By Pablo Hidalgo

Dorling Kindersley, out now

Star Wars aficionado Pablo Hidalgo treats us to another in-depth in-world overview of characters, locales and hardware of the latest Star Wars movie.

For me, buying the latest Dorling Kindersley guide when a new Star Wars movie has been released has become a habit for the last four films. This series has always boasted incredibly background detail and invention and invariably because the action is happening front of screen you’re often left wanting in knowing who the subsidiary characters are, or want to pause and linger around some of the new starships.

This book follows a well-established formula (if it ain’t broke…) by presenting material typically as cutouts with labels and annotations. It’s broken down into six sections: Mean Streets, Trench Warfare, The Great Robbery, Place Your Bets, The Big Score and Going Solo, each representing a major set-piece within the movie. Pleasingly, it boasts a more acceptable 132 pages versus the 84 of the slender The Last Jedi volume. There’s also a great intro by screenplay co-writer Jon Kasdan on these books – ‘They are grimoires of magic, an access point to another galaxy…’

So, what did I learn? I won’t spoil any of the big movie plot points (the book itself stops before the movie’s end and doesn’t include certain reveals) but I can tell you that the cool new TIE Fighter is the TIE/rb, the recruitment officer is Drawd Munbrin and the emigration officer L.T.S.O. Falthina Sharest. It really must be great for some of the supporting artistes to be immortalised in this way.

There’s a lovely cutaway of the Millennium Falcon, though I still feel that I know little about the new escape pod section that sits between the prongs at the front, and you can’t help but smile at the detail on display in the spread of 22 droids from Kessel, each named and throwing a pose; the one that’s jumping across the control panels is JV-P12!

Verdict: Indulge your Star Wars data needs with this detail-packed visit to the Solo-verse, poring over every restraining bolt and blaster scorch mark. 9/10

Nick Joy

Click here to order Solo – The Official Guide from Amazon.co.uk