Roqoo Depot

Millennium Falcon Owner’s Workshop Manual

The Millennium Falcon Owner’s Workshop Manual is a rather interesting book. Unlike most of the books that have focused on the Falcon, this one isn’t geared toward young readers like Millennium Falcon – A 3-D Owner’s Guide. It’s also rather comprehensive. With 125 pages almost exclusively devoted to the Millennium Falcon, it covers detailed aspects that have been rarely or never explored. That said, it is a reference book, and it’s not exactly the most gripping book to read, but there is a lot of valuable info inside.

For ship lovers, the manual will be a tasty treat that will hold a special spot on your bookshelf. Inside there are numerous pictures of the Falcon‘s interior, exterior, cutaways, and floor plans. If you’re not quite so enamored with Han Solo’s famous ship, there are also 22 pages detailing other ships from Corellian Engineering Corporation. Although a few other ships do get mentioned, much of the focus is on the YT line leading up to and surpassing the YT-1300. From the YT-1000 to to the YT-2400, each ship gets an overview, a side and top image, and a floor plan plus technical specs. The end of the book also includes a ship comparison chart that compares the Falcon to a wide range of starfighters and capital ships (covering all the classics from the films).

Ship aficionados and general Star Wars fans alike will also find the overview of the Millennium Falcon‘s various systems to be rather useful. With explanations on how hyperspace and the navcomputer work, readers can get a better idea of how the technology functions. There are even sections devoted to flying and maneuvers. I found these areas to be useful in that they could be applied to ships in general, and not just to the Millennium Falcon. Yet the aspects devoted just to the Falcon were very extensive.

The majority of the book, as can be expected, details the inner and outer workings of the Millennium Falcon. The obvious inclusions are floor plans, cutaways, spec sheets, and film photos. The not so obvious inclusions are detailed overviews of of the cockpit controls and screens, highlights that focus on just about every system in the ship from the droid brains to the landing struts, and even the names for every holomonster on the dejarik board. The flight suits in the storage lockers get a full picture breaking down every vital piece of the suit, the breath masks get covered, even the locations of the freshers and the costs for replacement escape pods, used or new. To say no stone is left unturned would probably be incorrect, but Ryder Windham certainly gave it a fantastic go. Hardcore, ship-enthusiastic canon loremasters will probably point out things that were left untouched, but for the general Star Wars fan, the book covers everything you could expect and more.

Aside from all the ship specs, the book includes a few other narratives and sections to help flesh out the reading enjoyment factor of the book. There are six pages devoted to Lando, Han, and Chewbacca which cover their pasts and their ties to the Falcon. The Falcon itself gets some history rehashed with aspects taken from just about everywhere in the EU including Brain Daley’s Han Solo novels and James Luceno’s Millennium Falcon. There are also some excerpts from in-universe literature like CEC brochures and Imperial documents that add a little bit of fun to the book. Personally I think it would have been fun to see a little more of that, perhaps some advertisements for YT vessels and the like. However it’s hard to fault them from keeping the focus on useful info rather than sideline entertainment. The Millennium Falcon Owner’s Workshop Manual does an excellent job of including a wealth of information and creating the perfect reference guide to the Millennium Falcon and a very useful reference guide to starships in general.

Reviewed By: Skuldren for Roqoo Depot.