REVIEW: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S THE JEDI DOTH RETURN / AUTHOR: IAN DOESCHER / PUBLISHER: QUIRK BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Concluding the trilogy retelling the original Star Wars films as if they were a series of plays by the great Shakespeare himself, The Jedi Doth Return proves to be a definite improvement over past books.

While Verily, A New Hope emulated many sequences of the plays, it was to the point of outright copying lines from Hamlet at times and often came across as tongue in cheek. Here however, the tale is consistently played far more straight-faced and is all the better for it, with an air of seriousness which makes the jokes all the funnier.

While it would have been easy to merely slightly alter Ackbar’s famous line, we are offered instead the likes of this: “Most vile, O trick of the Empire’s basest wit. A snare, a ruse, a ploy; and we the fools. What great deception hath been plied today – O rebels, do you hear? Fie, ‘tis a trap!”

This is a book you can truly judge by its cover, with everything you would expect from Star Wars written as a Tudor play, from soliloquies to R2-D2 playing the Shakespearian fool. This said, some scenes are distinctly uneven, with the chorus expected to provide description for the bigger details during battles. Furthermore, casual fans will miss some of the jokes intended for those with a greater awareness of the fandom and the (now dead) Expanded Universe, especially one priceless comment about midichlorians.

Still, despite this, it’s one well worth picking up if you are at all amused by the concept.