SPOILER The Last Jedi Novelization by Jason Fry Discussion

Del Ray didn't provide us an early copy of the novel for the review, so we are reading it with the rest of you. We still don't know who will review it or when, but I wanted to open a thread so that people can have a place to discuss it as they finish reading.

The title of the thread is clear - this is a SPOILER THREAD, so you are entering and reading knowing that fact and on your own responsibility.

So, discuss away.






Still here?

Here are some tidbits I found interesting. Ben Solo and other students were the first generation of pupils Luke trained. He had spent decades having adventures with R2-D2, researching the Force and collecting artifacts, many of whom were stolen from Ach-To and which he returned when he came to the island.

He did teach Leia the basics of Force using - how to open herself to the Force, sense life around her and people's feelings and let it flow through her and she does that several times in the novel.

The deleted scene with Caretaker party is in the novel and Luke dances with Rey, but she is hurt and disappointed which sends her to the Dark Cave and inspires Luke to open himself to the Force. When he opens himself, he feels everything, Leia, the happenings in the galaxy, and decides that Rey is right and that he should come back. That is, until he catches her with Ben.

Luke has very dry humor in the novel. For example, when he says something along the lines: Great, one student wants to kill me, the other to be me.

The lightsaber breaks between Kylo and Rey because they are both trying to use the Force for their own goals, regardless of their motivations. This is the lesson Rey learns: Luke thought that the future was determined when he looked into Kylo's mind. She has the same exact temptation as Luke, to kill unconscious Kylo, but decides against it, basically letting the Force to sort him out, letting the will of the Force do it's work. Kylo still sees that fact - that she let him live - as a weakness, sentimentality that will be Rey's downfall.

The Dark Side is what you imagine. All of them, Snoke, Hux, Kylo, have their own ambitions. Hux sees himself as someone who will eventually rule the First Order and bring order to the galaxy as Snoke and Kylo are relics of the past. He is often referred as madman and is not respected by older officer who served the Empire. They are surprised when doesn't act impulsively. Snoke reflects how his leadership of the FO wasn't planed, but, sort of, improvised. He was, basically, at the right place at the right time and he either brought FO leaders to his way of thinking or dispatched them all together. He learned the secrets of the Force in forgotten systems of Unknown Regions, secrets Palpatine was aware of. Supremacy is his mobile capital.

In the beginning, Finn is obsessed with Rey, which annoys Rose. She warns him that Rey won't be the same when she returns. When they are reunited, Finn is reassured - she is different, but at the same time still old Rey. After Luke dies, Leia goes to the cockpit of Falcon to tell Chewie and breaks down. She cries in his embrace - for Han, for Luke, for Ben - they are the only ones left of their old band. It was incredibly touching moment.

Caretakers are rad.

This is it for a while. I'll come back later with more. If you have any thoughts or questions, fire away.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 7, 2018, Original Post Date: Mar 7, 2018 ---

Just to add this. Luke's dream is a true lesson of the story - the Force is showing him what his life and the galaxy would look like if he didn't go on the adventure in ANH. The result is a modest life for himself, but an iron grip of the Empire for the Galaxy. Leia is killed, Death Star destroys several planets besides Alderaan (Chandrila is one of them), everyone works for the Empire, etc.

 

Not really, plot is the same, they just expanded a little. Mainly on the stuff that couldn't be covered or shown in the movie - like inner thoughts, etc.

 

Some of them that we know of are in there: caretaker party, Finn encountering a storm trooper who thinks he was promoted to the officer on the Supremacy, etc. I can't be completely sure, until I see home release.

 

This is one example of Leia using the Force, also mentioning a bit of Luke's philosophy:

Spoiler: cut for space

Leia let it all wash over her, allowing its tides to carry her this way and that. Then she reached out for those individuals with whom she had an emotional connection.

On this point, Luke had explained, he had rejected the teachings of the Jedi. The Order had forbidden emotional attachments, warning that they left a Jedi vulnerable to the lures of the dark side. And indeed, it was a love curdled into jealousy and possessiveness that had led their father, Anakin Skywalker, into darkness and despair.

But Luke had disagreed with Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi that Anakin was lost to the light. He had insisted that the very emotional entanglements that had led Anakin to become Darth Vader might also draw him back—entanglements such as the stubborn love between a father and son, each of whom had thought the other lost.

Luke had been right—and ignoring his teachers had saved him, the Alliance, and the galaxy.

Leia reached out and found Ackbar—weary yet stolid, his mind sifting through worries in his usual orderly fashion. She sensed Connix was exhausted and uncertain, doubting. And Fossil’s grief for her lost bomber pilots was so raw and open that Leia instinctively retreated from it.

 

Leia thinking about Ben.

Spoiler: cut for size

Leia tried to stop herself from being drawn into her memories, even as she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

Ben in her womb, turning and tumbling in search of comfort, an ever-expanding radiance in the Force, but one shot through with veins of shadow. Luke had reassured her that was normal—the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. She’d desperately hoped that was true.

Ben as a baby, red-faced and round. His hair had been black from birth, impossibly fine and delicate—the softest thing Leia had ever imagined.

Ben as a toddler, forever following Han. Carrying the dice from the Millennium Falcon—the ones his father had used to win the beloved, battered freighter—and promising anyone who’d listen that one day he would be a pilot, too, like his daddy.

Ben in adolescence, his face grown lean above a strong jaw. A boy who always seemed alone, a churning storm in the Force. And whose anger had begun to manifest in malfunctions and breakdowns and objects that fell off shelves and shattered with no one near.

Ben, her son. Who’d been stolen from her and Han, stolen by Snoke’s wiles and Luke’s mistakes and his own furies. Who’d become Kylo Ren, the champion of the First Order—and his father’s murderer.

 

Canady is what I always wanted to see on screen, solid, intelligent Imperial (and FO) officer.