills millions every year. 

Over the years, tuberculosis has a lot of names and suspected causes. Before it got its current name, the most common name for tuberculosis in English was "consumption." No one really knew where it came from and they were equally ignorant of how to cure the disease. Oddly enough, most people (90%) who are infected with tuberculosis (TB) never develop any symptoms and are not able to spread the disease. This is called "latent tuberculosis." Literally, 25% of the world is walking around with latent TB and more are added every day.

Doctors describe latent TB as an infection that takes advantage of its host's weakened immune system to spread and become a full blown case of TB. Immunosuppresent drugs would do this, but more mundane things like famine, poor diet, an HIV infection, diabetes, cancer, or being an elderly person make an infection move from being latent to active.

Green makes the story personal by describing the treatment of a young man he met in Sierra Leone named Henry. Green deftly goes back and forth between the big picture discussion of treatments, the countless challenges of treating TB cases in high poverty countries like Sierra Leone, and Henry's specific case. 

This is not a happy book in any way. But, it is important and it is very well told.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green.

BOUDICA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2026 by Hourly History

Hourly History specializes in short histories that take about an hour to read. In the case of Boudica, that's more space and time than needed to fill in what we actually know.

Boudica was a queen of a Celtic people called the Iceni (or Eceni) who lived in what is now Eastern England. Her husband was older than her and he had made a deal with the invading Romans. He agreed to be a vassal state of the Roman Empire in the hopes of saving a semblance of independence. The agreeement stated that the Roman Emperor would receive half of the Iceni kingdom when the king died.

But, when the king died the Romans claimed the entire kingdom as their own. Boudica protested that the Romans were reneging on the deal and claimed the entire kingdom for her and her two daughters.

The Romans responded by invading and capturing Boudica and her daughters. They raped her daughters and flogged Boudica in public but did not kill her.

When Boudica recovered from her injuries, she appealled to the other Celtic peoples to rise up and destroy the Roman invaders and soon she she found herself leading a mob of 100,000+ men, women, and children descending upon three Roman cities and completely destroyed them, including Londinium - modern day London.

The Roman soldiers retreated from the mob until they gathered up enough soldiers to make a stand of sorts in a place of their choosing. The Celts had numbers, but the Romans had military discipline and despite being outnumbered by 10 to 1, the Romans routed the Celts.

Boudica fled the scene of the battle and killed herself. Her body was never discovered and her daughters disappeared from history.

In the past, I read an article in a history magazine about Boudica that told me about the same as this e-book did. The problem is that all of the history is told from the Roman point of view and they didn't even know much about Boudica. They do agree that the Romans were initially dismissive of her, they then abused her in some way, and they were completely surprised by the revolt she led. There's just not that much to tell.

I rate this history 3 stars out of 5. It tells the story, but it pads it from time to time by repeating facts or writing things in an overly-complicated way. Perhaps this one should have been a 45 minute history rather than an Hourly History.

This short e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: Boudica: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History.