The second-to-last week of November, I finished reading The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition (Star Wars) on my Kindle after starting it a couple of months ago (August according to Goodreads). I had wanted to read it when I heard that there was going to be more story than what was in the movie, which you expect from a book, but maybe not necessarily from a book adaptation of a movie, let alone a Star Wars movie. I had previously read The Force Awakens (Star Wars) also on my Kindle a few years back and almost did not pick up TRoS because of how much I did not enjoy TFA novelization and, I think, Alan Dean Foster's treatment of the story from the film (which I apparently never talked about but may revisit before the end of the year); to note, I have not read Jason Fry's novelization of The Last Jedi (Star Wars). And just a word of warning, there will be spoilers as I do not see ways around it, but I will try to keep them to a minimum. But they will be there.
To date, I have only seen Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker once, which was when I saw it in the theatre with Conklederp back on December 20th, 2019 so when I started reading TRoS back in June, it had been just about six months since I had any connection to the story. It must have been around February when images from The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker book were being made public on Twitter and it was revealed that in Kylo Ren's opening scene, that he was actually on the planet of Mustafar, killing Sith cultists who make the pilgrimage to Darth Vader's planet while he was searching for the Sith Wayfinder. Knowing this little bit of information, which I cannot recall if it is mentioned at all in the movie, made this whole scene a lot more interesting, coupled with the revelation that in concept art Kylo would have met a large spider-like creature (now known as the Eye of Webbish Bog) that directs him to the Wayfinder. I then knew that I wanted to read this extended novelization, if only so that when I watch the movie again (under certain circumstances which I might get to later) I could have this background of information to put back into the movie.
For the most part, I felt that Rae Carson did a fantastic job with the Star Wars universe and the material from TRoS. There were more scenes involving Rose (but still felt that there could have been more), additional scenes with Zorii Bliss on Kijimi, a little more with ex-Stormtrooper Jannah, more development with Allegiant General Pryde and General Hux and why he was aiding the resistance. Even Lando's entrance and the rest of his scenes together felt more natural than just "Hey guys! You remember Lando right!? Lando Calrissian!? He's BACK BABY!!" And his final scene with Jannah, which seemed to be a bit on the cradle-robbing side had more context and inner-monologue to deter all those dirty-0ld-man vibes. There was even a full-on explanation as to how Darth Sideous survived after Return of the Jedi, which only ended up taking a couple of paragraphs but it definitely made his spontaneous return here a bit more palpable. There was even the Emperor's transmission, which previously was only listenable from an in-game event in Fortnite back in December 2019 and was mentioned in the opening crawl. There was also some explanation as to Leia's choices regarding Rey herself and put into context Rey's decision to reside at the Skywalker farm back on Tatooine (kind of, or at least that was how I interpreted Leia's interior monologue). And speaking of Leia, I felt that her characterization here was so much better than in the film, possibly because the dialogue in the book felt more natural than previously delivered lines being worked around to create a scene even if the delivery was not for its intended usage.
There were a couple of scenes from the movie that I do not recall happening in the book, with the main one being Rey's confrontation with Kylo Ren while she is aboard the Star Destroyer and he is searching Kijimi. The scene in the movie is actually well done with both characters being in two different locations and fighting each other while the camera pans around them allowing them to be in the same space and not at the same time. It played a lot better than I made it sound. I also do not recall, but I do not think that there was a scene in the book that went into Sheev Palpatine's lover and their child who then gave birth to Rey, which may end up being saved for a follow-up Star Wars novel or just left ambiguous until that plot point comes up again and needs to be corrected, ironed out, or added on to facilitate a new story. There was also a little bit more involving the Knights of Ren, although this might end up being something that is left to additional materials such as comics or secondary novels outside of the visual encyclopedias. I think that Carson even omitted Poe's line about Vice-Admiral Holdo's sacrifice/tactic (referred to as the "Holdo Maneuver") being "a million-in-one shot" which, in this humble human's opinion trivialized her final decisions in The Last Jedi; but I could be wrong and just do not remember the line being in the book as well.
What I ended up enjoying about Carson's writing was that I got the impression that she did more than reading the screenplay in an afternoon and wrote a story off of what she remembered. That she had seen the movie, seen concept art, possibly even seen deleted scenes and worked those elements into her adaptation of the film which did feel a lot more complete than the film. Sure there were things that I still had issues with story-wise but that is to be expected with nearly any Star Wars property. I will eventually pick up the Blu ray of The Rise of Skywalker, but I still want to wait just a little bit longer in hopes of an edition that has deleted scenes, or even a commentary, which JJ did not do for The Force Awakens until the 3D Blu ray was released six months after the initial release; although there is this edition which has two bonus discs, and trying to find out what exactly is on those is bonus discs has proven to be problematic. Hell, I am even tempted by The Rise of Skywalker art book after reading Carson's adaptation, so I guess that is recommendation enough.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental
P.S.
Another way of putting this entire article is that this novelization (and some of the story being told in The Mandalorian) did for me what The Clone Wars animated series did for the prequels.
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