You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
A movie tie in has no gods damned business being this good.
This book officially shredded my soul, I'm gone. Full review to come.
Stover has an interesting way of writing this book that really adds more depth and detail that the movie is not able convey. Overall it is a good adaptation of the movie. I would recommend it.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is Star Wars at its best. SO many incredible lines. At the beginning when it's like "This happened a long time ago. There is nothing that can be done to change it." YESSSSSSS I LOVE YOU TRAGEDY 🫶. Also the line that's like "to kill him would be a mercy. Obi-Wan was not feeling merciful." GOD. So so good.
The relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan is stellar, and this does such a good job of actually contextualizing how Anakin was feeling just before he fell; how utterly exhausted he was, how burnt out, how he was being pulled in a million different directions and was so terrified........ I know this isn't technically canon but it doesn't contradict canon so that means it's canon to me. This lends to much depth to the events of Revenge of the Sith and it's such a necessary piece of Star Wars media.
The relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan is stellar, and this does such a good job of actually contextualizing how Anakin was feeling just before he fell; how utterly exhausted he was, how burnt out, how he was being pulled in a million different directions and was so terrified........ I know this isn't technically canon but it doesn't contradict canon so that means it's canon to me. This lends to much depth to the events of Revenge of the Sith and it's such a necessary piece of Star Wars media.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Much better than the prequel movies. My favorite moment in particular was the scene with Count Dooku. That character was added so much more depht that in movies.
For years, I’ve heard Star Wars fans talk about how amazing Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization is. People revere it as one of the great movie novelizations, that it adds to and deepens the story of the film. I’ve always been mildly curious and a little bit skeptical. How much can a book improve one of the dorkiest and most disappointing of all Star Wars movies?
I’ve also known Star Wars book fans who love Jonathan Davis’s audiobook narrations. So when I was looking for an audiobook at the library recently in preparation for a long drive, I happened to see Revenge of the Sith and thought I’d finally give it a try. Does it really make the movie better?
Sort of. I mean, there’s not much you can do with all the corners George Lucas painted the prequels into by the time of the third episode. I will never think that the Clone War was simply a war in which one army happened to be all clones. And even if I did accept that, I would never believe that Boba Fett’s “father” was the origin of all the clones in that war. In my imagination, Anakin and Obi-Wan actually were good friends, not a bizarre dysfunctional teacher–student relationship in which Obi-Wan is constantly scolding and making corny jokes. By the time of their duel over the lava, they would actually be the right age so that it makes sense how old Obi-Wan is in the original film. Leia would spend more than a few seconds with her mother, so that her later recollections of her mother would be true. Tatooine would not have been the boyhood home of Anakin, so there would be nothing ridiculous about having Luke raised there. And on and on. The prequels are a mess, and nothing can solve it except choosing to disregard them, which is what I do.
Stover’s novel adds elements to and in between movie scenes, trying as hard as he can to make sense of the material he’s been given to work with. Some of it works quite well. Anakin’s fall makes as much sense as it can, and in Stover’s version of the story, Anakin and Obi-Wan are a lot better friends than they appear to be in any other medium. Padme has more to do in the novel, as she navigates the tough spot of being a senator with so many conflicting pressures in discerning the right way forward for herself and the government. One of the things I like about Stover’s novel is that it exists before the later Clone Wars TV series. All that was available at the time Stover was writing was the original (and, in my opinion, far superior) Clone Wars animated series. So it’s fun to hear references to Durge, and to Grievous’s first appearance.
What’s less good about the novelization is the long, long sections of descriptions of battles and lightsaber duels. It’s just so very uninteresting in words (and those scenes are barely interesting even in the movies!). Stover goes on, and on (and on) in overwriting the action scenes, and it was so easy to zone out and only return to the story when something interesting started happening again.
That’s a problem with the whole book, actually. It often feels like a gigantic exercise for a creative writing class: take each frame of a film and write five pages about it. At many points in the book, I was thinking, “Enough! Please stop overwriting! Just move on already!” There has to be some sort of middle ground: more than what’s in the movies, but much, much less than what’s in the novel.
