Star Wars: Return of the Jedi by James Kahn

Novelisations are written with the intent of merchandisation - an effort to increase profit over a short period of time, through reprint or by hasty writing, inserting prose into a movie script.

Often, I doubt the need for them. Few care, home media is available, and, especially when written for children, little is added; a lot detracted by presenting the story in prose rather than the visual format it desperately needs.

James Kahn manages to turn a visual screenplay into an engaging novel, giving extra depth that is either not noticed or not present within the movie. It may be clarity - a small detail, its inclusion logical, but easy to miss. Through this novel, I now know that Han was conscious for the entire year of being frozen in carbonite - the movie is paced well enough to not consider this. Chewbacca can control the AT-ST as it is standardized technology, not through imperial experience.

But it also gives an opportunity to be expansive - reveal the backstory of people and places more than a decade before the prequel trilogy began; present the unobvious thoughts of characters - adding deeper into characterisation. Children's novelisations will present the obvious, and brief, through thoughts - the screenplay itself will already have made those thoughts clear. The bleak uninhabitance of Endor in contrast to its moon; Jabba the Hutt's development into his current, repulsive form; Leia's childhood, foreshadowing her learning that she is Luke's sister, whilst already known to Luke. Vader's return to the light side is beautifully written, his fear behind the mask before the mask is removed presented here; his exposure to world as it actually exists for the first time in over two decades.

Slyly, Kahn gives reference to the world of the reader - he often gives similes between intergalactic creatures and those of our world, creating a frame of reference. A Rancor is "the size of an elephant" and "somehow reptillian."

Ewoks pet Iguanas, you know.

On page 120, C-3PO's role as a deity is explored upon - "And it was good," referencing Genesis. Chapter 9 even begins with the sentence "the two space armadas, like their sea-bound counterparts of another time and galaxy..."

Because of the timeframe of final editing and writing of the novel, the book includes some deleted scenes, such as the construction of Luke's lightsaber and the Sandstorm. Their inclusion is effective - not simply for curiosity value, but it adds to the slower pace required for a novel compared to the more restrained running time of a movie.

And, this is where a novelisation  is engaging, by moving past the restraints of a movie, instead of being restrained by the movie's limitations, playing word for word and scene for scene. That, my friends, is effortless money-making. This is literature.