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921 reviews for:
Star Wars, Episode III: De Wraak van de Sith: Het Boek van de Film
Gert van Santen, Matthew Woodring Stover
4.34 AVERAGE
921 reviews for:
Star Wars, Episode III: De Wraak van de Sith: Het Boek van de Film
Gert van Santen, Matthew Woodring Stover
4.34 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
funny
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The best written book out of the first three. Stover out-did himself!!
I don't remember how I fell down the rabbit hole of Star Wars books. But I remember every list had this one as the best.
I can see why! It added so much depth to the movie. We learn what Count Dooku thought was the plan, we learn why Anakin was so upset not to be named a Master, and we get the Senate's storyline.
The battles were hard for me to follow with all the sci-fy jargon. I have seen the movie though and that helped me follow the gist.
What really stood out to me was how exhausted Anakin was - He killed Count Dooku and then that night he had his Padme dying dream. From there, he barely slept or ate over the course of I think like a week? It made him more sympathic to me. He was getting pulled in all different directions and everyone was trying to manipulate him. Meanwhile, he was so exhausted he wasn't mentally functioning at 100%. I also had to face the facts that Hayden Christensen did a bad job in the movie...despite how attractive I think he was. Book Anakin was charming and tortured. Movie Anakin was stiff and whiny.
I gotta say, some of Palpatine's arguments really reasonated and Yoda's advice to Anakin was just laughable. It was painful to read knowing the outcome because you can see every mistake the Jedi made.
The romantic in me got upset at Anakin's rage at Padme during the book. At one point he imagines, she's a bug he wants to crush. But it reminded me of Walter White from Breaking Bad. Both of them kept declaring they were doing evil deeds for love and noble reasons but in the end they both realize they were just doing it for themselves.
I wish Matthew at least wrote the entire prequel trilogy! I would love to get this take on the first two episodes.
I can see why! It added so much depth to the movie. We learn what Count Dooku thought was the plan, we learn why Anakin was so upset not to be named a Master, and we get the Senate's storyline.
The battles were hard for me to follow with all the sci-fy jargon. I have seen the movie though and that helped me follow the gist.
What really stood out to me was how exhausted Anakin was - He killed Count Dooku and then that night he had his Padme dying dream. From there, he barely slept or ate over the course of I think like a week? It made him more sympathic to me. He was getting pulled in all different directions and everyone was trying to manipulate him. Meanwhile, he was so exhausted he wasn't mentally functioning at 100%. I also had to face the facts that Hayden Christensen did a bad job in the movie...despite how attractive I think he was. Book Anakin was charming and tortured. Movie Anakin was stiff and whiny.
I gotta say, some of Palpatine's arguments really reasonated and Yoda's advice to Anakin was just laughable. It was painful to read knowing the outcome because you can see every mistake the Jedi made.
The romantic in me got upset at Anakin's rage at Padme during the book. At one point he imagines, she's a bug he wants to crush. But it reminded me of Walter White from Breaking Bad. Both of them kept declaring they were doing evil deeds for love and noble reasons but in the end they both realize they were just doing it for themselves.
I wish Matthew at least wrote the entire prequel trilogy! I would love to get this take on the first two episodes.
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Matthew Stover might be one of the best writers in the Expanded Universe, and I’m beginning to think I’ve underrated him all these years because his contributions were relatively few compared to the likes of Timothy Zahn or Michael Stackpole.
But let’s backtrack for a second, because when I’m reviewing a Star Wars film novelisation, I’m often doing two jobs – firstly, commenting on the film’s story itself, and secondly, commenting on the quality of the author’s adaptation. I try to make it obvious which is which, but it’s worth my saying now that I can’t lay at Stover’s door anything which was the responsibility of George Lucas and the lead filmmakers.
