Star Wars The Force Awakens Novel by Michael Kogge

Star Wars The Force Awakens Novel by Michael Kogge
Buy Star Wars The Force Awakens Novel by Michael Kogge at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: The novelisation for the junior reader finally arrives, and with it comes one more slice of the very kinetic pie called The Force Awakens.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 188	Date: April 2016
Publisher: Egmont
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781405283939
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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Actually, it was any place on this planet you care to mention. Adults took their children along to see a proper time machine – one that would take the parents back to a future-seeming science fantasy action film, and would transport children to an ideal place where derring-do did, where spacecraft never bothered with taking fourteen parsecs to do the Kessel Run when they could do it in twelve, and where high-octane action was to be had. The time machine was called The Force Awakens, the seventh film in the enduring series. But when they got home there were no books suitable for the young readers to use to engage with what they'd just seen. The Alan Dean Foster adaptation of the script was for adults – it was a lot longer and more wordy than they were used to. They had to wait months for a book telling the story their way. But now it’s arrived.

Yes, and it arrived in a package containing a brilliant pictorial version of the story, so it had a lot to do to make itself stand out. But on the whole it does. The narrative is fine, really getting in to the action and the character both, so you see, for example, Finn's personal rebellion just as much as you do the swooping dogfights and dramas elsewhere. It being a very PG telling of a PG story, you don’t get all the details that appear, however briefly, on screen. There's no real death and destruction, nor even the real reason Finn's helmet gets bloodied.

What you also get, however, are 'exclusive scenes', and I suppose you have to call them that, not having read the adult novel; they certainly don't correspond with the DVD's dropped material. They don't amount to much, all told, however – Imperial Stormtroopers shouldn't be all jock-ular after a training hologram that's borrowed from X-Men and Star Trek; extra bits surrounding Rey with BB-8 don't add anything really. But the real nitty-gritty of the drama is inescapable, and we're soon leaving Poe to his journey back to civilisation, and in full flight.

And we're fully in the story, just as we should be. We're in the world of the series much more, in fact, than we might be from just watching the film. I'm sure it never named Ren's main ship, and you can leave the cinema unaware of the name of that huge boss of his, as well as the beast of burden when BB-8 is first fought over. It's only because this is such a well-loved franchise that such minor details matter. And while this book doesn't quite have the va-va-voom, the force of the source material, it serves to bring the story to the bookshelf, from where I am sure it will routinely lifted.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

The Snare (Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space) by Cavan Scott starts another series for this age range with more or less wholly new characters.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Star Wars The Force Awakens Novel by Michael Kogge 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 The Force Awakens Novel by Michael Kogge at Amazon.com.

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