Review - The Force Unleashed II

"The Force Unleashed II" - by Sean Williams - October 2010

The most recent Star Wars Novel, The Force Unleashed II is a tie in for the new Star Wars action game for console and PC. Now, as such, some of this means there are things that are outside of the author's hands. However, we are still going to review the book as his - perhaps much to his chagrin.

1. The EU - The Writing. This book is actually well written. William's verbal pacing, his grammar, his structure, these are all very well done, some of the most adept in the Expanded Universe. The individual pages were easy to read. (Please note: this is intended to be high praise, because it is going to get ugly, through no fault of William's own).

2. The Bad - This is a setting issue - but the idea of having Kota be this main general in the Rebellion is... well, dumb. Leia et al have no business having any Jedi Generals - and especially rogue Jedi Generals. This is just bad form. It would be acceptable except. . .

3. The Ugly - What's the Plot for an entire Novel, again? Seriously, the plot is. . . lacking. There is only one stream (which is understandable for a video game adaptation), but there are no... twists. And it's a shame - there could have been stages - Who am I, why am I here, ah, let me go rescue the girl. It's nothing but "I should rescue the girl" with no surprises, no jumps, no questions answered. In fact, the best question is one that is unanswered. . .

4. The Ugly - The ending fits cannon how? Seriously. The "happy ending" for the game gives something that would have rocked the entirety of the Universe. Okay - so how does this get fixed. . . how do we get from this ending point to where we know things are in just a year or so of story time? Now, that could be an interesting story (in fact, it almost might be something fun to write for that National Write a Novel Month thing in November - if you are so inclined or have good ideas how to apply an "I, Jedi" fix to this, I highly encourage you to do so).

I feel bad for these complaints because they are completely out of William's hands. It's almost as though we should just lambaste Lucas Arts for following up a game with such a wondrous story with such a... pre-Christmas money grab?

Grade - C-. It should be split - Wililams gets a B+ and Lucas Arts gets a D-. But I can't. Thus, I don't. Oh well.