A review by inhonoredglory
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back So You Want to Be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz
2.0
Of all the new Disney middle-grade retelling of the Star Wars trilogy, this one is the worst (with [b:Return of the Jedi: Beware the Power of the Dark Side!|21947311|Return of the Jedi Beware the Power of the Dark Side! (Star Wars Episode VI)|Tom Angleberger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1436154397s/21947311.jpg|41252282] leading my a mile and [b:A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy|21947304|A New Hope The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy (Star Wars Episode IV)|Alexandra Bracken|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433535272s/21947304.jpg|41252272] coming in a close second]. I know it's written for a younger audience, but some of the dumbing down was just too much. Potty jokes and such. Lost a lot of the motivations and beautiful complexities that were in the original. (The little Jedi lessons were fun though and I enjoyed them. I can see how a kid would really love them.)
I think the first red flag was the opening author's note, which told us Luke is an empty character, who we're supposed to fill with ourselves. Um... that's completely wrong. Luke is a very definite person who (yeah) we're supposed to see ourselves in, but not completely void of personality like Gidwitz believes. It's the reason he wrote it in second person, and the reason I can't really trust him with Star Wars henceforth. He doesn't feel like the fan that both Alexandra Bracken and Tom Angleberger are. His author's notes talk about the fairytale quality of Star Wars and I wish I felt that in his book, because boy would it be fun to take a deft, enchanted, but Grimms-dark journey through Empire Strikes Back. Instead of the weird trying-to-be-a-cool-bedtime-story retelling we got here.
I think the first red flag was the opening author's note, which told us Luke is an empty character, who we're supposed to fill with ourselves. Um... that's completely wrong. Luke is a very definite person who (yeah) we're supposed to see ourselves in, but not completely void of personality like Gidwitz believes. It's the reason he wrote it in second person, and the reason I can't really trust him with Star Wars henceforth. He doesn't feel like the fan that both Alexandra Bracken and Tom Angleberger are. His author's notes talk about the fairytale quality of Star Wars and I wish I felt that in his book, because boy would it be fun to take a deft, enchanted, but Grimms-dark journey through Empire Strikes Back. Instead of the weird trying-to-be-a-cool-bedtime-story retelling we got here.