"LEGO® Galaxy comes with complete instructions as to how to build your favorite spaceship, droid or space station it only takes a little ambition, imagination and intuition. Simple step-by-step instructions complete with clearly arranged parts lists make it easy to bring your favorite science fiction movies to life."

And boy, does it!

From the creative minds of Joachim Klang, Oliver Albrecht, Lutz Uhlmann and Tim Bischoff, a team of German AFOLs, comes a high quality guide to building a variety of LEGO science fiction models, including Star Wars, Star Trek, Space:1999 (a mid-70s science fiction TV series from the United Kingdom), Battlestar Galactica (the original series from the late 1970s), and Space Patrol Orion (a black-and-white science fiction TV series broadcast in the '60s). The inclusion of this last show should give you a clue where the book originates.

German publishing house Heel Publishers has had a long and successful relationship with LEGO, and have printed a number offical titles with LEGO including a limited Fifty Years of the LEGO Brick. This book was specially commissioned by LEGO to be given out to key stakeholders to mark the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.



Their Build Your Own Galaxy: The Big Unofficial Builder's Book is a shockingly impressive. With precisley 400 pages and a perfect bound spince, this softcover title is - with the exception of the Spare Patrol Orion section - is printed in full colour. The book's designers have gone to great length to match the colour palette to the same one LEGO uses; apart from dark grey which actually looks dark grey, instead of black like in the instructions books that LEGO provides.

The idea of the book is to encourage LEGO build rather than LEGO play, so none of the constructions are for the ubiquitous minifig. In researching this book it would appear that, sadly, a number of reviews on Amazon reflect this in a negative light. It's my hope that these owners eventually realised that LEGO has more applications than simple minifig role-playing.

Before jumping straight into the build section it's worth going over the introductory chapter, which describes a number of building tecnhiques used throughout the book. These are going to be new to the bulk of LEGO builders as they illustrate methods of connecting brick that the designers of the official LEGO sets are not permitted to use. The introduction also explains how to navigate the build instructions and comprehend the build inventory.


There are 25 models in the book, ranging from beginner figure builds that are similar to Miniland and Cube Dudes as well as a pair of highly inventive microfig X-wing and TIE Fighter, an intermediate microfig-scale AT-AT and Slave I constructions, and an advanced Imperial Shuttle build that takes up nearly a quarter of the page count. Scattered throughout are inspirational photographs of MOC dioramas that will make you 348C with envy.





If you are a big and old or a small and young LEGO fan and think that this book will have something for you then head over to Amazon.com (English version) or Amazon.de (German version) where a brand new copy will set you back less that $24/€20.

Is it a perfect book? For presentation and style Build Your Own Galaxy gets a solid A, for clarity of instructions another A, for size and heft I'm giving it a C+ (if you are into big books swap that for an A but if you prefer light tomes then you'll want to give it a D - though there is a Kindle edition on Amazon.de) and for build fun a B. Overall Build Your Own Galaxy gets a B+. Could do better? personally I'd have liked to see a couple of more vehicles, but as LEGO has produced such a variety of spaceships, landspeeders and what-not over the years it's kind of nice to see these figure builds dominating the book. But one or two less, and some microfig-scale diorama buildings or more ships (especially the Battle of Hoth landscape) would have pushed the final grade into that top score that all parent's love to see their kids get.

Disclaimer: I was provided this copy for review by the publishers.