I read the Jedi Prince series when I was 9 years old. I loved the books back then. I can still remember some of the characters, the plots, certain sequences and developments that made my pre-pubescent mind explode with thrills. I don't know how they would stand up now, being children's books, and having been out of my possession for probably ten years. But they're about Star Wars, with all the characters I loved, plus an overall cool story, so right there they're looking good. And without recalling their merits or weaknesses, I remember they accomplished two of the primary things fiction should: they stimulated my imagination and thoroughly entertained me. Years after reading the series, still excited by the books, I went on to write my own Star Wars fan fiction, which was pretty bad. I was 12 or 13 by that point, but it didn't matter. Star Wars never stops being awesome. If you ever "grow out" of Star Wars you'd might as well die, because you're already dead inside. I've looked up stuff about these books that have memories flooding back into me. And there's some cool stuff there that probably wouldn't seem as cool now, and would even appear as obviously poor as it maybe originally was, but goddammit, it was cool then. And it seems the writing is pretty awful through and through. And the horrible characterization of the classic characters. And the weirdly overstated environmental message that I never picked up on as a kid. But the illustrations were cool. And again, the stories were neat. I don't even think these books are officially part of Star Wars canon, though I could be wrong. That seems to be the general consensus by people who know more about Star Wars than me. Doesn't matter. A 9 year old doesn't care about canon. I was excited about the whole Star Wars universe, the endless possibilities, the alien races, the technology, the Force, the history of the Empire and the Rebellion and the wars and the worlds and the people, the action, the imagination-inspiring simple stories that regaled me in my youth. These books cover a lot of stuff in a simple way, maybe too simple. But hell, they're for kids. This poor "review" is for the whole series, not for this particular book. I can't separate them into 6 books in my memory, just one overall Star Wars story arc for young folk. So I'm rating them all together rather than individually. I'm trying to take into account their simplicity, their bad writing, and trying to judge it from a different perspective than when I was 9. Hard to do. The rating is probably meaningless. All I know is that with all its weaknesses and silliness and badness from a technical standpoint, it's still better than Hemingway and Joyce.
Sure, it's a "kids" book, and the environmentalist push toward the end is in retrospect rather heavy-handed, but this isn't all that bad. The dialogue is a bit goofy at times, but trying to capture famous characters is certainly a challenge, especially with so little material to base characterizations upon (3 movies is rather different from, say, 7 seasons of a TV series) - especially when intentionally watering their dialogue down for a younger audience. (Though the choice to transcribe Chewie and R2's dialogue does get a bit annoying.) The book (and whole series) suffers from that "let's only mention planets we've seen/heard of before" limitation, whether foisted upon the creative teams by the owning company or not, but if you can easily overlook that sort of thing, with the right attitude it adds to the familiarity of it all more than distracts. The time on Calamar is interesting enough while being fairly believable and credible for the Star Wars Universe (laying aside the notion a race intelligent enough to build large, powerful space craft should be able to overcome whaling).The premise of the villain being a three-eyed mutant proclaiming to be the new Emperor feels initially goofy and "kid-book like," especially when adding in the notion of "Darth Vader's glove is indestructible and a symbol of power," but those ideas are developed in rather impressive ways. The idea of Trioculus being the Emperor's son may seem goofy, but it, too, is handled rather well when we find out it's all a ruse concocted by the Grand Moffs who want to re-solidify their power and authority now that a large vacuum exists in the upper echelons of the Empire. This "kids book" has some rather intelligent components to it, such as the political machinations of the Grand Moffs as just mentioned, the glove of Darth Vader being useless for Trioculus since he isn't a real Force user (and relies on technology that is killing him as part of the ruse), the Emperor's real son is being kept locked away because he is supposedly insane - they may not sound like much hear, but they do come together rather well, even with all the "kid book" goofiness (like the acronyms for everything and such). Still, this book has a fair amount of violence, death, threats, deception, and more, so its "kid book" status is somewhat dependent on your own maturity-level awareness. Not too shabby, after all - it has held up rather well.
What do You think about The Glove Of Darth Vader (1992)?
I liked this book, the Glove of Darth Vader, because it is a book off the series of the movie classics of George Lucas. The characters of the original stories are there, for example Han Solo, Luke and Leia. The story is well written and the text size is rather bigger for my taste. The book does have pictures and yes this book does seem not as advanced for the 10th grade and your right, but I didn't let this stop me from reading it. The book is about a new evil empire taking over with a stronger Death Star planet. If you like scientific fiction, I would recommend this book to you. This book was enjoyable and would be great to read anytime in the year.
—Frank Rivera