I don’t think it’s controversial to state that it is generally agreed upon that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequels. That might not mean much if you consider it to be the best of a bad bunch. There are mixed feelings about the prequels among the fan community, and I’m deeply ambivalent about them myself. Look, I’ll say this straight up: despite all the criticism levelled at the prequels, I can safely say they are not the worst films I’ve ever seen. I can quite easily cite examples of worse. But at the same time, for me they are quite clearly not in the same league as the originals. Character stupidity, plotholes, bad dialogue, bad romance, too much action and a lack of the reflective heart and soul that was present in the originals… there’s many reasons why the prequels don’t measure up. Nevertheless, I do consider Revenge to be of a better calibre. Almost all of the silliness has been eliminated by necessity of the movie’s darker tone, which brings it closer to the life-and-death stakes and heroics of the originals, there’s no awful forced romance to cringe through, heck, the film even has brief flashes of genius. The musical score was excellent, and I can quite clearly recall my first viewing and being sucked in to the scene where Vader is being reconstructed. The alienness of the equipment, the claustrophobic shots, they were perfect in evoking the sheer primal terror of becoming trapped, physically as well as metaphorically, in a nightmare of your own making. I remember recoiling in revulsion. Aaaaand then that moment of genius was shattered by that dire, staged “nooo!” of legend. It isn’t that the line is wrong – it’s the delivery. Compared to Luke’s famous “nooo!” in Empire Strikes Back, which was ugly and messy and roiling with the anguish of a raw wound; this one was far too composed, and thus pompous and unintentionally hilarious.
There are still far too many criticisms that one can make, probably too many for me to recall in a single review. The story begins extremely abruptly, to the point where it is not immediately intuitive what is going on. Padme’s death is a truly groanworthy example of fridging – she has almost no agency of her own, and exists merely to die and spur a male protagonist’s character development. Plotholes abound with Leia remembering her mother, and Obi-Wan and Owen forgetting R2-D2 and C-3PO, calling Luke by his real name and putting him with his actual family which is the first place anyone would come looking for him and so forth. Midichlorians are still annoying because they’re a misguided attempt to put science into what was always supposed to be the mystical concept of the Force – Star Wars is space fantasy, not hard sci fi. I still prefer the Expanded Universe vision of the Clone Wars as a several-decades-long crumbling of the Republic’s centralised authority, with local disputes using unstable clones on both sides, a lawless wild frontier feel with the Jedi as itinerant nomads. But none of this can be laid at Stover’s door. Everything I’ve commented on so far belongs purely to the films.
What’s remarkable is that Stover takes the film as his basis, a film which, despite improvements on earlier prequels, still had plenty of annoying flaws, and creates a good book out of it. I mean really good. If you hadn’t guessed from the page count, Stover has a lot of room to expand upon scenes, add dialogue, and most importantly of all delve deep into the motivations of the characters.
The style with which Stover executes this may seem a little odd at first. Second person present tense isn’t something you see in many books, and I can’t recall it in any other Expanded Universe novel. It’s a type of narration that is very easy to get wrong; the perspective can be very narrowing, while the tense can feel clunky when readers are so used to past tense. But Stover dodges the perspective issues by using this narrative style in select scenes – not throughout the whole book – keeping a smooth flow while allowing the reader at very specific moments to understand with incredible intimacy the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of key characters. This extreme intimacy fleshes the characters out as they never appear in the film, the detail making them feel extraordinarily tangible as people, and giving readers a profound connection to them, and thus care for their fates. Stover doesn’t hold this exclusively for the protagonists either, but gives the same treatment to the antagonists too. Proper characterisation for antagonists is far too often overlooked, and results in villains who skirt the absurd with their lack of reasoning, desire, or motivation to explain their actions, villains who are too improbable to seem real.
