You Are Unprepared for The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire
A spoiler-free book review of Chris Kempshall's new book from DK Publishing.
I’ve been a huge fan of in-universe Star Wars history books since the release of Skywalker: A Family At War. DK’s newest book, The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, is quite similar in format and design. While Skywalker was a written history of the Skywalker family, Chris Kempshall’s book is a look back at the formation of the Empire and its eventual demise.
But it’s so, so much more than that.
Think of this book through the eyes of someone who exists within the Star Wars universe. You are not you, sitting at your desk or on your couch or, I don’t know, at the beach, reading the complex history of the Empire as a fan of a galaxy far, far away. You are a student, perhaps, or an aspiring politician or activist who has stumbled upon a book written by a historian who has lived through much of the Empire’s history himself.
You are not reading about things that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. You are reading, presumably, about plenty of things that happened in your lifetime. Or close to it. What you are reading is not fiction. It is, as far as you know, real.
Kempshall captures this feeling and fully immerses readers into the universe by adopting the role of a narrator who is a historian in the time of the Empire and beyond, as opposed to someone writing about Star Wars from an outside fan perspective. You wouldn’t think this would work as well as it does, except the narrator becomes his own character in the story, reflecting on events and offering commentary as he recounts them.
This is what I was not expecting from this book — and to be clear, I had quite high expectations that were exceeded within the first few pages of the book’s introduction. I was not expecting the history to be told with feeling. I was not prepared for it to conjure intense emotions to the surface of my existence as I read about war and genocide, discrimination, failure and triumph and suffering and peace.
Yet I read the book’s final line and closed it and I sat there for a very long time, thinking. Not about Star Wars, but instead about my own world. Our world. About all the ways in which I was failing to resist the inevitable collapse of, well … everything around me.
It’s been days since I finished that final page. I haven’t been able to write my review sooner because, in part, I wasn’t ready to face the feelings it would force me to feel. Regret, and guilt, and despair, and grief. But also hope. Hope that not all is lost. Hope that brighter days always come, even after a seemingly endless stream of unbearable ones.
The book begins, as it should, with a brief history of the origins of none other than Sheev Palpatine — brief because, particularly from the perspective of an outsider, not much is known about his early rise toward power. (There’s a nice nod to James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis novel wedged in there — as I like to say, Legends still matters!) It continues on through the Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, all the way through the defeat of the Final Order.
And every single page, every single chapter is worth exploring.
This book is unexpected also in the way it tricks you into thinking you already know everything it’s going to say — because you’re a huge Star Wars fan, of course you know everything — only to sprinkle in the occasional fact or comment that will forever change the way you interact with certain parts of the overarching Skywalker Saga. You don’t know everything, it turns out, because you’re not a historian who fought against regimes in the actual Star Wars universe. But the narrator is, and did.
He doesn’t know everything either — reading this book, you’ll certainly have plenty of “I know something he doesn’t know” moments, and that somehow makes this book even more brilliant. Histories are never complete, multi-perspective accounts of events. Historians have limitations, biases, specific experiences and worldviews. It is the nature of history, to shape stories of the past based on what you know as you write it.
The book does so much more than recite facts. It asks its readers to look upon what has come before in order to mold a better world for those who come after. That is why I still sit here in awe of what I have read. In-universe, the book’s narrator asks readers to contemplate how the Empire rose, and to do everything in their power to never let it happen again.
Out-of-universe, Kempshall asks us to look at where we are in our world and ask ourselves: What are we going to do to save it?
So many Star Wars fans consume stories of heroes and dream of becoming the heroes of their own stories. This book offers that pathway. It allows you to believe, even for a moment, that you can be part of something bigger. That you can resist oppression, fight against hatred, bring down the powers that harm and elect ones that might do something to reshape our galaxy.
Perhaps not what you might expect from a Star Wars history book. But that is what makes it remarkable. The fact that it dares you to question everything you are, remember all the moments you could have changed the world but didn’t, and decide what making a better choice this time means for you.
All Empires fall. But maybe they don’t have to rise again.
The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Chris Kempshall is available now wherever you get your Star Wars books.
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