Book Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

 

Obviously, people have wildly different opinions on The Force Awakens, which was the movie that brought the Star Wars franchise back to theaters. This is a pretty standard novelization of the movie, although it is not a word-for-word reprint of the movie. Some of the dialogue gets changed slightly, and there is some material that was deleted from the movie (one particular scene involving Chewbacca and Unkar Plutt) that appears in the book. It fleshes out the story a bit and adds some context, but it does not give away anything that was not revealed in the movie (e.g., Rey's backstory).

So, ultimately, how you feel about the book is likely going to mirror how you feel about the movie. Personally, I liked the movie, although I strongly disagreed with having three different writers for each movie in the trilogy who could pretty much do what they wanted with the story. Although the different writers were more of an issue with the next installment, The Last Jedi. I think The Force Awaken developed the new characters well, incorporated the legacy characters fairly well (with one exception), and set up the new trilogy well. So, if you liked the movie, this is definitely worth reading.