Examining the characters with such intensity adds another benefit too: it makes it absolutely clear how confusion and human lack of omniscience can lead us to make horrible mistakes, even when we’re sure we’re doing the right thing, and especially when fear has a grip on us. This isn’t Star Wars lore – it’s real life. That’s why the story resonates so well with us. Anakin is a clear example of how fear can alter our behaviour, and by such alteration bring about exactly what we so desperately wish to avoid. And Stover digs deep into his character, more so than any other. His scenes are uncomfortable and unsettling, confronting us with our most primal terrors – am I good enough, does anyone love me, will I lose those who do love me? – and how our own identity can crumble and collapse if we don’t find good answers to those questions. It all hinges on whether we’re smart enough to realise that only we can give ourselves those answers and decide to step up and be our own hero, or whether we fall into the trap of thinking that some outside force, some poor person who has no more certainty than we do, or some secret miracle cure will fix all our problems.
Another thing that’s noticeable about the structure of the book is that Stover weights the beginning and middle of the story far heavier than the end. This might raise eyebrows, if you’re thinking that surely the final duels from the film should be the climax of the story and have the most attention lavished upon them. But it works. Anakin’s seduction is the meat of the story, and requires the most development to feel plausible; after all, a character changing sides from good to evil, doing a complete 180, this is the kind of pivot that needs to earn its payoff through being built up. The expansion of the opening battle was appreciated too, particularly as it gives Dooku the kind of development he really needed but never got in either Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. Stover throws in some very nice links with classic Empire era as well, through Dooku’s human-centric prejudices, and Palpatine’s imposition of system governors – this feels more like original Star Wars than any of the prequel novels have before. He even rescues Padme’s lack of agency by getting her a lot more involved in the politics of Palpatine’s rise, which gives even more substance to Anakin’s fears about her getting in to some kind of trouble.
I want to take a moment to praise the prose, also. I was struck by the vivid imagery Stover uses, and the sheer imagination put into his metaphors. The descriptions of the Force are unusual and striking, something I wish was explored more in other Expanded Universe novels, but it was the battle scenes that impressed me the most. I’ve read battle scenes before that were boring, or a mess, difficult to parse and unintelligible. I’ve read battle scenes that had clarity and easy to comprehend. But I haven’t read many that not only had clarity but also flair and inventiveness, almost poetry, in them. Perhaps action scenes don’t immediately come to mind as moments to wax lyrical, perhaps this is why many authors treat them functionally, so it surprised me to read something that could almost be described as beautiful.
I can’t deny that Stover’s adaptation of Revenge of the Sith still in many ways contradicts and does not tally with the vision of the Clone Wars provided by Expanded Universe material before the prequels were ever conceived of - and I prefer the EU vision. But it’s simply too good to cut from my collection. Honestly, this book makes me wonder why R. A. Salvatore couldn’t have written a better adaptation of Attack of the Clones. Was it just because his source material was not as good, or was it because Stover is just a better author?
9 out of 10
But let’s backtrack for a second, because when I’m reviewing a Star Wars film novelisation, I’m often doing two jobs – firstly, commenting on the film’s story itself, and secondly, commenting on the quality of the author’s adaptation. I try to make it obvious which is which, but it’s worth my saying now that I can’t lay at Stover’s door anything which was the responsibility of George Lucas and the lead filmmakers.
I don’t think it’s controversial to state that it is generally agreed upon that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequels. That might not mean much if you consider it to be the best of a bad bunch. There are mixed feelings about the prequels among the fan community, and I’m deeply ambivalent about them myself. Look, I’ll say this straight up: despite all the criticism levelled at the prequels, I can safely say they are not the worst films I’ve ever seen. I can quite easily cite examples of worse. But at the same time, for me they are quite clearly not in the same league as the originals. Character stupidity, plotholes, bad dialogue, bad romance, too much action and a lack of the reflective heart and soul that was present in the originals… there’s many reasons why the prequels don’t measure up. Nevertheless, I do consider Revenge to be of a better calibre. Almost all of the silliness has been eliminated by necessity of the movie’s darker tone, which brings it closer to the life-and-death stakes and heroics of the originals, there’s no awful forced romance to cringe through, heck, the film even has brief flashes of genius. The musical score was excellent, and I can quite clearly recall my first viewing and being sucked in to the scene where Vader is being reconstructed. The alienness of the equipment, the claustrophobic shots, they were perfect in evoking the sheer primal terror of becoming trapped, physically as well as metaphorically, in a nightmare of your own making. I remember recoiling in revulsion. Aaaaand then that moment of genius was shattered by that dire, staged “nooo!” of legend. It isn’t that the line is wrong – it’s the delivery. Compared to Luke’s famous “nooo!” in Empire Strikes Back, which was ugly and messy and roiling with the anguish of a raw wound; this one was far too composed, and thus pompous and unintentionally hilarious.
