Lit Favorite Novelization

Books and movies are very different forms of story-telling mediums. So, reading the book version of a movie can be a different experience.

So, which translation from screen to page is your favorite? The sky's the limit from the original New Hope novelization to the Princess, Smuggler, and Farmboy re-telling we got recently. Even the novelizations of Clone Wars and Rebels episodes are fair game. Canonicity doesn't matter.

After voting, why not post what your favorite is and why you like it so much?

To get the ball rolling, I'll say that, so far, my favorite is the Force Awakens junior novelization by Michael Kogge; I think it captures the feel of the movies better than a lot of the other ones, and I love the extra scenes a lot. It's also one of the only novelizations I've had the urge to re-read, which isn't that common.

So, who's next?

 

Return of the Jedi, with Revenge of the Sith a very, very, very close second.

Edited to add: for the "why," I just thought ROTJ perfectly captured the wonder and fairytale atmosphere of the original movies. It's simpler and shorter than ROTS, but that actually works for me, especially since there was so much less of a universe to reference at the time. It still manages to expand on the movie in a way that I didn't think the ANH and TESB novelizations tried to do (the scene where Vader's mask is removed; the part where they try to convince the Ewoks to join up; the insights into various characters' minds, from Vader to Palpatine to Luke to Han to surprisingly secondary characters like Jerjerrod). And I love that a lot of it still maps perfectly onto the story we eventually got when the prequels came out twenty years later.

 

Revenge of the Sith, definitely. I enjoyed it more than the actual movie, and Anakin's fall made way more sense the way Stover wrote it.

I also really enjoyed A Princess, a Smuggler and a Farmboy, and the look into Leia's pre-ANH life, her thoughts on Alderaan (which we never really see in the old ANH novelization), and then Han's first thoughts meeting Leia.

 

Revenge is definitely on top, but I've always held a favorite spot for the AOTC junior novelization, as well was the recent Servant of the Empire series (which partially adapts Rebels episodes).

 

Revenge of the Sith since it brings in pretty much everything from the EU, including the comics. There were points of view that showed just how well Stover understood the characters that provide a very comprehensive view of the story. The originals were good, especially since there wasn't much extra story from '77-'83 but they didn't make me want more. ROTS made me want to read more, research more, know more, so that I could have a deeper relationship with the characters.

 

Matthew Stover's Dark Empire novelization. I've never read it, but it's gotten such good press here over the years that it has to be the best.

 

I've never heard of this one. Is this an adaptation of the Dark Empire comic book, or something else?

 

Stover's ROTS is a given. It should be excluded.

Traviss's Clone Wars novelization was a really good one. I eventually came away as a big fan of the show, but the movie, the first show...just an awful story. But Traviss managed to make it interesting.

 

There was something called The Test of Wills over on the domuspublica.net site - which was written in a somewhat similar style to Stover - even if it wasn't the same author.

 

The final battle between Luke and Palpatine did seem very like the one between Sidious & Yoda - at least the intro:


In the Senate Arena, lightning forked from the hands of a Sith, and bent away from the gesture of a Jedi to shock Redrobes into unconsciousness.
Then there were only the two of them.
Their clash transcended the personal; when new lightning blazed, it was not Palpatine burning Yoda with his hate, it was the Lord of all Sith scorching the Master of all Jedi into a smoldering huddle of clothing and green flesh.
A thousand years of hidden Sith exulted in their victory.
"Your time is over! The Sith rule the galaxy! Now and forever!"
And it was the whole of the Jedi Order that rocketed from its huddle, making of its own body a weapon to blast the Sith to the ground.
"At an end your rule is, and not short enough it was, I must say."
There appeared a blade the color of life.
From the shadow of a black wing, a small weapon—a holdout, an easily concealed backup, a tiny bit of treachery expressing the core of Sith mastery—slid into a withered hand and spat a flame- colored blade of its own.
When those blades met, it was more than Yoda against Palpatine, more the millennia of Sith against the legions of Jedi; this was the expression of the fundamental conflict of the universe itself.
Light against dark.
Winner take all.


And his "the shape" Luke references seemed to invoke Palpatine's "the shadow" ones.

 

The ROTJ novelization is so underrated it's criminal. It's beyond disappointing that James Kahn didn't do more with Star Wars. Stover's always on point, and he turns ROTS into something legitly beautiful, moving, and just incredibly memorable. It's everything the movie wanted to be and could've been, and one of the few SW books I end up regularly rereading. And the Clone Wars movie was pretty much **** for like...8/10ths of its runtime, but Traviss not only saved it, she followed up Stover in making a novelization that's just infinitely better than the movie.

Those were my three picks. And it kills me that I'm probably never gonna get another SW novel from any of them.

 

What happened to Publius and the Domus Publica? Lots of great fanfiction lost.

 

That is unfortunate. And mistaken, I think. He's pretty well respected in Star Wars circles. You two stay in contact?

 

It's still findable via web.archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120204063232/http://www.domuspublica.net/index.html

 

I'm the only one who voted for the original Star Wars novelization? Han Solo's dialog was so awesome in this book, and the word "laser" never even appeared once.

 

I like the six film novelizations for various reasons, though the best one is definitely RotS followed very closely by RotJ and TPM. RotS is everything the film and PT tried to be and more, with the epigraphs and introduction being some of the best stuff ever written, period. RotJ is excellent, especially Anakin's thoughts during the unmasking basically foreshadowing much of the PT. TPM is greatly enhanced by the extra scenes with Anakin, and the backstory for the Banite Sith and Darth Bane. TESB and AotC are good, despite largely just adapting what is on screen, because the extra scenes are welcome additions. ANH is an oddity in that the backstory offered is fairly consistent with what would later be established, but different enough that it almost doesn't fit with the rest of the universe, with plenty of subtle differences from the final film that were a product of the film's development, and make it a somewhat unique experience.

 

Another thing that makes far more sense in the novel is the duel with Mace and how he managed to fool the Galactic Senate into thinking the Jedi attempted to stage a coup. The way it plays out in the film is downright comical by comparison.

 

Revenge of the Sith and Attack of the Clones.

 

I like the Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones novelizations the best. On the other side of the spectrum, The Phantom Menace (it was so dull I've never gotten through it) and Revenge of the Sith are the ones I like the least. The Empire Strikes Back novelization is pretty "meh".