I say this is WAY BETTER THAN THE NOVEL, you gotta read this if you want to know Lucas's TRUE vision of Episode I; but still the book has some low points however: they could at least improve the paperback quality, and I would had fill it with real screenshots among the storyboards. Besides you can use it to learn more about Lucas's storytelling style: this was written entirely by George Lucas that's why the whimp hollywood critics say that the film has a very chessy dialogue, I partially agree with them, but I still say Lucas is a wonderful storyteller and he deserves more credit, however there are some problems on these writtings that even a man with a big imagination has to deal with: I know that when you write a whole story and you make the dialogue yourself you tend to repeat the same lines again later (ex.: "you assume to much") the Star Wars IV's script has the same problem, good thing Lucas has hired another guy to help him finish the Ep.II script. I definitely liked the way this book is written, and I'm sure the film's dialogue would have been better if some lines of this book were not deleted.