Jason Fry
Author of The Last Jedi Expanded edition [novelization]
About the Author
Jason Fry is the author of the science fiction series Jupiter Pirates. These books are part adventure and part space -age-epic and geared toward kids in the 8-12 age demographic. Jason is also an editor and journalism consultant. He has written several Star Wars books and short stories. He also show more spent more than 12 years at The Wall Street Journal Online where he wrote The Real Time column about technology. He also co-wrote the Daily Fix, a daily roundup of sportswriting. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Jason Fry
The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure (Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens) (2015) 481 copies, 8 reviews
DK Readers L4: Star Wars: Rogue One: Secret Mission: Join the Quest to Destroy the Death Star! (DK Readers Level 4) (2016) 71 copies
Star Wars the Clone Wars Heroes 2 copies
The Levers of Power 2 copies
Heroes and villains flip book 2 copies
Star Wars: Le Réveil de la Force : Vaisseaux et véhicules : plans, coupes et technologies (2015) 2 copies
Viimeiset jedit 1 copy
Duty Roster {short story} 1 copy
Last Call at the Zero Angle 1 copy
Associated Works
From a Certain Point of View: 40 Stories Celebrating 40 Years of Star Wars (2017) — Contributor — 1,058 copies, 41 reviews
From a Certain Point of View: 40 Stories Celebrating 40 Years of The Empire Strikes Back (2020) — Contributor — 512 copies, 8 reviews
From a Certain Point of View: 40 Stories Celebrating 40 Years of Return of the Jedi (2023) — Contributor — 209 copies, 6 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1969
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Yale University (American Studies) (1991)
- Occupations
- newspaper reporter
newspaper editor
newspaper columnist
digital media consultant
writer - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
- Places of residence
- Long Island, New York, USA
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Florida, USA
Massachusetts, USA
Connecticut, USA
Maine, USA (show all 9)
Louisiana, USA
California, USA
Maryland, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry
In The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure, Jason Fry presents a middle-reader novel about Luke Skywalker learning to better use his father's lightsaber, territory that the new expanded universe canon has yet to explore. Fry's story feels like a continuation of themes begun in Kevin Hearne's Heir to the Jedi, which focused on Luke learning how to use the Force for telekinesis. The overall feel of the narrative is introspective, with Luke musing on the nature of the Force and Fry show more manages to give the fight scenes a sense of tension, despite the fact that Luke must survive to appear in The Empire Strikes Back. Though not marketed at an adult audience, Fry's writing is among the best of the various junior novels released under the Star Wars banner over the years and will entertain adults.
The glimpses of continuity leading to The Force Awakens come in the form of the bookended nature of the story. The entire tale, though written in the third-person, is told by C-3PO sometime nearer to Episode VII and after he received his red arm. This is a nice narrative device, but, unless one of the side characters should tie into The Force Awakens, it is the only thing linking this novel to the future films. That shouldn't deter or disappoint readers, however, as the story is fun and adds to the canon. Fry also helps link some prequel-era concepts with the original trilogy in a way that adds to the story without calling too much attention to them. Probably the best callback occurs when C-3PO picks up the broken head of a battle droid and R2-D2 encourages him to exchange his head.
The art by Phil Noto is a lovely touch. The black, white, gray, and red tones condense the action down to its most basic elements and give this book, and its three companions, a distinctive look. Hopefully future Star Wars middle-reader novels continue to blend story with art to such great effect. show less
The glimpses of continuity leading to The Force Awakens come in the form of the bookended nature of the story. The entire tale, though written in the third-person, is told by C-3PO sometime nearer to Episode VII and after he received his red arm. This is a nice narrative device, but, unless one of the side characters should tie into The Force Awakens, it is the only thing linking this novel to the future films. That shouldn't deter or disappoint readers, however, as the story is fun and adds to the canon. Fry also helps link some prequel-era concepts with the original trilogy in a way that adds to the story without calling too much attention to them. Probably the best callback occurs when C-3PO picks up the broken head of a battle droid and R2-D2 encourages him to exchange his head.