There are still far too many criticisms that one can make, probably too many for me to recall in a single review. The story begins extremely abruptly, to the point where it is not immediately intuitive what is going on. Padme’s death is a truly groanworthy example of fridging – she has almost no agency of her own, and exists merely to die and spur a male protagonist’s character development. Plotholes abound with Leia remembering her mother, and Obi-Wan and Owen forgetting R2-D2 and C-3PO, calling Luke by his real name and putting him with his actual family which is the first place anyone would come looking for him and so forth. Midichlorians are still annoying because they’re a misguided attempt to put science into what was always supposed to be the mystical concept of the Force – Star Wars is space fantasy, not hard sci fi. I still prefer the Expanded Universe vision of the Clone Wars as a several-decades-long crumbling of the Republic’s centralised authority, with local disputes using unstable clones on both sides, a lawless wild frontier feel with the Jedi as itinerant nomads. But none of this can be laid at Stover’s door. Everything I’ve commented on so far belongs purely to the films.
What’s remarkable is that Stover takes the film as his basis, a film which, despite improvements on earlier prequels, still had plenty of annoying flaws, and creates a good book out of it. I mean really good. If you hadn’t guessed from the page count, Stover has a lot of room to expand upon scenes, add dialogue, and most importantly of all delve deep into the motivations of the characters.
The style with which Stover executes this may seem a little odd at first. Second person present tense isn’t something you see in many books, and I can’t recall it in any other Expanded Universe novel. It’s a type of narration that is very easy to get wrong; the perspective can be very narrowing, while the tense can feel clunky when readers are so used to past tense. But Stover dodges the perspective issues by using this narrative style in select scenes – not throughout the whole book – keeping a smooth flow while allowing the reader at very specific moments to understand with incredible intimacy the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of key characters. This extreme intimacy fleshes the characters out as they never appear in the film, the detail making them feel extraordinarily tangible as people, and giving readers a profound connection to them, and thus care for their fates. Stover doesn’t hold this exclusively for the protagonists either, but gives the same treatment to the antagonists too. Proper characterisation for antagonists is far too often overlooked, and results in villains who skirt the absurd with their lack of reasoning, desire, or motivation to explain their actions, villains who are too improbable to seem real.
Examining the characters with such intensity adds another benefit too: it makes it absolutely clear how confusion and human lack of omniscience can lead us to make horrible mistakes, even when we’re sure we’re doing the right thing, and especially when fear has a grip on us. This isn’t Star Wars lore – it’s real life. That’s why the story resonates so well with us. Anakin is a clear example of how fear can alter our behaviour, and by such alteration bring about exactly what we so desperately wish to avoid. And Stover digs deep into his character, more so than any other. His scenes are uncomfortable and unsettling, confronting us with our most primal terrors – am I good enough, does anyone love me, will I lose those who do love me? – and how our own identity can crumble and collapse if we don’t find good answers to those questions. It all hinges on whether we’re smart enough to realise that only we can give ourselves those answers and decide to step up and be our own hero, or whether we fall into the trap of thinking that some outside force, some poor person who has no more certainty than we do, or some secret miracle cure will fix all our problems.