The narration by Jonathan Davis is often quite entertaining. The prose is as purple as Mace Windu’s lightsaber blade, so it must be a challenge to read it and stay interested. Davis does an admirable job. Though this is not dramatized, he does some of the voices, which helps in listening. In particular, his Palpatine voice is better than Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine voice! Davis finds a smooth, reasonable way of reading Palpatine that avoids the hammy cheesiness that McDiarmid sometimes falls into (and that the animated version’s Ian Abercrombie almost constantly falls into). In Davis’s voice, it makes a little bit more sense that no one has figured out that Palpatine is ultimate evil. (Though, still . . . come on, seriously? Nobody figured that out?)
So overall, the novelization is probably better than the film. But it’s a hard story to love, no matter what the format. The film has the advantage of being only a couple hours long, whereas the audiobook is about fourteen hours. But I’m not eager to devote any amount of time to the prequels.
I’ve also known Star Wars book fans who love Jonathan Davis’s audiobook narrations. So when I was looking for an audiobook at the library recently in preparation for a long drive, I happened to see Revenge of the Sith and thought I’d finally give it a try. Does it really make the movie better?
Sort of. I mean, there’s not much you can do with all the corners George Lucas painted the prequels into by the time of the third episode. I will never think that the Clone War was simply a war in which one army happened to be all clones. And even if I did accept that, I would never believe that Boba Fett’s “father” was the origin of all the clones in that war. In my imagination, Anakin and Obi-Wan actually were good friends, not a bizarre dysfunctional teacher–student relationship in which Obi-Wan is constantly scolding and making corny jokes. By the time of their duel over the lava, they would actually be the right age so that it makes sense how old Obi-Wan is in the original film. Leia would spend more than a few seconds with her mother, so that her later recollections of her mother would be true. Tatooine would not have been the boyhood home of Anakin, so there would be nothing ridiculous about having Luke raised there. And on and on. The prequels are a mess, and nothing can solve it except choosing to disregard them, which is what I do.
Stover’s novel adds elements to and in between movie scenes, trying as hard as he can to make sense of the material he’s been given to work with. Some of it works quite well. Anakin’s fall makes as much sense as it can, and in Stover’s version of the story, Anakin and Obi-Wan are a lot better friends than they appear to be in any other medium. Padme has more to do in the novel, as she navigates the tough spot of being a senator with so many conflicting pressures in discerning the right way forward for herself and the government. One of the things I like about Stover’s novel is that it exists before the later Clone Wars TV series. All that was available at the time Stover was writing was the original (and, in my opinion, far superior) Clone Wars animated series. So it’s fun to hear references to Durge, and to Grievous’s first appearance.
What’s less good about the novelization is the long, long sections of descriptions of battles and lightsaber duels. It’s just so very uninteresting in words (and those scenes are barely interesting even in the movies!). Stover goes on, and on (and on) in overwriting the action scenes, and it was so easy to zone out and only return to the story when something interesting started happening again.
That’s a problem with the whole book, actually. It often feels like a gigantic exercise for a creative writing class: take each frame of a film and write five pages about it. At many points in the book, I was thinking, “Enough! Please stop overwriting! Just move on already!” There has to be some sort of middle ground: more than what’s in the movies, but much, much less than what’s in the novel.
The narration by Jonathan Davis is often quite entertaining. The prose is as purple as Mace Windu’s lightsaber blade, so it must be a challenge to read it and stay interested. Davis does an admirable job. Though this is not dramatized, he does some of the voices, which helps in listening. In particular, his Palpatine voice is better than Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine voice! Davis finds a smooth, reasonable way of reading Palpatine that avoids the hammy cheesiness that McDiarmid sometimes falls into (and that the animated version’s Ian Abercrombie almost constantly falls into). In Davis’s voice, it makes a little bit more sense that no one has figured out that Palpatine is ultimate evil. (Though, still . . . come on, seriously? Nobody figured that out?)
So overall, the novelization is probably better than the film. But it’s a hard story to love, no matter what the format. The film has the advantage of being only a couple hours long, whereas the audiobook is about fourteen hours. But I’m not eager to devote any amount of time to the prequels.