The art by Phil Noto is a lovely touch. The black, white, gray, and red tones condense the action down to its most basic elements and give this book, and its three companions, a distinctive look. Hopefully future Star Wars middle-reader novels continue to blend story with art to such great effect. show less
I've always enjoyed reading the novelizations of Star Wars movies. Even the prequel trilogy is vastly better in book form. I was especially excited to read this one because Jason Fry is someone I sort of know online because he's also a Mets' blogger.
Fry adapts Rian Johnson's script (including scenes cut from the final film) and adds his own creativity to interpret the most complex and complicated of Star Wars stories. The great thing about a novelization is that the reader can get inside the show more character's minds to explore the thoughts, feelings, and memories not expressed on the screen. Fry is particularly good at detailing the thoughts of non-organic minds, whether it be Poe's high maintenance X-Wing demanding repairs from BB-8 or C-3P0 reluctantly refraining from informing the Resitance that a group of crystal foxes should really be called "a skulk of vulpices."
The humor in the book is great and balances well with the action scenes and moments of deep emotion. It would take a stronger person than I to not shed a tear when Leia and Chewbacca embrace as they remember the one's they've lost: Han, Luke, and even Ben Solo . This book will be a delight to diehard Star Wars fans and those who more casually just enjoy the movies. And for the vocal group of people who actively disliked The Last Jedi, I think it's even more important that they read this book as Fry makes the central themes of the movie all the more clear and ties them in to the unifying message of Star Wars dating back to 1977.
Favorite Passages:
Fry adapts Rian Johnson's script (including scenes cut from the final film) and adds his own creativity to interpret the most complex and complicated of Star Wars stories. The great thing about a novelization is that the reader can get inside the show more character's minds to explore the thoughts, feelings, and memories not expressed on the screen. Fry is particularly good at detailing the thoughts of non-organic minds, whether it be Poe's high maintenance X-Wing demanding repairs from BB-8 or C-3P0 reluctantly refraining from informing the Resitance that a group of crystal foxes should really be called "a skulk of vulpices."
The humor in the book is great and balances well with the action scenes and moments of deep emotion. It would take a stronger person than I to not shed a tear when Leia and Chewbacca embrace as they remember the one's they've lost: Han, Luke, and even Ben Solo . This book will be a delight to diehard Star Wars fans and those who more casually just enjoy the movies. And for the vocal group of people who actively disliked The Last Jedi, I think it's even more important that they read this book as Fry makes the central themes of the movie all the more clear and ties them in to the unifying message of Star Wars dating back to 1977.
Favorite Passages:
"Let him think she'd given up -- he'd soon discover otherwise. Jakku had trained her to do two things better than anyone else could.show less
The first was to salvage broken things.
The second was to wait." -.p. 70
"Poe was struck, and not for the first time, by how small Leia was - a petite, delicate-looking woman, seemingly at risk of being swallowed up by the bedding and the gurney around her. It was an impression that many people had on meeting her -- and that vanished the moment she engaged with them. Her determination, her ferocity, her sheer force of will belied her size and made visitors remember her as far bigger than she was." - p. 155
This is a guide to "warfare" in the Star Wars universe. What this means in practice is that it's kind of a military history, a chronological telling but with a focus on military organization, weapons, starships and starfighters, strategies and philosophies, military politics, and military personalities.
I would have put this on my list before it came out in 2012, which was a very different time for Star Wars, both in a broad sense (The Force Awakens would come along in 2015 and "decanonize" a show more lot of what is in this book) and for me personally (even before the new trilogy came along, a series of mediocre Expanded Universe releases was diminishing my interest). So when I first started reading this, I found it pretty hard going. There is a time, I guess, where I would have found reading about military conflicts set over five thousand years before the films interesting... but now my reaction was kind of bafflement: in terms of themes, characters, worldbuilding, &c., it could basically be anything, not really Star Wars. I am not reading Star Wars books because I care about the Tionese and the Rakatha! I'm reading them because I care about the Jedi and the Republic! So as I began the book, I was wondering if I even cared enough about Star Wars to enjoy it at all.
