Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Star Wars (Del Rey)) Review

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(More customer reviews)Sean Williams' novel The Force Unleashed is part of a multimedia blitz from Lucasfilm centered around the release of a multi-platform next-gen videogame. This particular project was started in 2005 and has the twin goals of providing a unique and trail-blazing gaming experience while simultaneously adding an important new chapter to the overall Star Wars saga. I've followed the development of The Force Unleashed with a certain degree of skepticism, centered around my doubt that a storyline so focused on creating an over-the-top, ultra-powerful gaming experience would be able to also sustain a compelling narrative.
Now that the novel is here, it appears my concerns were well-founded. The book reads like a summary of a videogame. Yes, that's what it is, but that doesn't lend itself to a well-rounded story. The characters in the book are thinly sketched, the plot is a series of "missions" that end in what are clearly boss fights in the game, and the bigger storyline has such a fundamental impact on the overall story of the saga that it undermines itself by being too rushed. Large expanses of the chapters are devoted either to tedious action sequences or the inner monologues of two of the characters, so not much room is left for meaningful exposition or more exploration of the plot's impact on the other main characters.
The two characters that get the bulk of the attention are Darth Vader's secret apprentice, a boy he has raised to eventually help him overthrow the Emperor, and Juno Eclipse, an Imperial pilot with misgivings about the side of the war she has chosen to fight for. The secret apprentice is the main character in the game, and his missions have a bizarrely amoral bent to them. Since Vader wants him to remain completely secret from everyone in the galaxy, that entails the apprentice slaughtering every single person that crosses his path, even his supposed Imperial allies. It feels like the storyline creators (while Sean Williams wrote this novel, it is based on the overall story from Haden Blackman), were concerned that this character might be too evil if he only wiped out good guys, and so they alleviate that by having him kill everybody. I find it hard to reconcile the apprentice's massive killing sprees with the vastly different role he is placed in at the end of the book.
The other difficulty with the apprentice's missions is the lack of tension during the action. He mows down any number of any enemies he encounters with no problems. His ability to tap the Force is close to unlimited, which is an interesting concept but it certainly doesn't make for a gripping fight scene. There are many descriptions of piles of bodies, people flying into walls, waves of Force power rippling through rooms, but the sequences are so nebulously depicted that they don't have enough impact. He does struggle some in the boss fights, but fans of Darth Vader as he was portrayed in the original trilogy are probably not going to like how his fight with the apprentice turns out here. I also was surprised how quickly his battle with Jedi Master Shaak Ti was resolved. Here is a leading Jedi who had survived sixteen long years since Order 66: it felt like there was a lot more story left to be told. Not to mention her apprentice, who essentially turns bad, fights the apprentice, and runs off, again feeling too much like a scene from the game and not a fully-realized story.
Williams describes the settings well and it is easy to visualize the distinct locations the story rapidly moves through. I enjoyed the brief appearance of a certain Rebel original trilogy character, and the apprentice's droid sidekick Proxy is an innovative concept. Proxy has a hologram technology that allows him to appear as anybody he has in his database, which has interesting ramifications for communications, fight training, and potentially for the apprentice's spy missions. He also provides a few nice moments of comic relief.
I won't spoil the end events of the story, which have a significant impact on the original trilogy of movies. Suffice it to say that they open up some interesting ideas, but I sorely wish Williams could have been freed to spend most of the book on this plotline and a whole lot less on action sequences. After reading the book, I am optimistic that the game itself may be a very engaging experience, but I would mostly recommend the novelization to hardcore fans who, like myself, want to know all the ins and outs of the larger saga.


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