Another thing that’s noticeable about the structure of the book is that Stover weights the beginning and middle of the story far heavier than the end. This might raise eyebrows, if you’re thinking that surely the final duels from the film should be the climax of the story and have the most attention lavished upon them. But it works. Anakin’s seduction is the meat of the story, and requires the most development to feel plausible; after all, a character changing sides from good to evil, doing a complete 180, this is the kind of pivot that needs to earn its payoff through being built up. The expansion of the opening battle was appreciated too, particularly as it gives Dooku the kind of development he really needed but never got in either Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. Stover throws in some very nice links with classic Empire era as well, through Dooku’s human-centric prejudices, and Palpatine’s imposition of system governors – this feels more like original Star Wars than any of the prequel novels have before. He even rescues Padme’s lack of agency by getting her a lot more involved in the politics of Palpatine’s rise, which gives even more substance to Anakin’s fears about her getting in to some kind of trouble.
I want to take a moment to praise the prose, also. I was struck by the vivid imagery Stover uses, and the sheer imagination put into his metaphors. The descriptions of the Force are unusual and striking, something I wish was explored more in other Expanded Universe novels, but it was the battle scenes that impressed me the most. I’ve read battle scenes before that were boring, or a mess, difficult to parse and unintelligible. I’ve read battle scenes that had clarity and easy to comprehend. But I haven’t read many that not only had clarity but also flair and inventiveness, almost poetry, in them. Perhaps action scenes don’t immediately come to mind as moments to wax lyrical, perhaps this is why many authors treat them functionally, so it surprised me to read something that could almost be described as beautiful.
I can’t deny that Stover’s adaptation of Revenge of the Sith still in many ways contradicts and does not tally with the vision of the Clone Wars provided by Expanded Universe material before the prequels were ever conceived of - and I prefer the EU vision. But it’s simply too good to cut from my collection. Honestly, this book makes me wonder why R. A. Salvatore couldn’t have written a better adaptation of Attack of the Clones. Was it just because his source material was not as good, or was it because Stover is just a better author?
9 out of 10
Beautifully written and, above all, saves Anakin Skywalker from George Lucas. Thank you.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
tense
fast-paced
My favorite Star Wars novel and movie.
2025 reread
Just in time for the 20th anniversary screening (and the second season of Andor!). Still brilliant. Still packed with emotion, drama, sizzling action, and so, so many amazing lines.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever.
2025 reread
Just in time for the 20th anniversary screening (and the second season of Andor!). Still brilliant. Still packed with emotion, drama, sizzling action, and so, so many amazing lines.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever.
I've finally read the novelization to my favorite Star Wars movie, and somehow, it made the story even better. Revenge of the Sith is often criticized for not properly depicting Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace, as he begins the story as a legendary Jedi hero, only to become one of the most villainous beings in the galaxy. I agree that this change is a little too drastic in the movie, though it's somewhat remedied by the Clone Wars tv show. But before that happened, we had this book.
There were some aspects of the novel that had me scratching my head, like Anakin thinking that Obi-Wan and Padmé were having an affair, or some of the dialogue feeling a little off to me. Star Wars isn't necessarily known for its subtlety, but this takes it to the next level with some very on the nose references to future events. Also why did Obi-Wan have to think about Anakin's butt for so long in that one chapter. Still not sure what the reason for that was.
However, this was a fantastic adaptation of the movie, truly focusing on the emotion and heartbreak that comes with not only the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith, but the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader. Delving into his bond with Obi-Wan even more than the movie did only made this so much more heart-wrenching.
"Anakin and Obi-Wan would never fight each other. They couldn’t. They’re a team. They’re the team. And both of them are sure they always will be."
