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A review by goodverbsonly
The Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars: Episode V by Donald F. Glut
2.0
I'm thinking NOTHING will ever live up to my first star wars read, Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith. That shit is crazy and in comparison EVERY Star Wars novel sort of falls flat on its face.
I guess this shouldn't be too much of a surprise because of the following pieces of information: what I am looking for in a novelization (in particular, but also ALL star wars novels) is Darth Vader/Anakin nonsense (re: sadness) or information about the Jedi order. I am the prequels' BITCH, and it's very possible that this novelization, which reads very much like a prose-ified or even in places like a transcript of esb itself, was there to fill the void between seeing and reliving the movie to the best of your ability until a) return of the jedi came out or b) they replayed esb on tv and you were around to catch it. The prose is nothing special and it doesn't add anything to my understanding of the characters. Honestly, because it's been 40 years since this movie came out, and star wars has in a lot of ways grown beyond the original trilogy, I (and also you, and pretty much everyone with more than a passing interesting, and also some people with only a passing interest, in star wars) have a better understanding of the characters than this book has. I'm not giving it two stars for that reason, just...the lackluster prose.
On the other hand! I will say I think modern star wars fans are really missing out on the impish nature of Yoda's original concept which he never really lost, which means I am now walking away from this novel with an increased Love for Yoda. I've been diagnosed with Loving Yoda disease and you all can fight me.
Oh, also, I can't believe how distracted I was by the revelation that tauntauns are giant lizards with hair and blubber. This was so upsetting to me, because it rocked my understanding of life itself. I spent about two hours on Friday googling whether or not reptiles could live in cold climates, thinking that was stupid, stop trying to apply science to star wars, there's nothing to say that reptiles COULDN'T adapt like tauntauns, but then going bACK and being like: why AREN'T THEY MAMMALS? This is such a small thing, not the fault of this book at all (it could have been retconned at any time and hasn't been; they've retconned so much! they will retcon their own retcon! Lucasfilsm, PLEASE), and like, literally just a fact about tauntauns but it is STILL upsetting me.
I guess this shouldn't be too much of a surprise because of the following pieces of information: what I am looking for in a novelization (in particular, but also ALL star wars novels) is Darth Vader/Anakin nonsense (re: sadness) or information about the Jedi order. I am the prequels' BITCH, and it's very possible that this novelization, which reads very much like a prose-ified or even in places like a transcript of esb itself, was there to fill the void between seeing and reliving the movie to the best of your ability until a) return of the jedi came out or b) they replayed esb on tv and you were around to catch it. The prose is nothing special and it doesn't add anything to my understanding of the characters. Honestly, because it's been 40 years since this movie came out, and star wars has in a lot of ways grown beyond the original trilogy, I (and also you, and pretty much everyone with more than a passing interesting, and also some people with only a passing interest, in star wars) have a better understanding of the characters than this book has. I'm not giving it two stars for that reason, just...the lackluster prose.
On the other hand! I will say I think modern star wars fans are really missing out on the impish nature of Yoda's original concept which he never really lost, which means I am now walking away from this novel with an increased Love for Yoda. I've been diagnosed with Loving Yoda disease and you all can fight me.
Oh, also, I can't believe how distracted I was by the revelation that tauntauns are giant lizards with hair and blubber. This was so upsetting to me, because it rocked my understanding of life itself. I spent about two hours on Friday googling whether or not reptiles could live in cold climates, thinking that was stupid, stop trying to apply science to star wars, there's nothing to say that reptiles COULDN'T adapt like tauntauns, but then going bACK and being like: why AREN'T THEY MAMMALS? This is such a small thing, not the fault of this book at all (it could have been retconned at any time and hasn't been; they've retconned so much! they will retcon their own retcon! Lucasfilsm, PLEASE), and like, literally just a fact about tauntauns but it is STILL upsetting me.