Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
by MATTHEW STOVER
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Book Reviews of Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Book Review: Much more than a rehash of the screenplay.
Summary: 4 Stars
Having watched the movie, Revenge of the Sith, about four times, I still had many questions in my head. I read this book to answer those questions, and was not disappointed.
The author, Matthew Stover, clearly has a deep understanding of the Star Wars characters. This is not surprising since he has written two other Star Wars novels, but I found that he anticipated my guesses and confirmed some of my theories about the novels. He also is good at writing dialog that sounds true.
The plot of the book follows the path of the movie fairly faithfully, but it is fleshed out by character profiles that explain the history and motivations of each of the principle characters. This can be a little trying if you are reading the story for the plot, but if you already know the story it can be very enlightening.
I really liked that the author was not afraid to change dialog from the movie, or to extend scenes. Having seen movie novelizations that slavishly follow the screenplay, I was really pleased that he had the courage to change things.
For example, the first major sword battle in the book is the one with Count Dooku. In this book Mr Stover narrates this fight in detail, even creating the names of different Jedi fighting styles, and as mentioned before, the details of the fight are NOT the same as the movie, so it seems a bit fresh and different
I also enjoyed the asides about Mace and Yoda's fighting techniques.
At times, I found the writing style jarring as the author used weird tenses and odd viewpoints in some scenes. His use of the second person, YOU to help the audience identify with Anakin, for example, kept reminding me of my high-school English teacher who told me never to use that tense.
Objections aside though, I quite enjoyed the book.It confirmed to me that Obi Wan is as cool as ever, that Mace and Yoda were flawed by their own arrogance, that Palpatine was absolutely salivating over the chance to convert Anakin, and that Padme is overcome by the complete failure of everything that she believed in.
Reading the book made me want to see new novelization of episodes 4 - 6 from the viewpoint of Obi-wan, Yoda, and Anakin. To greater understand how the NEW Jedi Order led by Luke Skywalker will be able to overcome the failings of the old one.
All in all I enjoyed this novelization and would recommend it to anyone who wants a greater understanding of the history and motivations of the characters. If you can overlook a certain oddness of style the end result is quite entertaining.
Book Review: This is Anakin and Obi-Wan...
Summary: 5 Stars
The most important thing this book does, and it does it wonderfully, is to give you the background and depth of the friendship between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I am very hopeful that the movie will convey this as well but amidst all the space battles and lightsaber duels I don't think it will be possible to get the full effect of what I feel is the most important relationship in the entire saga. I'm old enough to remember seeing the original trilogy when it was initially released in theaters and I have followed the Star Wars Expanded Universe faithfully throughout the long, long years in between the original trilogy and the prequels and I am a true fan (and defender) of the prequels as well.
At five years old my favorite character was Darth Vader so maybe it's no surprise that I love that the entire saga has been turned on it's ear and that when you step back and look at all six movies you are suddenly seeing it from a totally different perspective - that it is, after all, the story of the life of Anakin Skywalker. Therefore, no relationship in the entire saga is more important than that between Anakin and his teacher and friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Star Wars fans are not known for keeping their opinions to themselves so I'm sure others would argue for Anakin and Padme, Anakin and Luke, Luke and Leia, etc. For me, it's Anakin and Obi-Wan.
In Attack of the Clones we saw a master and apprentice, frequently at odds with one another, fighting in the first battle of the Clone Wars. By the time Revenge of the Sith begins we have a Jedi Master and Jedi Knight fighting side by side as equals three long years into this neverending war. What they have endured and accomplished in that time is remarkable but is the subject of other novels. What this novel does is allow us to see into the friendship and love that now exists in that relationship. Ultimately, we know, this friendship will crumble and the result will devastate everyone involved. I was so glad to read their happy banter during the opening and to get their inner thoughts about the strengths that each felt the other had. I love that you can feel their love and respect for one another and that when it all goes bad, you understand what each has lost. Fighting together, side by side, they are an unstoppable force and neither can truly imagine a time when they would be on opposite sides of a fight until it happens and there they stand face to face. Heartbreaking.