Thankfully, as I read on, it turned out the problem was the disconnect from the Star Wars I am familiar with, not my interest in Star Wars in general. Once it got up to around a millennium before the films, the era of the excellent comic Jedi vs. Sith, I found the book a lot more interesting and engaging, as it had a clear connection to actual stories I had seen or read. From then on, you can basically draw a straight line to the prequel films, and thence to the original trilogy, and so on. This stuff I found fascinating; it gets a bad rap (and makes for bad movies, to be honest), but I love the politics and minutiae of the prequel era, the details of the disintegration of the Republic. Author Jason Fry does what I think tie-in fiction does best, takes a bunch of disparate references and weaves them together into a coherent story. If you care about this kind of thing, there are lots of retcons here; if you don't, what's worthwhile is the retcons makes for a complex story that explains a lot of the stuff we see in the prequels: the lack of a Republic military, the creation of the Clone Army, the reluctance of the Jedi to get involved, and so on. I also really enjoyed the exploration of how the Rebellion was organized (something I had never given much thought to) and what tactics they used, and how the Empire chose to counter them. One of my favorite Star Wars eras is that of the Bantam novels, the early New Republic, and there's lots of crunchy detail there too, good drawing of connections between the X-Wing books and the Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire and so on.
I found the discussion of The New Jedi Order kind of superficial, unfortunately, and once you get beyond that, you end up in an era where I don't care about the stories anymore, and thus I don't really care about what the books have to say; I hated Legacy of the Force and didn't even bother to read Fate of the Jedi. I did like the Legacy comics, but they feel so very disconnected from everything else.
The book mixes in-universe historical overviews, "found documents"–style interludes (a soldier's diary, a politician's speech, and so on), and call-out details on ships and weapons. I don't care about ships and weapons, so I tended to skim those sections, but the rest was pretty interesting. Sometimes the "found documents" would really work for me, like Wedge's account of Baron Fel, making interesting angles on familiar tales. Probably the real highlight of the book is the illustrations... but I read it on my Kindle via a library loan, so the impact of those was very much lost.
Anyway, I was honestly kind of dreading it at first, reading it only out of a sense of obligation to the me that put it on my list a third of my life ago, but I ended up enjoying the three days I spent on it. Sooner or later, I'll have to check The Essential Reader's Companion out of the library, too, the last of the "Essential Guides" that I was interested in but never got around to. show less
I would have put this on my list before it came out in 2012, which was a very different time for Star Wars, both in a broad sense (The Force Awakens would come along in 2015 and "decanonize" a show more lot of what is in this book) and for me personally (even before the new trilogy came along, a series of mediocre Expanded Universe releases was diminishing my interest). So when I first started reading this, I found it pretty hard going. There is a time, I guess, where I would have found reading about military conflicts set over five thousand years before the films interesting... but now my reaction was kind of bafflement: in terms of themes, characters, worldbuilding, &c., it could basically be anything, not really Star Wars. I am not reading Star Wars books because I care about the Tionese and the Rakatha! I'm reading them because I care about the Jedi and the Republic! So as I began the book, I was wondering if I even cared enough about Star Wars to enjoy it at all.
Thankfully, as I read on, it turned out the problem was the disconnect from the Star Wars I am familiar with, not my interest in Star Wars in general. Once it got up to around a millennium before the films, the era of the excellent comic Jedi vs. Sith, I found the book a lot more interesting and engaging, as it had a clear connection to actual stories I had seen or read. From then on, you can basically draw a straight line to the prequel films, and thence to the original trilogy, and so on. This stuff I found fascinating; it gets a bad rap (and makes for bad movies, to be honest), but I love the politics and minutiae of the prequel era, the details of the disintegration of the Republic. Author Jason Fry does what I think tie-in fiction does best, takes a bunch of disparate references and weaves them together into a coherent story. If you care about this kind of thing, there are lots of retcons here; if you don't, what's worthwhile is the retcons makes for a complex story that explains a lot of the stuff we see in the prequels: the lack of a Republic military, the creation of the Clone Army, the reluctance of the Jedi to get involved, and so on. I also really enjoyed the exploration of how the Rebellion was organized (something I had never given much thought to) and what tactics they used, and how the Empire chose to counter them. One of my favorite Star Wars eras is that of the Bantam novels, the early New Republic, and there's lots of crunchy detail there too, good drawing of connections between the X-Wing books and the Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire and so on.
