Star Wars Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections; written by Curtis Saxton, Illustrated by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore

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Star Wars Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections; written by Curtis Saxton, Illustrated by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore
pub: Lucas Books & Dorling Kindersley. 32 page hardback. Price 12.99 (UK). ISBN 0-7513-3744-7.

I have always been a sucker for cut-away illustrations, and spent many hours during my geeky Adrian Mole years with an A3 pad and a Rotring architect's pen, drawing up massive spaceships with open decks and tiny crew-type inhabitants.

With a case history like that, how could I fail but to love this full-colour Star Wars Attack of The Clones offering?

The gadgets and interiors illustrated vary from the small airspeeders (read hover-car) used by Anakin Skywalker through to the truly massive Trade Federation Core Ship.

Featured vehicles goodies include:

- Naboo Cruiser (bit like a stealth bomber)
- Zam's Airspeeder (evil female bounty hunter)
- Anakin's Airspeeder (moody teenage Jedi)
- Jedi Starfighter (not like an X-Wing at all)
- Owen Lar's Swoop Bike (yep, the old codger you saw in Star Wars)
- Padme's Starship (sleek blockade runner thang)
- Trade Federation Core Ship (large indeed)
- Genosian fighter (insect-type aliens)
- Republic Assault Ship (the MK I star destroyer, really)
- Republic Gunship (the Huey of the Star Wars world)
- AT-TE (primitive walking attack tank thing)
- Solar Sailer (solar-sail craft belonging to one of the baddies)

While the illustrations are fab, the faux technical babble that accompanies them sometimes grates a little. A bit too reminiscent of the all too fully fleshed out Star Trek technical manuals of yore.

For instance, there is a long justification for how the Solar Sailer only has tiny solar sails (and can travel out-system), rather than the hundred-mile wide sails she should be sporting.

This craft belongs to Count Dooku (or should that be Count Dracula), and is "powered by an as-yet undetectable source of supralight emissions, allowing Dooku's custom ship an independence, and style, unknown by any other current space-faring vehicle."

Yeah, right. Or perhaps Lucas realised that having a sail a couple of hundred miles big would just make the rice grain-sized ship look out of proportion on film, and nobody apart from NASA-types would ever winge about making it smaller.

These small gripes aside, this is another worthy addition to the DK cutaways series, and I have no doubts that the Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross Sections volume will be making its way onto the shelves of many a true Jedi in the months ahead.

Check out websites DK.com and StarWars.com

Stephen Hunt

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