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eBook – The Empire Striketh Back

eBook –  The Empire Striketh Back Full title :  William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back By : Ian Doescher  Iillustrations :  Nicolas Delort Score : 9/10 Year : 2014 Publisher : Quirk Books  eISBN :  978-1-59474-716-8 Based on  978-1-59474-715-1 (hard cover) Pages : 176 *  Language : English From Goodreads : Hot on the heels of the New York Times best seller William Shakespeare’s Star Wars comes the next two installments of the original trilogy: William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back  (and not reviewed as yet,  William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return.) Return to the star-crossed galaxy far, far away as the brooding young hero, a power-mad emperor, and their jesting droids match wits, struggle for power, and soliloquize in elegant and impeccable iambic pentameter. Illustrated with beautiful black-and-white Elizabethan-style artwork, these two plays offer essential reading for all ages. Something Wookiee this way comes!  *** As he explains at the end, Ian Doescher

Books - Lord of the Rings (part 2)








Books - Lord of the Rings
Author : JRR Tokkien
Score:  9/10
Years: 1954+1955
Publisher : Harper Collins 
ISBN: 9780007269709  ; 9780007269716 ; 9780007269723
(box set ISBN is 9780007355143)

Pages: 1349 pages+ appendices (my edition) (total 1567 numbered + 5 unnumebred for maps)



Bilbo’s 111th birthday party starts this marvellous sequel to the 1937 The Hobbit, which had been re-written several times to accommodate the arc told in the LOTR, an epic quest to get rid of the One ring of Power Bilbo had found during The Hobbit, but this isn’t an easy task as one finds out in this amazing high fantasy novel.


Tolkien’s gift is here exponentially shown as the narration unfolds ; each word and each sentence is chosen with great care and is full with poetic and beautiful writing, with an unmatched style and eloquence. Simply put, this raises the bar in quality that you’ll want to throw any other book, quickly deemed boring and badly written book, straight into the bin! 


Tolkien includes many poems, in English but also in languages he invented for the various races of Middle Earth where the story unfolds.


At the end of the tale, extensive appendices complete the already long read (1349 pages ) and give insight both to elements before the story had begun, and some of the characters’ evolution after the events of the main plot. 


This time, our Master storyteller didn’t forget female characters, and even gave us a great line I shall let you (rare readers who never read LOTR) to discover it. However, there is no proper balance between the genders - so, although the technical prowess in the storytelling would warrant a perfect 10/10, the modern reader has to accept this limitation and reduce the overall score. 


Total score is a near perfection 9/10.

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