Book Review: The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The novelization of the first film of the Disney sequel trilogy The Force Awakens hit the shelves a few weeks after the film’s premiere in theaters to avoid spoilers, written by fantasy-science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster based on the script by J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt.

Foster followed the film script faithfully, so faithfully that he barely was in any of the characters heads giving them personality or extra scenes to flesh out the story. But even sticking with the script, Foster’s writing was lackluster and his transition from character to character in the same scene was near confusing at times. What makes it worse is that Foster’s short story, “Bait”, had better writing and characters in ten pages than 300 pages of the primary story of the book. Of the few extra scenes or focus on characters, Foster did address how Rey knew the workings of the Millennium Falcon which helped the narrative as did how Poe Dameron survived but Rey’s use of the Force like the film came off lame. The other and lengthier short story, “The Perfect Weapon”, by Delilah S. Dawson is fantastic and the best reason to pick up this book.

The Force Awakens is a novelization that exists, honestly the two bonus short stories that take up the last quarter of the 400 pages were better reads and earned the second star of this rating.

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