In 2014, the literary world of Star Wars was turned upside down. After the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm, none of the previous Star Wars books would be considered canon, and instead would be relegated to the status of “Legends.” Like Palpatine dissolving the senate offscreen, the Expanded Universe or “EU” of Star Wars was suddenly obliterated. But, then again, George Lucas never fully considered the EU to be true canon. Rather, he let the writers of those pre-2014 books and comics take all sorts of liberties. Indeed, contrary to what fans might assume about Lucas, he generally had a hands-off and pro-writer approach to the tie-in media of Star Wars, going all the way back to giving Alan Dean Foster a solid royalty deal for his ghost-written adaptation of the first movie, published in 1976.
But the possible zenith of EU-era Star Wars books may have been Matthew Stover’s ambitious and genre-connecting 2005 novelization of the film Revenge of the Sith. And now, 20 years after this book was published — one month before the film was in theaters — Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization is back, and has been given a major upgrade.
Revenge of the Sith, Deluxe Edition, explained
On October 14, 2025, Random House Worlds (Penguin Random House) will publish a lush new hardcover edition of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: Episode III by Matthew Stover. An art object as much as it is a book, the new Revenge of the Sith novel has illustrated endpapers, which depict Anakin and Padme, as well as Anakin’s final transformation into Vader. The pseudo-transparent dust jacket features the silhouette of Darth Vader, and a painting that renders the famous Mustafar duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan. The book has red foil edges for its pages, and a slick red-satin bookmark, like a class Sith lightsaber.
But the style of the new book isn’t the main reason why this tome will be essential for hardcore Star Wars fans. Instead, unlike most novelizations published in any franchise, this one is a kind of retrospective, and a look behind the curtain simultaneously.
Revenge of the Sith, reassessed
The new edition of Stover’s Revenge of the Sith won’t only contain the original text of the book but also will sport 170 footnotes from Stover, elucidating his process in writing the book, and how he incorporated different literary styles, and crucially, tons of EU lore.
In his new introduction, Stover makes it clear that his primary goal with the Revenge of the Sith book was to dramatize the internal motivations of many of the characters, as well as link the events clearly to the entire EU up to that point. Stover also invented very specific EU Force powers for this novel, including Mace Windu’s unique Jedi power called “shatterpoint.” (Shatterpoint was later a novel written by Stover, but the basis of this power originated. With his shatterpoint Jedi perception, Stover added an entirely new dimension to Mace Windu and his role in trying to take down Darth Sidious.
Indeed, with various shifting points of view and narrative tense changes, the Revenge of the Sith novelization created an entirely different layer of the Star Wars canon, one that hasn’t fully been replicated in book form, since.
And now, two decades after its publication, these strange and artistic canon innovations will be brought into new light, proving, once again, that the fall of Anakin Skywalker can always allow for a little more scrutiny.