I also loved how much more of Padmé we got to see here, and her conflict both within herself and with Anakin as their ideals become more and more different from each other. Padmé is a politician, and can see things in a more nuanced perspective than Anakin is able to, while Anakin is very clearly being manipulated by a powerful man that wants to use him only for his own political gain. She goes through so much turmoil at the thought of betraying her husband, but she will not relinquish her own beliefs for the sake of love. My major gripe with the movie is how little we see Padmé in an active role, and this book definitely helped with that.
Anakin himself is, as always, an extremely tragic character—and this book does not shy away from this. He is drowning in his own anxieties, his fear of death and loss overwhelming him whenever he gets a moment to himself. He becomes such an immensely relatable character, so when he begins walking down a darker path, you can't help but feel sorry for him after everything that has happened. One of my favorite parts of the book is how even as Vader, he isn't able to get rid of his fears and anxieties, no matter how much power he's able to get.
Given that this was published back in 2005 there are some elements which are considered non-canon now, so characters like Ahsoka don't exist and Maul is said to be dead despite the Siege of Mandalore occurring concurrently with this story, but I honestly thought it made reading this more exciting. I've never really consumed the Extended Universe before, so it was cool to see hints of what that contained while reading this book.
Anyways, I could go on about this book, but if you're a fan of Star Wars and this movie in particular then I highly recommend it. I'm not sure how accessible it will be if you've never consumed any Star Wars content at all, but watching at least the first two movies chronologically or everything up to Episode 3 in the release order should be good (basically, you don't need to watch this movie in particular, but maybe watch every other movie leading up to it).
(Also for an additional note, if you're not super into Star Wars, at least watch Andor. I need more people to watch Andor.)
There were some aspects of the novel that had me scratching my head, like Anakin thinking that Obi-Wan and Padmé were having an affair, or some of the dialogue feeling a little off to me. Star Wars isn't necessarily known for its subtlety, but this takes it to the next level with some very on the nose references to future events. Also why did Obi-Wan have to think about Anakin's butt for so long in that one chapter. Still not sure what the reason for that was.
However, this was a fantastic adaptation of the movie, truly focusing on the emotion and heartbreak that comes with not only the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith, but the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader. Delving into his bond with Obi-Wan even more than the movie did only made this so much more heart-wrenching.
"Anakin and Obi-Wan would never fight each other. They couldn’t. They’re a team. They’re the team. And both of them are sure they always will be."
I also loved how much more of Padmé we got to see here, and her conflict both within herself and with Anakin as their ideals become more and more different from each other. Padmé is a politician, and can see things in a more nuanced perspective than Anakin is able to, while Anakin is very clearly being manipulated by a powerful man that wants to use him only for his own political gain. She goes through so much turmoil at the thought of betraying her husband, but she will not relinquish her own beliefs for the sake of love. My major gripe with the movie is how little we see Padmé in an active role, and this book definitely helped with that.
Anakin himself is, as always, an extremely tragic character—and this book does not shy away from this. He is drowning in his own anxieties, his fear of death and loss overwhelming him whenever he gets a moment to himself. He becomes such an immensely relatable character, so when he begins walking down a darker path, you can't help but feel sorry for him after everything that has happened. One of my favorite parts of the book is how even as Vader, he isn't able to get rid of his fears and anxieties, no matter how much power he's able to get.
Given that this was published back in 2005 there are some elements which are considered non-canon now, so characters like Ahsoka don't exist and Maul is said to be dead despite the Siege of Mandalore occurring concurrently with this story, but I honestly thought it made reading this more exciting. I've never really consumed the Extended Universe before, so it was cool to see hints of what that contained while reading this book.
Anyways, I could go on about this book, but if you're a fan of Star Wars and this movie in particular then I highly recommend it. I'm not sure how accessible it will be if you've never consumed any Star Wars content at all, but watching at least the first two movies chronologically or everything up to Episode 3 in the release order should be good (basically, you don't need to watch this movie in particular, but maybe watch every other movie leading up to it).
(Also for an additional note, if you're not super into Star Wars, at least watch Andor. I need more people to watch Andor.)