Ian Doescher

A retelling of Star wars in the style of Shakespeare, in which a wise Jedi knight, an evil Sith lord, a beautiful captive princess, and a young hero coming of age reflect the valor and villainy of the Bard's greatest plays.

Verily, a New Hope

Star Wars

Kimberly Burgess 

OMG this was hilarious -if you love the movies, you need to listen to this audiobook 🤣🤣🤣

Annie

"Friends, rebels, starfighters, lend me your ears. Wish not we had a single fighter more, If we are mark’d to die, we are enough To make our planets proud. But should we win, We fewer rebels share the greater fame. We all have sacrific’d unto this cause." - Ian Doescher, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope

5/5 Read 103 this year.

I recently got this in audiobook format from the library to listen to on a long road trip. I fell madly in love with this. I love Shakespeare, and I love Star Wars, so naturally I knew I would like this series adaptations,. But I did not realize how much of an obsession I would get from this. I believe the best way to read these books is through the audiobooks, because the entire 'play' is acted out by numerous authors. It only adds to the hilarity and fun of these books. Taking the Star Wars books and movies and putting them into a play using Old English, is done so well by Ian Doescher. He is clearly a fan of Star Wars, and has studied and read lots of Shakespeare as well. You can tell through the speech of each character, how much time he took to translate the wording and make sure it was in iambic pentameter. Even though the entire novel is written in Old English, and structured the same way, it is not hard to follow along. Even those individuals who are not use to Shakespearean verse will be able to understand the action and emotions that each of these characters portray. All in all, I have this book a 5 out of 5, because it is hands down perfect.

Destiny Martino

As both a fan of Star Wars and a student of Shakespeare, I really wanted to love this book. The concept laid out here was absolutely brilliant and exciting, but it fell short in execution. From the simple stance of satire, the book does its job, and anyone who is just a fan of Star Wars will probably find it extremely amusing, but if you have any real grasp of Shakespeare it is a bit maddening. 

The first thing I noticed was the overuse of a chorus. I could understand the presence of a chorus to relate the prologue and even perhaps an epilogue, but it seems to be used every single time any sort of action takes place. While Shakespeare did use a chorus in Henry V, it is used only as an introduction to each act, not intermixed with the dialogue of other characters as well. One thing Shakespeare is always praised for is how well stage direction is given within dialogue to make it unnecessary to spell it out, the chorus seems a crutch for this here.

Second problem, would be the excessive "asides." It is constantly happening in every scene, and while I was initially excited to see R2D2 given some dialogue through asides, it was quickly cheapened by every other character speaking in asides every chance they had.

The third problem, and possibly the most jarring for me, was the poor language. I have seen other people review this book and talk about how spot on the language was, and I could only assume they have an elementary understanding of Shakespeare at most. The dialogue read like someone pretending to speak like a Shakespeare play without every having actually read one. The book was full of thou, thy, and thine, with few, if any you or your.

"Romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink
How nice the quarrel was, and urged withal 
YOUR high displeasure."

Thou and you had different uses, but here the thous appeared overused in an attempt to sound Shakespearean. The book was also littered with pointless verily's and other words that were obviously thrown in to sound Shakespearean, but were overused to the point of eye-rolling. 

Finally, there were several identifiable lines that were taken directly from some of Shakespeare's plays and altered to fit the theme of Star Wars ("Alas, poor Stormtrooper," "Friends, rebels, starfighters, lend me your ears," "Once more unto the trench, dear friends"). Again, this felt like a forced attempt to sound Shakespearean by inserting well known quotes that even the most unfamiliar with Shakespeare would recognize. 

Will I read the other books? Yes. Part of me hopes that they will improve, but I doubt it. I will read them because I am a fan of Star Wars and Shakespeare and I want to have at least read them once for reference. I will own them as well, and display them, more because the symbolism of them shows a blend of my interests even if the content does not, but I am horribly disappointing by what could have been an incredible work of literature.

I have officially been hit with the Star Wars bug, and this book definitely pandered to the people who want to read anything related to Star Wars. I got it as a bargain book and decided to give it a shot, though I was unsure of how well the iambic pentameter would transfer to the movie's plot.

I have to say that Doescher pulled it off with much more finesse and humor than I would have expected. It actually was a joy to read, because of the added asides and passages to turn the saga into a full blown Shakespeare play.

While I'm not running out to buy the next ones, I will definitely keep an eye out for them in the future.

Danielle H.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this really. I am a pretty big Star Wars fan, but not a huge fan of Shakespeare. But the premise was so intriguing that I had to give it a try. I thought it would either be hilarious, or so awful it was funny. Either way I would get a good laugh out of it. 

Well, I loved it and now own the second book which I cannot wait to read...eventually when I have some spare time, which is hard to come by these days. College...

Ben Nathan

An absolute blast. If only they would put this on the stage. Though my favorite is the huge number of lines that work from the original as Shakespearean dialogue. Also, the number of chunks that sound just like so many other plays. I think Han talking about his excellence was my favorite part. Looking forward to finishing the trilogy soon-ish.

Lorien O'Brien

Talk about a quirky book! Oh wow, this is really well done! I totally loved it, and had trouble answering emails while reading without going into Shakespearean verse!

I loved the play on both famous Shakespeare lines and scenes, and on Star Wars lines and scenes as well. So much fun to read! I have probably 50 different lines that I love for one reason or another, and Obi-Wan's monologue was touching. All the monologues were great! All of it was great! Can't wait to get my own copy!!!

Star Wars Verily, a New Hope

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