The language in this book is extraordinarily appealing. Brooks has managed to create a painterly kind of poetic style of description that is evocative without drawing undue attention to itself. At the very beginning Brooks describes the Tatooine landscape thus "Sharply etched, the monoliths stood like sentinels keeping watch in a watery haze." The language is overblown, but there is poetry in it and the image sticks in the mind.