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Posted by Jeremy on August 6, 2019 at 10:21 PM CST
As the summer break comes to an end and with the prospect of giving up those halcyon days of playing hoop and stick in the street or skimming rocks across the duck pond, the prospect of sending children back to school is probably as off-putting as it is liberating.
Luckily, for fans of LEGO Star Wars, DK has found a way to help the transition - a book that is designed with play and learning in mind. This curious combination of books with bricks has been around for a decade, and already has three other LEGO Star Wars titles in the collection. This latest addition - LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure: Galactic Missions is packed with fun ideas that will help while away the waning days of summer vacation and enough of a story to encourage some cerebral activities that will help youngsters when they are confined to their classrooms in a week or so.
LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure: Galactic Missions comes in a hardcover slipcase that contains a sleeve which houses a bag of 70 bricks to a minifigure and an exclusive model, and a book that has a collection of inspirational builds. At this point, it is important to iterate that the bricks that come with the set are only intended to complement the builds in the book and not to actually make them.
The book opens with a preface that introduces Seb Astro (the character portrayed by the included minifigure), the five planets that the book will bring its readers to, a guide to the contents of the Build You Own Adventure book, followed by a brief review on the LEGO elements most commonly used in the builds contained in the suggested builds.
The five chapters, each centred around an important planet in the Star Wars universe, comprises the bulk of the book. Each planet has a cutesy adventure story that threads a collection of themed build ideas, neither of which are taxing to read or construct. It's worth noting that unlike the previous Brickmaster publications, LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure: Galactic Missions doesn't have a continuous story arc and each chapter is stand-alone, each with new characters, adventures and environs.
The stories are packed with the humour - like turning tropical Scarif into an Imperial holiday resort - that we've all come to associate with DK's LEGO books, and the gags and details are non-specific enough that the reader doesn't have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy them. The suggested reading range is from six to nine years of age, and while the text isn't going to hold the attention of a child above nine the construction illustrations, which are both bright and bold, are sure to inspire even the oldest LEGO builder.
The most important take-away is that the builds, which aren't the step-by-step guides that you'd find in an instruction book packed in with a LEGO set, are presented in broad strokes that are designed to encourage the builder into developing new techniques and deep-diving into their collection of loose bricks.
The included set, a Microfighter-style Twin Pod Cloud Car, is the sixth version of this aerial patrol vehicle made famous in The Empire Strikes Back, and was last included in 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City in September, 2018. It's a great little 70-piece build that only lacks for a proper Cloud Car Pilot minifigure.
With a suggested retail price of $24.99 this is a great buy for any young fan of LEGO Star Wars in your life, and with its solid packaging and strong binding it will make a long-lasting addition to any LEGO Star Wars collection.
