Review: Vader's Little Princess
This article was originally published on Tuesday 2nd April 2013, but we'd thought we'd republish as it's Star Wars Day tomorrow (May 4th 2013).
Vader's Little Princess by Jeffrey Brown (Chronicle Books)
Star Wars is in a tough place at the moment.
After three of the most classic films ever created, as well as some pretty great RPG and FPS games, George Lucas decided it’d be a great idea to make a prequel trilogy, and we all know how well that ended up.
And so Star Wars slowly degraded into cult nerdiness, some people just deciding to forget the prequel trilogy all together. Now Star Wars waits in an awkward limbo; recently brought by Disney and trying to deal with the fans bad reaction to the World Of Warcraft rip free-to-play MMORPG.
Last year (2012), fans were delighted with the release of Darth Vader & Son, a series of short comics and pictures by Jeffery Brown. The book was incredibly funny and a huge hit. His next book in the (sort of) series, Vader’s Little Princess, comes out on Saturday 4th May 2013, but TheSprout has been lucky enough to get an exclusive review copy, which I picked up at the last editorial meeting [Sub-Ed Note: the next meeting is Thursday 25th April]. I’ve read through it quite a few times and I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it each time.
The art, as before, is very good. Though not incredibly detailed, its simplicity makes it more attractive to a younger audience, like with Tintin and Asterix, but is also very nice to look at, so older readers will enjoy it as well, like with Tintin and Asterix. The book follows Leia’s life in an alternate Star Wars universe where Anakin somehow keeps his kids as Leia goes from toddler to young adult. Lots of the scenes that happen in the film are recreated in the book, showing how Vader reacts to Luke and Leia’s actions; the destruction of the Death Star, their time on the forest moon of Endor and Hoth.
If you’ve never seen any of the good Star Wars films, you might not get the some of the jokes, but if you were buying or borrowing a book called Vader’s Little Princess, you’d probably already know plenty about Star Wars.
You’ll also probably won’t get most of the jokes if you’ve never been through or known someone who went from toddler to young adult. There are jokes about Leia getting her first TIE Fighter, Vader trying to deal with Han, as well as Leia asking Obi Wan for more pocket money. Most of the jokes are really quite funny, and there’s a good few of them, but since the book is largely made out of pictures, it doesn’t take that long to read. I’d managed finish the book by just reading it in the breaks of How I Met Your Mother and New Normal, which is only about fifteen to twenty minutes.
These fifteen – twenty minutes will be incredibly enjoyable, but that’s still only fifteen-to-twenty minutes. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to spend a whole £9.99 (£8.99 off Amazon) on a short enjoyable book when you can get War & Peace (Amazon) or Fallout: New Vegas (CeX) for £2 each. It’s a quality over quantity test. Before any comic artists have a small rant at me, I understand that comic books/graphic novels don’t take long to read and take quite long time to make, but seeing as the fantastic Runaways Vol.1 is only £7.50 (Amazon) and that’s one of my favourite pieces of literature ever written but also lasts longer than Vader’s Little Princess #JustSaying.
Vader’s Little Princess is a fantastic, if a little short, book. It’s the sort of book you’d take off the shelf in Waterstones and read a few pages, take it to the till and buy it, but realise when you get home that you’d nearly finished it whilst waiting in line to buy the book. You won’t regret the purchase, it just leaves an after taste of “Oh, I’ve finished? Hmm, okay then…” The jokes are really funny and the art is really nice to look at, I just find it hard to give it a huge recommendation because of its length and price. It’d make a good present for a Star Wars fan and I’d highly advise you get it if it gets a good price drop.
Vader's Little Princess comes out on Saturday 4th May 2013 (A.K.A National Star Wars Day)
If you're interested in reading, why not get involved with the Reading Power Book Club? The Reading Power Book Club is a new virtual book club for young people in Cardiff and involves Reading Power, Cardiff Libraries, Cardiff Council, TheSprout and you!
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