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! 

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As he explains at the end, Ian Doescher took to heart various criticisms in the first of his William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series to better blend these two universes  ; thus in The Empire, he used the Chorus less frequently, and used the arrival of new characters in this chapter in order to diversify from iambic pentameter to include his own take of  modernized Haikus and Prose passages. 

He even went so far to give more depth to some characters, including ones who never talk in the original movie - thoughts from creatures, droids and the like are blended into the action of the main cast. 

Just like Ian's Shakespean take on IV : A New Hope, If you've seen the movie in any of its versions, you won't be surprised as to the story told here ; just like that previous volume, internal thoughts and possible dialogues based on the story convert it to a Play, expanding here only through inner thoughts of such creatures and characters we never heard, nor necessarily put words onto their on-screen actions and re-actions. Ian keeps the logic of composition faithful to the story. 

This Play is comprised of a Prologue, followed by 3 Acts of 7 Scenes each, a 4th Act of 5 and 5th, last Act of 4 Scenes. 

Just like any play, you'll see names of characters as they enter, speak and/or think, and exit the scene ; the novelty in this book is that it presents the play, written mostly in modern, easy to understand English, inserting at times old-timey English à-la-Shakespeare in a rather balanced way and usually easy to follow - one may need to check the meanings of old-English words if not familiarized to them. 

Characters are mostly identical to their movie-counterpart, once more exaggerated as per a play. 

The Empire Striketh Back is yet another funny book to read and respectful of the Saga in its whole. 

The Acts are all illustrated in Elizabethan-style artwork, once more by Nicolas Delort.

PS I used both ebook and book tags, though I read only the digital version - I may eventually buy this and other volumes in the series, to complete what started with Ian's first book, for chapter IV.