Warning: this review will contain spoilers to anyone who is not already familiar with the original Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
In writing, authors have three perspectives in which they write: 1st person, where the narrator is telling their own story. 2nd person, where the narrator is telling you, the reader, what you’re doing. 3rd person, where the narrator tells the story of a character or group of characters. Most modern books are told through either 1st person, or 3rd person close perspective when multiple character perspectives are desired.
For So You Want to be a Jedi, Author Adam Gidwitz chose to write primarily in the unconventional 2nd person perspective. Consider any books you’ve read in 2nd person. The only ones I can think of were the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” type books. Listening to this book almost feels like playing an old school pen and paper RPG with a Game Master who loves to wax poetic.
For most of the book, the reader is placed in the role of Luke Skywalker, with the narrator telling you what you are doing in present tense. At times however the narrator switches over to following the adventures of Han and Leia, or Vader’s Imperial Commanders from a shifting 3rd person omniscient position, also in the present tense. While this allows the story book to follow the multiple storylines it does it in such a way that you, the reader, can never feel really connected to those characters.
Like the other two books retelling the original Star Wars Trilogy that were released with it, SYWTOBAJ (Wow that’s a mouthful and I work for the Government) is labeled as Young Adult book. It is not. It is, at best, a Juvenile. YA fiction often had to deal with mature themes regarding growing up, growing as a person, and learning about the wide world around you. While this book does touch on those themes it also “will skip over the mushy parts.” I did a triple take when I heard that, and for the most part, the book does just that.
When most people think about Empire, they consider it one of the best of the Original Trilogy Star Wars movies. It develops greatly on A New Hope and expands on the nature of The Force and the Jedi, and the universe at large. This book tosses out most of that for fairy tale stylings, and adds a trite fairy tale about Yoda right in the middle of the book.
This book also has severe timeline issues. Empire never did a good job of showing the passage of time. Luke was supposed to have spent months on Dagobah in training, yet the movie made it feel like mere days. There were subtle cues they could have used to show this passage of time, but didn’t. This book never even touches on it, but heavily implies at the beginning that it takes place only a short time after the destruction of the Death Star, instead of three years later as is canon.
There are some bright spots in this book and it is how Adam Gidwitz sets a scene. Especially in the early parts of the book, the author, through the 2nd person POV, paints a vivid landscape for the reader with very few words. The imagery is great and draws the reader in, once you get past the odd 2nd person perspective.
The book also has a good scene where Luke is training on Dagobah and get chased by a giant wild Elephun. I won’t ruin the scene, but it is a fun listen, though it could have been a great scene if it had pointed out the influence of the Force on the events better.
Like The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, there are some odd deviations to the established scenes. Sometimes it’s a shift of characters that are present, or slightly different dialogue, except in the case of Yoda, where all of his early dialogue is changed and actually made even more confusing.
The book also pauses between chapters for “Jedi Lessons.” These are little more than exercises in concentration and meditation. There are also the constant references to things here in the real world that do not fit in the Star Wars universe, and the almost insulting descriptions of certain characters, while glossing over the descriptions of others.
Don’t even get me started on the bad physics that were described any time they climbed aboard a ship or fighter. I could go on far too long about those issues.
The audiobook was well put together for the most part, but I found the narrator’s Han voice grating, and his Leia voice was too similar to the Luke voice.
Overall score for the book: 1 star out of 5.
Audiobook Score: 3 out of 5 for the character voices.
“Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to be a Jedi?” by Adam Gidwitz audiobook | hardcover
Age Range: 8 – 12 years
Grade Level: 3 – 7
Series: Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Disney Lucasfilm Press; Ill edition (September 22, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1484709144
ISBN-13: 978-1484709146
Author
"Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to be a Jedi?" by Adam Gidwitz
Summary
When most people think about Empire, they consider it one of the best of the Original Trilogy Star Wars movies. It develops greatly on A New Hope and expands on the nature of The Force and the Jedi, and the universe at large. This book tosses out most of that for fairy tale stylings, and adds a trite fairy tale about Yoda right in the middle of the book.
Hi, Sean -. I enjoyed your review of the book. For what its worth, my 8-year-old daughter and I had a fantastic time reading this book (and are currently enjoying, though to a somewhat lesser extent, “Beware the Dark Side” – haven’t hit the Ep IV retelling yet). Personally, I thought the book was far stronger and more fun that it had any right to be. I really enjoyed all the humorous asides and character insights; I loved Yoda’s “story within the story” that he told Luke; and my daughter had a great time trying several of the “Jedi lessons” (balancing the book on the head, etc.), some of which I thought made some really important life lessons in kid-friendly language. I’m not sure it would bear many rereadings, but it was very entertaining and made the story feel fresh to me.