Return Of The Jedi – James Kahn, 1983 ★★

Back when We Thought it Was Over

Funny all the crazy things we believed in back in 1983: imminent nuclear holocaust, supply-side economics, Hitler’s diary, and the Star Wars franchise coming to an end after just three films.

Return Of The Jedi was not the end, or even the end of the beginning; later Star Wars movies have been set chronologically both before and after this. But Jedi does conclude the original story arc about a farm boy who discovers himself to be the son of an evil galactic overlord, and how he and his friends restore good to the universe.

As a movie, it’s widely regarded as the weakest of the original trilogy, but it does something no other Star Wars film ever attempted by wrapping everything up.

The Empire Strikes Back – Donald F. Glut, 1980 ★½

The Force is Weak with this One

You just broke box-office records, redefined special effects, and kindled sci-fi mania in an entire generation. What to do for an encore?

In the case of George Lucas and the people behind Star Wars, you take a sledgehammer to expectations and give the audience what no one thought they ever wanted. Less thrills, less humor, no happy ending.

That’s the conventional take on The Empire Strikes Back, joined to the fact this risky gamble worked, galvanizing its fan base and transforming a blockbuster into a franchise. So why is it so unimpressive as a novel?

Star Wars – George Lucas, 1976 ★★★½

Another Galaxy, Another Time

Reading an adventure story after seeing it as a movie might seem a waste of time. You already got all its thrills in more visceral form.

But back in the day, when home video meant Super 8 or slide shows, a novelization of a just-released movie was something to own, and read. And when that novelization was of this amazing cinematic experience which had become our generation’s Beatles-at-Ed-Sullivan moment, you even brought it to school to wave around in homeroom.

How to review Star Wars the novel? For me, it’s not about ignoring the nostalgia as much as contextualizing it just enough to appreciate a first-class adventure story with more strings attached now than in 1976.

Red Duster, White Ensign: The Story Of Malta And The Malta Convoys – Ian Cameron, 1960 ★★★

Steaming against the Odds

For want of a nail, the boot was lost. New life got breathed into a tired old adage in 1943 when the failure to secure a narrow island fortress just off the coast of Sicily wound up costing the Axis the entire Mediterranean and that biggest and most famous of boots, Italy.

How did British naval forces and the people of Malta, then a Crown colony, pull off this amazing upset? Ian Cameron lays out just how close matters came to falling Hitler’s way.

Jude The Obscure – Thomas Hardy, 1895 ★★

The Cruelest Art

As is so with butchers and lawyers, being a good novelist requires more than a little healthy sadism. Needs of drama and conflict require putting characters through the wringer, even (especially?) those you like.

Perhaps Thomas Hardy minded that as, after Jude The Obscure, he left novels behind and switched to poetry.

If so, he made sure he got every last dreg of cruelty out of his system by spilling it on the page of his final manuscript.