Quote: Episode III: Revenge of The Sith
A favoured quote from what should be a dumb book.
I’ve been reading Matt Stover’s Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which is a novelisation of, well, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, so the prequels are not exactly favourites of mine, but I recognise some of the ideas in there as worthwhile, and it’s taken me literally decades, but I also accept them as canon.
This book was written based on a read of the shooting script, and makes a lot of creative choices the film didn’t, mostly to its credit, but it is still fundamentally the same story. The genre skews a little more Hard Sci-Fi, but is still a big dumb genre tale.
However, I think what it mostly has going for it, and why I’m happy to crack it open, is the texture and quality of the writing.
For example, take this short excerpt:
Depowered lampdisks were rings of ghostly grey floating in the gloom. The shimmering jewelscape of Coruscant haloed the knife-edged shadow of the chair.
This was the office of the Chancellor.
Within the chair’s shadow sat another shadow: deeper, darker, formless and impenetrable, an abyssal umbra so profound that it drained light from the room around it.
Chef’s kiss - I could read that all day.