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Created page with "{{infobox |title=Star Wars: Imperial Assault Activity Book and Model (Star Wars Construction Books) |author=Emil Fortune and Neal Manning |reviewer=John Lloyd |genre=Crafts |s..."
{{infobox
|title=Star Wars: Imperial Assault Activity Book and Model (Star Wars Construction Books)
|author=Emil Fortune and Neal Manning
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Crafts
|summary=The book-styled item here leaves one with a great model – and a bit of a nonentity when it comes to actual vital books. Still, it's a fun product and worth the purchase.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=No
|pages=36
|publisher=Egmont
|date=June 2017
|isbn=9781405285384
|website=
|video=
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405285389</amazonuk>
}}

Bobby, my U-Wing model, was feeling lonely. Sure, he had a few select critters from Harry Potter on his shelf, but nothing else from his world. Luckily, now he has a companion. Unluckily, however, it's a baddy – one of the AT-ST Scout Walkers those nasty Empire people like to use to stride around and attack the good rebels. But that aside, it is a very handsome companion.

This remains a kind of a clunky, ungainly book, however. The bulk of its girth is taken up with the six sheets of strong card the pieces of the AT-ST have to be pressed out from. Attached to the inside front cover is a little encyclopaedia of the Empire's machinery and war materiel, some of which I don't even recognise from the cinema films. This itself is a little unusual – babying us into understanding the needs of the baddies with text in their own, propagandistic style, while also being an in-universe guide, letting us know the names of the companies who actually made and developed the machines in the first place, alongside their schematic illustrations.

That said, it's not the Kuat Drive Yards who are important here in making the AT-ST, it's you, and you'll find it a decent and easy task. It certainly won't tax anyone for a full school half-term, if that's what you're expecting. No, in pressing every little nubbin out, and in using all of thirteen steps to manipulate the forty pieces involved you should get it done in half an hour or so. And as it seems to have been made of pretty decent and sturdy card, and as the decorative detail are as fine as you could wish, it does look good when finished.

But as for my other shelf – that remains burdened with a full centimetre-and-more-deep hardback, with forty pages, some now redundant, within them. It seems silly for me to dismiss this book as a bad idea – books which are an out-and-out bad idea are few and far between, and the form should only be encouraged – but I do wonder once more if this format is ideal, being left as I am with a little booklet in a welter of empty space now I've made my model piece. Still, if you're more amenable to this as being a toy wrapped up in book-styled packaging, this is a decent little item, and well worth the consideration.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

And for your own U-Wing, turn [[Star Wars Rogue One Book and Model: Make Your Own U-wing (Star Wars Construction Books) by Katrina Pallant and Neal Manning|here]] – but if you have plans to name yours Bobby too then you'll have to ask nicely first.

{{amazontext|amazon=1405285389}}
{{amazonUStext|amazon=1405285389}}

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[[Category:Entertainment]]
[[Category:Emil Fortune]]
[[Category:Neal Manning]]