Book Review: Wonder Woman Novelization

Book: Wonder Woman Novelization by S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison

Description:

Born of the fallout from mythic wars fought among the Grecian gods and their mortal worshippers, Diana, warrior princess of the Amazon island nation of Themyscira, bursts into the modern world both as ambassador of her people and selfless protector of the innocent. And in so doing, she collides with the ignorance and imbalances of the twenty-first century, battling injustice as Wonder Woman. 

But even with skills and abilities to rival those of her Olympian namesake, Diana is put to the supreme test as the horrors of the ancient past rise again to wreak havoc upon the world. Now her indomitable will and astounding powers are pitted against the patient and all-encompassing malice of the War God Ares, who feeds on the strife created by humanity's propensity to turn against itself.



Rating: 4 stars

My Review:

I thought this was really quite good. It captured the movie and the characters perfectly and filled in missing scenes from the movie. Although, this is probably not a book for young fans - little kids - due to the very graphic details of violence and possibly for some of the language. In this story (and the movie) Diana was young and had not yet transformed into the iconic Wonder Woman. Despite living a rather sheltered and "perfect" life, Diana desired and wished to see the outside world or Man's World.

As they say be careful what you wish for, Diana got her chance to see the outside world but at a huge price. Once she won the Amazonian competition, she earned the honor of wearing the iconic Wonder Woman suit, then she had to stop Ares, The God of War and not to mention take pilot Colonel Steve Trevor back to America.

Diana's task to stop Ares was an action packed adventure. This book was a perfect blend of Greek Mythology and modern times. Diana was confident, strong and smart yet they showed how initially awed she was by her new surroundings. Steve was initially shown in the typical modern way - arrogant and a bit of a womanizer - but throughout the story he was changing into a worthwhile guy. A guy that Diana could actually start to like and respect and maybe even fall in love with.

I thought the story was interesting because it was an updated re-telling of Wonder Woman's origin story. It provided the reader with a wonderful back story of the Amazons and why they chose to cut themselves off from the rest of the world.

Despite being a wonderful book, I did have a few issues with it. I'm not sure if this had an editor or not because there seemed to be typos, missing words, words that should have been omitted and weird sentence structures.

Also, I felt like the fight scene between Diana and Deimos went on for too long. Perhaps they could have condensed it by taking out a page or two. There was also two minor changes that I didn't quite understand why they were made: One, Queen Hippolyta's hair being described as blonde when it's dark brown/black in the movie. Second, the the description of the little girl in the scene where Diana was helping her in the park. In the book, the little girl was described as having blonde hair while in the movie she was African-American.

Perhaps the book was released before the movie who knows. Those little minor changes just stood out to me but all in all I really enjoyed reading this.