Bookworms: The Empire Striketh Back (2014) by Ian Doescher

“Tis Vader, and ’tis Fate. Let it begin.” – Luke Skywalker

The Empire Striketh Back

Ian Doescher, and the Bard, are back with a vengeance in the second installment in the Star Wars Shakespearean saga. Author of the highly amusing, and successful, Verily, A New Hope, Doescher re-writes the second book in the Star Wars trilogy as Shakespeare might have done and the result is The Empire Striketh Back. Full of pompous, soliloquizing AT-AT walkers at the battle of Hoth, singing ugnaughts in Cloud City, a nefariously money grubbing Boba Fett, and Yoda, this installment in the Shakespeare Star Wars has much that will delight and tantalize the reader.

Doescher improves his craft the second time around, eschewing the overuse of the chorus to describe action, and instead puts the audience right in the scene by letting the characters speak for themselves to describe what is occurring. Thus, during the battle of Hoth, the AT-AT walkers speak, and strive together vocally in their struggle against the Rebel speeders. At other times the chorus is used, for instance during the lightsaber battle between Luke and Vader in the book’s climax, but this time fit the mood and provide a hallowed chorus to backdrop a battle of good and evil, of father and son. Other times a chorus is literally called for during the three songs, two by the ugnaught crew, and again in a mournful duet betwixt Chewbacca and Leia as they deal with the loss of Han Solo.

Utilizing all the tools at his disposal, Doescher lets Boba Fett, the basest of the base, speak not in iambic pentameter, but in prose, a most basic form of literary speech. Thus the bounty hunter is plainly amoral, for who but the most uncaring will not even speak in meter? Breaking a bit from Shakespearean convention, Yoda speaks in haiku. While Shakespeare never wrote haiku, it is still a poetic form, bearing meter, and carrying musical speech and is the perfect way to represent the backward speech pattern of Yoda in a higher literary form. The haiku fits perfectly with the iambic pentameter that is Luke and Artoo, but is just odd enough to stand out a bit. Yoda, in my opinion, has never sounded better:

When you use the Force
The Force, in your soul, begins
New paths to open

Throughout all, the lines that really crackle with fun and energy are those between Han Solo and Princess Leia. Their romantic love and back and forth bickering was made for iambic pentameter and the tropes of Shakespeare. Never has Elizabethan insults and Star Wars language come together in more perfect harmony. “Thou man of scruffy looks, thou who heard’st nerfs/ Thou fool-born wimpled roughhewn waste of flesh” is Leia’s jab at the cocky Solo who has enumerated on Leia’s overt affection in the south passage. Such delicious diction!

In all, William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back is another solid work of literary art and wonder. I absolutely love that Ian Doescher has taken the time and the immeasurable effort to give the world this book which might otherwise never exist. Fans of Star Wars and Shakespeare will find much to love and enjoy. And! The best part is that it is not over. The third book of the trilogy, The Jedi Doth Return, is set to be released on July 1, 2014. I cannot wait.

Read my review of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars on NerdSpan here.