Books A/V The Force Awakens Novelization Thread (TFA SPOILERS)

If I do end up getting the junior novel, I'll definitely review it as well. I have reviewed the adult novelization already. Not a huge fan, but it had some good moments. I like Alan Dean Foster, but this book didn't do much for me. I have heard some good things about the junior novelization so I am curious to read it. Maybe I'll hold off until next week when Bloodline comes out and pick up both books at the same time.

I post a review every two weeks, so not super often (I don't have tons of time to read while I'm at school), and lately I've been trying to alternate between canon and Legends stories with every review. I posted a review of Lords of the Sith earlier today. My next review will be either the novelization of Empire Strikes Back, or the original Marvel comic adaptation of A New Hope. Haven't decided yet!

 

Hope they keep Foster away from novelizations. It seems when he wrote this he just didn't take in the SW universe as a whole, and it felt very basic. No names of weapons, and the dialogue came off weird in how he reworked it (or else the original screenplay was like that?). I enjoyed it and will definitely read it again, but it just felt too shallow.

 

I am very curious about this line ;

So, Revenge is not the Kylo Ren's Dark Side way ? Or did First Order / Knights of Ren / Snoke made a new rule about the Revenge ?

Because Revenge is the most basic principle of the Sith, and even the name of the Episode III was ''REVENGE of the Sith.'' ....

Novelization of Episode III ;

Novelization of Episode I ;

Novelization of Episode V ;

Novelization of Episode VI ;

 

...Man, I can't believe Kylo Ren has the chutzpah to make fun of something as "adolescent".

 

You've got to admit, in the first half-hour or so, he seemed pretty deadly serious. His temper tantrum when the Falcon escaped Jakku started hinting at his true nature, of course.

 

Here's a weird fact I just learned about recently.

There's two different versions of the Junior novelization of TFA. The digital version and the print edition. They are different.

Here is something else I have not been able to personally verify but have seen a person talk about. I won't be able to verify it until I visit Books-A-Million or Barnes & Nobles and look at the print edition. Or someone else could do it for us.

 

Just a much belated follow-up to my post above, that scene does exist in the print edition of Kogge's Junior TFA novel. I found the passages within the book at the book store quite some time ago but forgot to mention it.

Also, it was announced yesterday that Kogge is also doing The Last Jedi junior novelization.

 

Finished the novelization (Hey, I waited for paperback and I'm slow) and I liked it mostly due to what some people were complaining, Foster's descriptions of the events of the film. While he may over-explain some things, and other bits he must be dipping deep into the thesaurus, I did like how he has a wry sense of humour about the proceedings which befits Star Wars (a description of Rey's day being tedium broken up with sheer panic to stay alive was good). While he doesn't add much new, although I did notice some mention on the Finalizer of Psychic Corps or something scary like that, there are a few bits where Kasadan / Abrams dialogue ends and what I assume is Foster's begins. Some things work well, like Kylo gets in a little monologue about the ethos of the First Order which is pretty cool, and I liked the in-depth description of the destruction of the Hosinan system. Hard to tell what is all Foster, though, because there is a lot of deleted scenes that worked their way into here (which I saw on the blu ray and apparently the 3D blu ray release had even more deleted scenes). Still, huge excitement for opening with a Journal of the Whills quote, that was a great callback to the ANH novelization.

One part that sticks in my head as to how Foster did it was the description of Han's death, while Abrams had that wonderfully heartfelt tragic moment of Han caressing Kylo's face as Williams music swelled, that isn't included in the novelization (probably not in the script and I believe Ford came up with it on set). So there's a moment of ... forgiveness from Han, that he still loves his son. Foster takes it in completely the other direction and doubles-down on how dark it is, like Ben is smiling at him and Han is just looking on in horror, confused and then dead. It's harsh but that is another way to play it.

the pace of the novel is a little odd, it takes forever (maybe 100 pages!) for them to get off Jakku but the 3rd act Starkiller Base stuff is, like, maybe 30 pages or so (I remember the Revenge of the Sith novelization was kind of like this where the 3rd act doesn't take as much page count as the Invisible Hand assault which takes, like, a third of the book). And Rey's walk to Luke is, like, 2 pages barely. But still dramatically powerful and I like the final line Foster ends on "She wondered what would happen next."

There is a moment where Rey meets Poe which is almost exactly like in their first meeting in The Last Jedi, maybe it was cut from TFA and they moved it to TLJ but ended up here. May be a bit of a brain-strainer as to how to reconcile it with their meeting in Last Jedi but I took a stab at it.

 

This only really crossed my mind today because the novelization is $2 for Kindle - same price as the digital short story contained within - but it did make me laugh. I know most people consider his thesaurus-rivaling prose pretty bad, but honestly, I thought it was funny at some points. Anyway.

Remembering some of the details, like "it is you!" on Starkiller Base, makes me almost want to revisit this novel to see how much my views on TFA will have changed since it was written compared to now, post-Last Jedi.

 

TLJ novelization should be better. Jason Fry is writing it

 

A bit (a lot?) of necroposting here, but wasn't it to be expected that they were going to be part of the high class of the New Republic and thus live in apartments of Coruscant? (like Padme did in ROTS) E.g. I love the dinner at the beginning of Betrayal, it really sets the tone for a new era, both in terms of the setting and of what gets discussed there.

 

And after watching Knives Out by Rian Johnson you can really appreciate dysfunctional family dinners... heck Knives Out is like LOTF, dinner with everyone pretending at first, then minor issues, then knives out and all at each others throats. Total war!

 

@The2ndQuest

Kylo's speech about the First Order is weird

 

I was thinking more this quote but I can see that

"It is the task of the First Order to remove the disorder from our own existence, so that civilization may be returned to the stability that promotes progress. A stability that existed under the Empire, was reduced to anarchy by the Rebellion, was inherited in turn by the so-called Republic, and will be restored by us. Future historians will look upon this as the time when a strong hand brought the rule of law back to civilization."

 

I have a question: when the Jakku scouts found Poe's demolished x-wing, it didn't occur to anyone that he may not have BEEN IN the x-wing when it exploded? They didn't want to take the chance of him being alive somewhere on Jakku? I know this isn't in Poe's character, but I wouldn't have blamed him if he felt a little bitter that absolutely everyone thought he was dead just because of the demolished x-wing and no sign of his body.

 

The First Order does not encourage its troops to think, that leads to all kinds of trouble....

 

I was actually talking about the Resistance. Leia hadn't heard from Poe so she sent a few people to Jakku, where they discovered Lor San Tekka dead and Poe's x-wing demolished.

 

Ah, sorry, yeah, they should know better. Certainly the 'no body' rule.

 

Oh man the TFA the novelization...The most bizarre of the Sequel Novels.