I found the discussion of The New Jedi Order kind of superficial, unfortunately, and once you get beyond that, you end up in an era where I don't care about the stories anymore, and thus I don't really care about what the books have to say; I hated Legacy of the Force and didn't even bother to read Fate of the Jedi. I did like the Legacy comics, but they feel so very disconnected from everything else.
The book mixes in-universe historical overviews, "found documents"–style interludes (a soldier's diary, a politician's speech, and so on), and call-out details on ships and weapons. I don't care about ships and weapons, so I tended to skim those sections, but the rest was pretty interesting. Sometimes the "found documents" would really work for me, like Wedge's account of Baron Fel, making interesting angles on familiar tales. Probably the real highlight of the book is the illustrations... but I read it on my Kindle via a library loan, so the impact of those was very much lost.
Anyway, I was honestly kind of dreading it at first, reading it only out of a sense of obligation to the me that put it on my list a third of my life ago, but I ended up enjoying the three days I spent on it. Sooner or later, I'll have to check The Essential Reader's Companion out of the library, too, the last of the "Essential Guides" that I was interested in but never got around to. show less
One of a trio of middle grade books released as part of Force Friday and the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens publishing initiative (the others are Star Wars: The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure and Star Wars: Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo Adventure), Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry's Star Wars: Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure takes place between the events of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and finds Princess Leia and Nien Nunb show more on a dangerous mission trying to distract the Empire by creating a false trail for them to follow.
This is the longest of the trio of books, and it clearly took advantage of that fact. I thoroughly enjoyed this volume the most; we are given some real insight into what drives Leia and what frightens her about the responsibility that she has placed on her. I think this book had a certain level of gravitas that the other two are missing; we are clearly shown the struggles and sacrifices that the Rebels are making in order to defeat the Empire, and how deeply this affects Leia. I think this is why I found this one shining over the other two, as we are really shown the cost of the war in this volume.
Moving Target is marketed as a middle grade book but I think it deals with the most mature content of the three volumes released in the trio. While I don't think it is inappropriate for the age range, it still handles some heavy material, but handles it well. For me, this was clearly the strongest of the three volumes, followed by Smuggler's Run and then The Weapon of a Jedi.
A note on the design of the book: All three of the middle grade books are packaged similarly, each set up in three parts with a prologue and an epilogue. Before each section there is an illustration by Phil Noto that is presented in greyscale with red highlighted areas. The red is reflected throughout the chapter openers, as well as the dust jacket covers and the boards of the book. The entire thing comes together in such an impressive package. I'm hoping that if they do anymore middle grade adventures of other Star Wars characters that they keep this same packaging throughout, as it is top notch. show less
This is the longest of the trio of books, and it clearly took advantage of that fact. I thoroughly enjoyed this volume the most; we are given some real insight into what drives Leia and what frightens her about the responsibility that she has placed on her. I think this book had a certain level of gravitas that the other two are missing; we are clearly shown the struggles and sacrifices that the Rebels are making in order to defeat the Empire, and how deeply this affects Leia. I think this is why I found this one shining over the other two, as we are really shown the cost of the war in this volume.
Moving Target is marketed as a middle grade book but I think it deals with the most mature content of the three volumes released in the trio. While I don't think it is inappropriate for the age range, it still handles some heavy material, but handles it well. For me, this was clearly the strongest of the three volumes, followed by Smuggler's Run and then The Weapon of a Jedi.
A note on the design of the book: All three of the middle grade books are packaged similarly, each set up in three parts with a prologue and an epilogue. Before each section there is an illustration by Phil Noto that is presented in greyscale with red highlighted areas. The red is reflected throughout the chapter openers, as well as the dust jacket covers and the boards of the book. The entire thing comes together in such an impressive package. I'm hoping that if they do anymore middle grade adventures of other Star Wars characters that they keep this same packaging throughout, as it is top notch. show less
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- Works
- 90
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 4,864
- Popularity
- #5,165
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 61
- ISBNs
- 253
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