I have finished reading Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars and I approve. The Jedi Doth Return has a lot of charm and is brimming with wit. There are, perhaps, too many soliloquies but I suppose that's to be expected when you're wrapping up a series and getting all of the characters' houses in order.
Darth Vader is wonderful: I really like the way Doescher frames his conflict and sets him up as a sympathetic character. Doescher does a much better job of communicating Vader's motivations and Anakin's faults and strengths than Lucas ever did.
Leia and Han are adorable, 3PO and R2 are a delightful comic foil for the rest of the cast, and - shockingly - the Ewoks are charming. There's a note in the afterword about the trouble that Doesher had with their language and his exhaustion with the cuddly beasts but he did a great job of solving those problems in a way that made them admirable and cute at the same time.
Luke is something of a blank in this novel but I suppose that's the part of the hero - he doesn't have to have his own personality, he just has to be something for your personality to reflect from. I did find myself wishing that there was a little more to Luke, but there was enough substance in everyone else to make up for it.
Cheers,
- Alli
Doescher, Ian. William Shakespeare's Star Wars: The Jedi Doth Return. Quirk Books.
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania. 2014.
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