Star Wars: Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck

Star Wars: Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck
Buy Star Wars: Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: A quick summary of the stand-alone movie's kinetic plot.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 192	Date: April 2017
Publisher: Egmont
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781405285681
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The bad thing about bad people is they keep on getting worse. The Empire has done so much evil, but they're finding new depths – they've managed to get enough of a special kind of crystal to power a new planet-shattering weapon, the Death Star. The Rebel Alliance, such as it is, have found out this is no mere rumour, courtesy of word from the horse's mouth in the shape of an escaped Imperial pilot, and news has followed it that could inspire them to fight back, of a potential set of plans showing a flaw in the weapon's construction. But with the search for the plans going to be so dangerous, and with anything that might result from them going to be such a hare-brained response, how dare they possibly commit any of their limited resources on even getting them?

Yes, in our sterlingly achieved mission to bring you reviews you will not find anywhere else, we at the Bookbag proudly present a verdict of the junior novel of the Rogue One film from someone who's not even seen it yet. But I have read around the film, of course, and kind of knew the premise as detailed above. You may well know a lot more about what happens, and to whom and why, in which case you will be more knowledgeable about what should be in these pages and what should not. But here's my response.

The first thing to be said, is that there certainly could have been more description. We barely get any mention of what some characters look like – oddly, Darth Vader has a lot more than anyone else – and that lack of visual sense throughout did hamper understanding a little, especially at key moments. I think the book does just enough to get us into the heads of characters – it's a rapid-fire selection of sixty chapters, and at most here and there we get a line of interior thought being conveyed to us, but on the whole the writing is more concerned with transposing the action into the written medium, and gearing us from one set scene to another.

And again, that was handled reasonably well, but I did find the key beats of the film hard to visualise. The island paradise of the final action in my head is bound to be nothing like that on the DVD. I think actually the presentation here is just about average, meaning a lot of what I enjoyed here – the action, the sacrifice-minded heroism of the Death Star designer, et al – and what I found less enjoyable – the humdrum in-fighting between the baddies – should really be credited to the film's creators and not our author.

And some of that includes a little silliness. Taken at one level the whole film was designed to plug a hole in A New Hope – namely, why is the Death Star open to such an attack in the first place? This answers that, but then seems to replace that problem with kill switches in unlikely places, and bizarre things at the unusual end of gantries, etc. But there you go – nothing is allowed to be straightforward in such a famous galaxy.

Finally, though, to what Matt Forbeck didn't bring to the page, and that's anything inappropriate. We get no adult descriptions of wounds, pain, heartache, or anything, but in fact a perfect evocation of the darkness and dirtiness, if you like, needed for any Resistance effort to succeed. (That's helped by the pages having been designed to appear grubby, and the cover art to be matt, and sheen-free.) While I can't judge the film's balance of maturity and family-friendliness, this book, which doesn't take the committed, able reader much longer to get through than the actual cinema trip, does do what it is supposed to – convey the film in a manner that the child in its audience can feel ownership of the story. Especially is she or he has seen the movie, they will have a perfect understanding of everything here, and the drama will connect to them very strongly as a result.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

Taking similar material and treating it very differently, Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Files by Jason Fry is designed to be an in-universe look at how the characters concerned were handling the news of the Death Star discovery and the people charged with reacting. It has depth and background the kinetic novelisation cannot hope to match.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Star Wars: Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Star Wars: Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck at Amazon.com.

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