Book Review: HORRIBLE ADAPTION
Summary: 1 Stars
This is by far the worst adaption of all the star wars movies. What was Lucas thinking? I could not stand his "Roadrunner vs. Wile E. Coyote" style of describing characters as they appeared in the novel. Just like the RR vs. WEC cartoons, the book opens in the middle of the action, then stops while he explains the back grounds of the characters involved in each scene as they appear, then restarts the action, then stops as new characters appear. Just horrible, IMHO. Perhaps people like his style, I don't know, I know that I don't. And the stuff about the dragon eating away at Anakin, it got very old, even though I let the dragon thing pass (hey, they're in a completely different galaxy and time, what are the odds on them coming up with dragons, too?). What really got to me, though, and just shows how sloppy this author is, was when he described Padme as the "youngest queen ever ...". In both the movie itself and the novelization of EP II, Padme insisted that she WASN'T the "youngest". What also drove me nuts was this author's incessent talk about fighting styles. I mean, does it really matter to nuance the point? There was the same old Jedi fighting style in the movie, so you'd never tell that there were any differences between the styles, so why nuance over such a petty thing, then read the back cover and the author is supposedly a master of "several marshall arts", so now I know why he nuances it, its to show off that he can do several fighting styles, big freakin' whooooop! My final point is that the author's nuancing and stopping the action and actually dragging out the fight scene with Obi-Wan, Anakin and Dooku so long (don't get me wrong, it should be more in depth and longer than the movie scene, but he went ridiculous) that it took 1/3 of the book to go from the opening scenes to the final landing of the ship on Coruscant with Palpatine, Anakin and Obi safe. That only took 30 minutes on the screen! After this, the rest of the book did keep moving at a decent pace, except for his typical stop to provide background info.
Avoid the book, IMHO, just see the movie, even though the fight scene at the beginning is much shorter than the one in the novelization, the fight scene in the movie is MUCH more believeable, IMHO. He just nuanced the whole fight scene into an unbelieveability. The final fight between Obi and Annie, however, was far better written, since he let it flow and did not try to nuance it death.
Book Review: Loved the movie! This book is awful
Summary: 2 Stars
I wanted to see the movie before reading this book, and so I did. It was right up there with "Empire Strikes Back".
After that, I thought I might fill in some holes by reading this book. Well... I'm not so sure it did that very well, as a matter of fact, it kind of messed with it a little, and changed some of the Star Wars facts (Amidala states in episode II, "I was not Naboo's youngest Queen", yet this book claims she was).
This book does do one thing extremely well. It demonstrates why you should never use a particular writing tactic I was told never to use. If you do employ such methods, you wind up with this crap.
I was told, "Never say 'Obi Wan and Anikin were the best of friends, closer than brothers, blah blah blah for two pages, to the point where you're expecting a love scene between the two of them'. Instead, you should show this through the story, NOT come right out and tell the reader what they should get about their relationship (or how a character is feeling)".
This sounded like good advice when I heard it fifteen years ago, but this book showed me exactly how awful it comes across when done. And this book does it through about a third of the book.
For every scene, they'll start some action or dialoge, then, to make sure we get the idea of what the scene wants to portray, the author goes into a two page "aside" telling the reader exactly what the point is, then finish up with the action or dialoge.
For example (small spoiler),
Anikin needs to land a space cruiser that is not designed to land, and is falling apart to boot. As this scene starts to unfold, we are told, "[This act will define the impossible for thousands of years]""[Anikin is the best pilot ever]" "[You've got to be really really really really good to even think of this]" "[Even the best pilots would never never never never ever even conceive of doing this.]" "[Holly crap readers, can you believe he's doing this?!?]" "[Oh my goodness readers, you should really be amazed at this!]" Then he lands the ship.
Yes, I'm paraphrasing a little ;) , but I'm not exagerating at all. Truly, I've learned my lesson better than ever... "Show, don't tell".
This is a book I would have put down twenty pages in, but I really wanted to see if any more details were thrown in. A little on the timeline, but I really should not have wasted my time.
Book Review: As good or better than the movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is perhaps better than the movie. It shows their thoughts in their mind and has some cool stuff like this.
This was in the beggining of part one
"The dark is generous. The first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remained shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truth of others. The dark protects us from what we dare not know.
The second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace, the beauty of that imagination brings to what would repel the day's harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it it day that is temprary. Day is the illusion. The third gift is the light itself: as dasys are defined by nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self.
With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins."
This section is before part two
" The dark is generous, and it is patient. It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt. The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout. The rain will come, the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light. The dark's patience is infinite.
Eventually, even stars burn out"
And this is before part three
" The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. It always wins because it is everywhere. It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The rightest light casts the darkest shadow"
And finally, this is at the end of the book
"Th dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins- but in the heart of its strength lies weakness:one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars."