Shadows of the Empire

AUTHOR: Steve Perry
COPYRIGHT: 1996
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

Shadows of the Empire marks a significant project for Lucasfilm. It was created as a new story with all the sorts of tie-ins a Star Wars movie might get, such as toys and a video game. There were comic books as well as the novel, and even a soundtrack album of score composed to coincide with the story. And I'm happy to report that the book itself is worthy of this treatment. After slogging through a few lackluster novels, I'm happy to say this one feels like a Star Wars movie in the best ways possible. It does a great job connecting the dots between the two movies without ever feeling like those points aren't justified by the story.

The main plot revolves around the crime organization Black Sun and it's reptilian leader, Prince Xizor (pronounced Shee-zor, apparently). Xizor wants revenge against Vader for killing his family, so he sets his sights on killing Skywalker. To do so, he cozies up to the Emperor and attempts to play him against Vader in a way. The release of the plans for the new Death Star was done by Xizor, with the permission of the Emperor. Thus, when he says in the movie that he was the one who allowed the information to leak, he is telling the truth. And that bit about how "many Bothans died to bring us this information"? That's a central moment in the first half of the book. We actually get to see that, and why the Bothans died.

We pick up the story with Luke and the gang on Tatooine awaiting Boba Fett's return to Jabba with Han. Luke has gone off to Kenobi's old place so that he can study the ways of the Force from Ben's old notes. It is here that he constructs his new lightsaber. I really like the way Perry plays Luke's arc over the course of the book from where he was in Empire to his proclaiming himself a Jedi Knight by the end. He hits all the points that he had to between movies organically. Just watching the movies, you go from "let's go save Han!" to everyone at Jabba's palace, but there are things that had to happen between. We find out how Leia got her Boussh bounter hunter costume too. This story allows us to learn how those things happened.

Ultimately, all the characters get caught up in a little goose chase first based on info that Boba Fett had been spotted elsewhere, but this quickly turns to the discovery of a plot to kill Luke, while the Alliance is teased with important secret information. Han is frozen in carbonite for the duration and you might think the book would suffer without him, but it never does. Lando does fine as a surrogate, and we get a new character, Dash Rendar, who is a cocky space cowboy sort like Han Solo turned up to 11. Perry also plays character moments about Han's absence that work, such as Leia pondering her feelings for Han and Luke. There's a moment where she even recalls his last words: "'I know'? What was that?!" Chewie has taken Han seriously when he said he had to take care of Leia now. Chewbacca is now Leia's personal bodyguard, to her sometime annoyance.

The story structure also allows for parallels to the first movie. It opens on Tatooine, there are some space battles, rebels gaining secret plans. And it climaxes with Leia being held captive on Coruscant in Xizor's castle, and Luke having to rescue her. They even sneak in in Stormtrooper uniforms. There's a cameo appearance from one of those "eye-stalk" aliens, as they sneak into the building via the sewer pipes. But these parallels feel like homages, and not retreads. Perry even sneaks in a 1138 reference.

There are a few oddities here when you consider it in the grand scheme of things that now includes prequels. The mention of palaces on Coruscant feels odd, having seen the city. The Emperor is said to live in a "castle", and that word just feels wrong to me (Vader has one too, apparently). There's a wonderful bit where we learn that chamber Vader was in during Empire is a healing chamber, and he's trying to use the Dark Side to heal himself. This nicely ties into dialogue from Revenge of the Sith, suggesting that with the Dark Side you had the power to reverse death. Perry suggests that the Emperor looks the way he does because the Dark Side has literally eaten away at him. This now conflicts with what we saw in Episode III, unless you consider that his "Force lightning" comes from the Dark Side, so it's sort of true. But I like that he tried to give a reason to something that at the time we had no knowledge of. In terms of how this book fits in with the other novels, it's curious that Mara Jade is so conspicuously absent, considering she's the Emperor's Hand at this point. But then, maybe that's addressed in the Thrawn trilogy; I don't remember. I'll find out when I get there.

For me, really the only thing that seems to fall flat about this book is the title, since I'm not sure what Shadows of the Empire is meant to connote. Does it refer to Black Sun "shadowing" the Empire? But the novel itself was surprisingly good and you can tell that Lucas seemed to like it too given the little nods to it that have cropped up in the prequels and the special editions. It's well worth reading if you're curious about what happened between the films, much more so than most of the novels written to date between Episodes IV and V. It even has Threepio flying the Millennium Falcon! By the time the last pages came, and Luke was recording his message for Jabba, I'd had a good time reading it. If you read only one Star Wars novel in your life, you could do worse than this one.

GRADE: A

The Empire Strikes Back

AUTHOR: Donald F. Glut, Based on a story by George Lucas
COPYRIGHT: 1980
SERIES: movie novelization
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- three years after the Battle of Yavin 

The book adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back is a perfectly serviceable novelization. This is the original 1980 book; I know there's been a separate junior novelization in recent years. Glut's writing style isn't flashy, but it's also not too blandly utilitarian either. His descriptions are usually succinct, but they are definitely visual. In many instances, reading his prose puts me right into the movie, and he's describing things shot for shot sometimes. So as far as capturing the movie in a book, I think he succeeded.

I was always curious whether the decision that the sequel was three years later, matching the real time between movies, was intended back then or worked out in the '90s later. This book proves that it was indeed a planned three year leap in time, as Glut notes the years Luke's been with the Rebellion. Funnily enough, the back copy on the paperback suggests it has NOT been three years. It even says, "Now, several months later," even though this clashes with the actual book text. I find that a curiosity.

There are far fewer dramatic differences between the book and the film than with the first movie. However, Yoda is described as being blue here rather than green. Another instance on Dagobah worth mentioning is the place that is "strong with the dark side of the Force". In the movie, this was ultimately some sort of cave, but in the book it's said to be inside a massive tree. I actually like this better because the Force is created "by all living things" and a cave is not alive. So it seems this idea was shifted a little for budgetary reasons, or it was present in the movie and just not really made clear. I'm inclined to think it was simply changed, since in the movie Yoda says, "Remember your failure at the cave!" but in the book it's "Remember your failure at the tree!"

The one place the novel really falls short is in the dialogue between Han and Leia. Some scenes go on longer than they need to, and some of their exchanges are just flat compared with what's in the film. Probably this is due to dialogue in the early script being used for the book, and this was changed or trimmed later. The lines don't have the punch or repartee that they do in the movie, which helps show what a great director Kershner was and how nice it was to craft those scenes and allow the actors to play with them. Almost every memorable exchange is better in the movie than in the novelization.

But there is one surprising curiosity between Leia and Han, and that's the famous exchange at the carbon freezing. In the movie, when Leia says, "I love you," Han's response was meant to be "I love you too." But we all know what ended up in the film is the memorable, "I know." Yet the novel has neither of these lines. His response is both cavalier and confusing. When Leia says she loves him: "He smiled his familiar cocky smile. 'Just remember that, because I'll be back.'" What? That's a very different sentiment from either of the other options! Did they lose this early on because they didn't want to telegraph? Perhaps they even truly believed he'd stay dead, though that seems unlikely given the ending (despite what Harrison Ford may have wanted). Of all the responses, I never expected Han's to be "I'll be back."

While the stuff with Han and Leia pales in comparison to the movie, the rest of the book is solidly handled. The action reads well, neither boring nor confusing, with a very visual sense of the prose without being too purple or verbose. For someone just wanting to relive the movie experience and not much else, it's a good novelization.

GRADE: B

Tales of the Bounty Hunters

EDITOR: Kevin J. Anderson
COPYRIGHT: 1996
SERIES: Tales From...
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- from before Empire Srikes Back to fifteen years after Return of the Jedi

After the publication of Tales From Mos Eisley and Tales From Jabba's Palace, I guess they decided they should do an anthology with ties to Empire Strikes Back. The focus chosen was on the bounty hunters Vader hired to find the Millennium Falcon. This wasn't a bad idea, but unfortunately focus for most of the anthology was broader than the scope of that film, with most of the stories spanning into Jedi as well. That, and the characterization of Boba Fett made this collection a real mixed bag for me. As usual, let's explore why this is by looking at each story individually.

"THEREFORE I AM: THE TALE OF IG-88"
AUTHOR: Kevin J. Anderson
This was the story I was perhaps most interested in. The idea of an assassin droid is just cool, especially because it's so different from all the other droids in this universe. Then the questions arise: why this droid specifically? Why doesn't the Empire dispatch more assassin droids? What made this one a bounty hunter worthy of being summoned by Vader? Unfortunately, Anderson's story quelled that excitement real fast.
As the story opens, we're treated to IG-88's first moments of consciousness, and then we find that he's a new AI gone haywire. This is a great concept. Anderson goes all out with the "monster destroys creators" trope, and this bit is fun. A killing droid that develops sentience is a classic sci-fi motif. The droid spreads its sentience to other identical models. They proceed to take over the lab and kill their creators, and it's all fun and crazy. Anderson doesn't skimp on the violence either; it's incredibly violent.  "The lifeless metal hand protruded through splintered bone in the front of his chest, holding the technician's quivering heart in rigid metal fingers." Wow!
Sadly, the rest of the story never lives up to that promise. IG-88 and is 3 identical companions become bent on world domination, neutralizing all humanoid threats. They conquer the droid-manufacturing world of Mech III. And only then do they come upon the bounty hunter idea. Why? To distract the Empire from finding them on Mech III and learning their plans. So one is sent out as a bounty hunter so that rumor would spread in different systems of the droid's whereabouts and they can continue to kill humanoids. Win win. But all this set-up leaves Anderson doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing with this story. He gives backstory to things nobody cares about, and avoids the very reason we read this book in the first place. The IG-88 Vader sends out isn't even the one that started the story! It's one of the other ones (known as IG-88B), so we've already been cheated. In Anderson's story, there was an immediate kill order dispatched throughout the Empire when news broke of these escaped droids; they were to be destroyed on sight. But because this has to jibe with Empire Strikes Back, Anderson just writes that "Vader ignored the order", which is so lame. The bounty hunters are sent to find Solo, and IG-88 does anything but! Instead, he learns of the plans for the second Death Star and concocts this bizarre plan to fuse with its computer core, thus becoming the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. So the story ends up having basically nothing to do with why Vader hired this thing.
Along the way, the droids start turning other droids to their cause. Remember the probe droid that found Echo Base on Hoth and Han shot at it and it blew up? It had a self-destruct function to prevent the Empire from discovering the IG-88's plans. Even though Leia's dialog suggested that all Imperial probe droids had self-destruct features. So it's a contradictory explanation for something that needed none. Remember that one time in Cloud City when C-3PO felt snubbed by a fellow droid and said, "How rude"? That's because the droid really WAS being rude. It had poorly assimilated IG-88's programming. WHO ASKED FOR THIS? No one CARES about a rude droid! And I can't believe I had to read that the Death Star was in fact sentient when it was firing at the Rebels in Jedi. That's insane.
To add insult to injury, apart from the original IG-88 becoming the Death Star and blowing up, the other three are all picked off by Boba Fett. It's like, "look how cool Boba Fett is!" but it really just makes the droids look incompetent. Where are the killer assassins from the first few pages? They are all easily beaten by Boba Fett. And we get silly lines, like IG-88's first description of Boba: "He looked like a droid, but moved like a human -- to his disadvantage." Apart from the clunky description, moving like a human proved no disadvantage at all. I'm meant to see it as irony, but it's just weak. And on top of all of these disappointments, Anderson peppers the story with this bizarre angle about how the guy who created the droids is insecure about his looks and desperately wants a nose job. Seriously. Why would some Imperial's giant nose be of any interest to me or this story?
What a major disappointment that contradicts what little we information is in Empire and elucidates fringe elements that just make everything silly.
GRADE: D (almost gave it a C for the killer opening, but I'm just too upset with the absurdity)

"PAYBACK: THE TALE OF DENGAR"
AUTHOR: Dave Wolverton
This is more like it. I enjoyed Dengar's story. Who is Dengar? He's that human-looking guy in a turban or something. And what I like is that he's not a droid, or an alien or a gunslinger in fancy armor, he's just a guy and the story pays that off. We learn he is a Corellian who in his youth was horribly wounded when he crashed during a race with Han Solo. The Imperial surgeons fixed him up, but used him to their own gains, making him an emotionless killing machine for them. So he's the product of surgical experimentation, and it haunts him. He's got a personal vendetta against Solo for what happened to him, so it makes perfect sense for him to go along with Vader's hunt for him. Along the way, he joins forces with a dancing girl who helps him find his old self again.
Like the previous story, this one carries through into Jedi. Dengar first plans to infiltrate the Rebels to get Solo, but he arrives at Hoth too late; it's already under attack. We also learn that he was the bounty hunter on Ord Mandell that Solor refers to in Empire. He gets to Bespin too late; Boba Fett's already got him. So when he gets to Jabba's palace, he warns Jabba that the Rebels will try to free Solo. But he's captured by Jabba and left to die out in the sand. He's finally rescued by his girlfriend and it's a nice happy ending. And it should have ended there. Unfortunately, we get a ridiculous moment tacked on, which I will probably deal with when we get to Boba Fett's story. But the way this book idolizes Boba Fett gets grating at times. In this story, he's almost gentlemanly to Dengar in some ways. He bombs his ship, but just enough to stop him, not kill him. He has this weird sort of code. But he's also always written like he's the absolute best there is and this sort of Fett worship gets annoying. There's less of it in this particular story, and had it ended a few pages before it did, I'd have liked it more. Still, a nice character study, which is what these stories should be.
GRADE: B

"THE PRIZE PELT: THE TALE OF BOSSK"
AUTHOR: Kathy Tyers
The tale of Bossk is a change of pace, which is nice, in that it doesn't really follow any set pieces from the movies. It starts just after Vader gives his "no disintegrations" speech and moves on from there. In this case, Bossk is totally on the wrong trail of Han Solo. He's led away by ruse to a different location. This is wise, because so far everyone's known pretty much exactly where Han is the whole time and that's silly. It's important that some of these bounty hunters go to other locales on their search.
Bossk is that reptilian one, and we learn here that his species, Trandoshans, are hunters who kill for trophies to appease their god. They particularly hunt Wookies, making Bossk's real quarry Chewbacca and not Han, which is a nice wrinkle.
Unfortinately, this story is also not really about Bossk. We learn very little of his backstory, and unlike the previous two tales, he is not the protagonist. This is actually a story about Kathy Tyers' character Tinian, who appeared in other stories including "Tinian on Trial" in Tales From the Empire. As a Tinian story it's not bad, and there's plenty of scheming and double-crossing, but it also leaves Bossk as sort of an evil cipher. Tinian lures Bossk to a planet with promises of Han being there, but actually they are out to collect a bounty on Bossk and free a bunch of Wookies from an Imperial prison colony. But Bossk is ready to double-cross them anyway once he's got what he wants. The crossing and double-crossing mostly works, and reads like something Timothy Zahn would write.
Tinian has a Wookie companion named Chenlambec. We are told he is her Ng'rhr, sort of a guardian of her apprenticeship or something. They really missed a golden opportunity to call this story, "That's my Ng'rhr Fo' Real." But I kid.
The one element that really doesn't work for me in this story is the addition of a sort of sentient computer program. She (yes it's a she) is a "droid" that's basically a small box that can tap into a computer system and get it to reveal it's secrets. How? She flirts with it. Seriously, she's named Flirt, which is just a bit too cute for me. So she uses her feminine computer wiles to cozy up to a ship's computer and gain access. At the end of the story, it's like she has kind of married it. I don't know, it was a tad too fanciful for me, and while a cute idea on its own, I don't think it works for Star Wars.
It was a decent yarn, but a shame that Bossk got sidelined to a villain role and we never got to know much more about him than that he's a hunter who killed Wookies. In the end, he's captured and the plan is to have him skinned, which is a nice sort of turnabout, but this is really less "the Tale of Bossk" than "the Tale That Has Bossk In It".
GRADE: C

"OF POSSIBLE FUTURES: THE TALE OF ZUCKUSS AND 4-LOM"
AUTHOR: M. Shayne Bell
And now we get two bounty hunters for the price of one! 4-LOM is a droid and his partner Zuckuss is an alien who breathes ammonia and thus wears a mask at all times. Their story has the added layer that Zuckuss is dying due to an accident on a hunt that exposed him to toxic oxygen. So the reason for accepting this particular job from Vader is to make enough money to buy Zuckuss a lung transplant. That's a nice motivation, different from the others, as it's not about revenge or the thrill of the chase. We are also given insight into the beginnings of 4-LOM's life of crime, which started as theft because his droid brain deduced logically that humans were too careless with their things and it would be better for him to hold onto them. Nice to see how clinical reasoning could lead to very different outcomes for different characters.
Like other stories, this one also has human characters. There's a subplot involving Toryn Farr, one of the Rebel leaders, in her attempts to escape from Hoth after the battle. For most of the story, the tale flips between the Rebels and the bounty hunters until their stories meet. Zuckuss wisely deduces Han is going to rejoin the Rebels at their rendezvous point, so he and 4-LOM try to infiltrate the Rebels and follow them there. It's a good plan. But like Han before them, they eventually are given the offer to stay with the Rebellion instead. Rebel surgical droids tell Zuckuss they can cure him, and they do.
I liked that this is the only story which keeps its focus just to the events of Empire. The story starts shortly after the Hoth battle, and ends just after Empire did, with the Rebels regrouping. I'm glad it didn't try to get into Jabba's palace or any of that, and it was good to see events from the side of the Rebels still struggling to make hyperjumps away from the Hoth System before the Empire catches them.
Another curious element here is that Zuckuss has what he calls "intuition", giving him insight in meditation to present or future events. To me, this implies he's actually Force-sensitive and doesn't know it. The story ends with a glimpse into a future where Zuckuss and 4-LOM are teachers at a Jedi Academy. Now, I haven't read the Jedi Academy books yet, but this is probably a nod to those stories. The strange element is that 4-LOM also seems to gain "intuition" by story's end and I'm not sure how much I buy that. But it falls into the "robot wants to be like his organic friends" trope fairly well.
I was pleasantly surprised by this story for maintaining a tighter focus and giving the bounty hunters just as much attention as the humans.
GRADE: B

"THE LAST ONE STANDING: THE TALE OF BOBA FETT"
AUTHOR: Daniel Keys Moran
And now we come to it, the story that most people probably wanted to read this book for, just to get a glimpse into the mystery that is Boba Fett.
From the outset, the story clashes with what is now established canon, but of course we didn't have the prequels when this book came out. So we are told that Boba Fett was originally a boy named Jaster Mareel, who was exiled from the world of Concord Dawn. I suppose we could reconcile this by saying that after Boba's dad was killed by Jedi, he eventually went to this world under a false name to ride out the Clone Wars. There is a little bit that reads amusingly now, where Boba says when he leaves he could always join the Imperial Academy because he'd make a good stormtrooper. Knowing the origins of the stormtroopers now makes this kind of hilarious.
After this, we jump ahead in time to where Boba Fett first encounters a young Han Solo. This drives me crazy. There's no need to make Han and Boba life-long adversaries, and no need for Han to have interacted with everyone before. The galaxy is a big place, and it strains credibility to constantly have the same five people bumping into each other.
The worst thing for me though is the characterization of Boba Fett. Fandom has made him this idolized figure and Moran (along with the other writers in this collection) paints him as a mythical, noble figure. He's supposed to be a bad guy! He's supposed to be the guy who disintegrates without hesitation, and takes our hero away to Jabba. Even if he were painted as a kind of lovable scoundrel I could buy it, but there's this attempt to make him a mysterious gunslinger who lives by his own chivalric code. This story seems to go out of its way to make Fett a weird paragon of virtue. He lives in pursuit of his own idea of Justice. That's fine, but the author goes even further than that. There's a scene at Jabba's palace where slave Leia is sent to spend the night with Fett. But he doesn't touch her because, get this, premarital sex is immoral. Does that sound like something this guy would say? It's anointing him with medieval chivalry, like he's some Space Knight. But he's a bounty hunter! Leia even asks him how he reconciles his code of ethics with working for guys like Vader and Jabba. And the story never gives a satisfying answer to that. He does it for money, and he does it because his victims are bad people, but I never found the characterization entirely convincing. I want my Boba Fett to be a ruthless bounty hunter who finally meets his end in a Sarlaac pit. I don't want him treated as if he's Shane. There are even western motifs, like the fact there's a town called Dying Slowly (later changed to just Death). Come on.
Oh, and about that Sarlaac pit... This is what I alluded to in the "Tale of Dengar": Fett survives the Sarlaac. Seriously. After a few days of slow digestion, he manages to detonate a bomb inside it and crawl out or something. They try their best to make it seem like a struggle, and he comes out without armor and badly injured from the digestive juices and all, but it's still just because fans don't want him dead, so they resurrected him. It's not quite as silly as if he just turned on his jet pack and rocketed out, but the idea is frustrating. I think this all had already been dealt with in other novels by then, but to read of it here is still disheartening. I do commend them for trying to make it seem reasonable, though.
What also bothers me about this story is that it glosses so quickly over the events in Empire. We never get to see Fett at Cloud City. The story doesn't care about that. He just shows up and leaves in a few sentences. Similarly, because it had been told of previously in this book, the escape from the Sarlaac is quickly glossed over. This is the perfect opportunity to finally see events from Fett's point of view, and instead we jump right past them. Even Vader's thing about "no disintegrations" is frustatingly handled. We are told: "No disintegrations; he'd said that every time he'd hired Fett, after that first incident." But we are never told what that first incident was! So one of the few things this story could have elucidated wasn't ever explored.
Perhaps it is because this story isn't really interested in the past. Halfway through, it jumps ahead another fifteen years, to a time after the defeat of the Empire and indeed after all the novels that had been written to date. The second half of the story is an older, wearier Fett still collecting bounties (now with an artificial leg). But the story shifts its focus to Han Solo and tries to be a character study of him too. Han feels he's losing his identity now that he's gone legit and is a father. So he goes back to the world where Fett first met him. And of course, they bump into each other. This whole section of the story seems to exist for no reason other than to bring them together, and it climaxes in a standoff where each has a gone on the other. Neither trusts one another. Some words are exchanged about going their separate ways, but the story just ends with both guns still pointed and no one making a move. I have many problems with this. First, Han and Boba are not mortal enemies. Sure, Han could hold a grudge for taking him to Jabba, but that was years ago and he'd already dumped him into the Pit of Carkoon so I'd call them even. Second, the story wants to have a "The Lady or the Tiger" ending, but it just made the whole story seem a waste. The second half has very little to do with the first half, apart from exploring whether or not Han is deserving of Fett's brand of justice. Instead, it just reads as a tease for an upcoming novel. I don't know if that's the case, but I found it frustrating.
Ultimately, this story is a failure for me. It's divided and doesn't quite succeed in a unifying theme. It fails by indulging the mystique around Boba Fett into someone far too idealized for my taste. I don't want him to be a moralistic ronin who doesn't drink, use drugs, or have sex because it's wrong. In that scene with Leia, conversation turns to parody of dialogue in A New Hope. Leia suggests that working for the Rebellion and helping them escape would be better than working for Jabba. She then suggests that his pay for helping them would be more than he could imagine. He says he can imagine a lot and she says, "You'll get it," mirroring the dialogue between Luke and Han. But where Han said, "I'd better," and consented, Fett refuses because the Rebels are morally wrong for starting a war with the lawful authority. Saying Fett sticks to his principals over money almost makes him better than Han, and that's just a bridge too far for me.
After all those pages, to have no idea what happens afterward is just a further frustration with this story. I can't fault Moran entirely for his work here since he's dealing with things that by then were established EU canon (such as referencing the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy), but his glossing over events in favor of this showdown with Han bothered me. I object to this notion of the iconic gunslinger Boba Fett, but I'm sure Kevin J. Anderson helped perpetuate that in the editing of the anthology. The writing was fine, but the content frustrated me.
GRADE: C

OVERALL ANTHOLOGY GRADE: C

Razor's Edge

AUTHOR: Martha Wells
COPYRIGHT: 2013
SERIES: Empire and Rebellion
TIMEFRAME: Rebellion -- about 2 years after the Battle of Yavin

I read this book months ago, and I don't remember it very well. But that's part of the problem with it. It's passable, but not particularly memorable.

The story concerns Leia and Han doing a supply run for the new Hoth base. They are intercepted by pirates -- woman pirates! And to top it all off, these woman pirates just happen to be refugees from Leia's home planet of Alderaan. Now, that's a great premise to start with. But the book doesn't really follow through on that idea. Leia gets herself taken aboard as a hostage to try and talk some sense into them, and they agree if she's really who she says she is. Right away we have a curious power dynamic, as Leia is a Princess of their world and a Senator (well, former Senator I guess since there is no more Senate). It's also interesting to think about some people taking the opposite route from Leia, doing naughty things in order to survive.

But the potential of those ideas don't really go anywhere. They start to build for the first few chapters, but then most of that tension is resolved or put on hold and the story shifts focus to the real enemy: the pirates that have been exploiting these Alderaanians who they were stupid enough to trust. There's a subplot involving slave-running, with Han and Leia freeing the slaves. But none of it quite pays off the promise of the first chapter.

The writing of the book is passable, but there are times it feels a bit too much like Star Wars fan fiction. The opening sentence is Leia saying, "I have a bad feeling about this." This is the most cliché way possible to open a Star Wars novel. It doesn't feel natural, it feels like right away Martha Wells is saying, "See, this is Star Wars!" The way she writes Han Solo was weird to me, as there were times he said things I didn't think Han would say. Or it was the way he said it. I don't have the book in front of me, or I'd cite specific examples. But there were moments he sounded too much like just some 21st Century twentysomething instead of Han Solo.

I give Ms. Wells credit for a Leia-centric, and really female-centric, story concept. I just wish the ultimate execution of that idea had been more engaging. So much of it kept feeling like the first act and it never went beyond that. I mean, I don't always want some crazy Timothy Zahn plot where a bunch of different threads overlap and intersect and explode at the end. But I would like to be a little more engaged after the initial premise. For a first book in this new Empire and Rebellion series, I wasn't grabbed by it. It's maybe worth a read if you're a big fan of Leia, but beyond that there just wasn't enough there for me. Too simple, like the sort of thing that could be resolved in a 40-minute television episode. Indeed, it felt very Star Trek: Voyager to me. Oh well.

GRADE: C

Splinter of the Mind's Eye

AUTHOR: Alan Dean Foster
COPYRIGHT: 1978
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- some time between episodes IV and V

When Luke and Leia crash-land on an unfamiliar planet, they stumble into a quest for a mysterious jewel. Trying to book passage off-world, they meet a woman who shows them a shard of this jewel which she claims has the power to enhance the Force for the one wielding it. She agrees to help them leave if they agree to help her find it first. Along the way, they run into Imperial agents who've made a base of some of the old temples, and escape only to find weird environments, native peoples, and ultimately cross paths once again with Darth Vader.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the very first Star Wars tie-in novel. It's interesting to see what Star Wars was to people who only had the first movie as a reference. Splinter of the Mind's Eye results in being an old-fashioned space adventure fantasy, much heavier on the adventure than later stories and novels. The book is full of strange exotic locales and adventure tropes like a fight to the death with the natives. In a way, this book has more in common with Indiana Jones than with where the Star Wars saga went. I liked that fantasy adventure element. The swamp environment where they crash also prefigures the Dagobah sequences in Empire. Too many Star Wars novels now get all bogged down in military maneuvers and technical matters. They know all about how hyperspace works and what powers each blaster, they have gotten mired in in-world terms like "'fresher" for bathroom and usually describe the "prefabricated" architecture. But they've lost some of the wonder and fun of a galaxy far, far away that this novel brings.

The book is also rather violent in places, though. During the bit where Luke and Leia have been captured by Imperials, there's a scene where the Imperial leader stabs a guy in the eye. This might be a bit much for some readers. But again, the first movie had that scene where Obi-Wan hacked off the arm at Mos Eisley.

Strangely, for all it's lack of technobabble, there are things in this book that I've never seen come up again. For example, Luke is constantly having to plug his lightsaber into his blaster's battery pack to recharge it. I guess since lightsabers are at least partially technological it makes sense they would need a power source of some kind. I've not read anything else that suggests they need their batteries recharged though. But this was back before many rules had been established and authors had to imagine things.

I love the title. It's just wonderfully evocative. The MacGuffin of the actual object though ultimately never completely works. We hear so much about it, but when we finally get to it at the end, not much more happens with it. It's really more of a plot device to instigate a quest. The idea of a crystal that channels or enhances the Force is interesting.

There is a lot to like in this book, and it's unfortunate to have to criticize any of it. But the absolute weirdest element about reading it now after the rest of the films have come out is the way Luke and Leia come across. That is, this was written before their relationship as siblings had been revealed, so there are at times very flirty moments between them that read as much more unsettling now than they did in 1978. Longing looks and such make the kiss in Empire Strikes Back seem like nothing. Also, the way Foster writes Leia it's hard to get a handle on who he feels she is. At times she's very much a girl and very much out of her element. He sees her as a sheltered Princess who has very little experience in the outside world. She has some more "damsel in distress" moments here. This can feel strange to later readers who remember Leia as spunkier, and better at the witty repartee. We see more of that in later films. This Leia is not one who has been a Rebellion leader; she's out of her element. But she's also got a mouth on her. There were moments of that in the first movie ("Into the garbage chute, fly boy!") and Foster tries to strike a balance there. So while this Leia at times seems weaker than the Leia you might remember, she's got a bit of sass to her as well. There's a great moment after Vader has arrived when she hides in the bushes to take a shot at him out of revenge. She does fire, but misses, and beats herself up over it.

It may be hard for some of you to imagine a Star Wars story with no Han Solo in it, but I'd say it fares pretty well without him and that his presence in this story would hurt the proceedings. Luke and Leia need to be out of their depth, and having a streetwise smuggler with them would keep them out of danger. And where's the fun in that?

For me, the biggest failing of the book is the ending. I just don't think we needed Darth Vader to turn up, but again this was the first new story and he was the big villain. It's unfortunate though because using him, to me, resulted in making him less menacing. After Leia has failed to kill him, there's a race to get to the temple for the crystal. The story culminates in a duel between Luke and Vader in the temple only to have it end in the most underwhelming way possible: Vader falls down a hole. There's a big ceremonial well or something in the middle of the floor, and just as Vader thinks he's beaten Luke, he comes walking toward him and falls right down the pit. That's it. That just felt so silly to me, and made Vader less threatening. Yes, they need to dispatch him somehow so he can terrorize them another day, but a Vader who can't watch where he's going (or you know, use the force to sense it) is not scary anymore.

Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a fascinating time-capsule of ideas from before there was more Star Wars. While some elements don't fare as well now in hindsight, the space adventure aspect is one that too many Star Wars novels have gotten away from and is really the highlight of this book for me. I want to see characters riding down underground rivers on giant lily pads. I want to see alien worlds with temples retro-fitted as bases (like Yavin was). Modern Star Wars sometimes tries too hard to be science-fiction, when Star Wars was always meant to be space opera and mythic adventure fantasy. While the ending for me is ultimately something of a cop-out, the journey was fun.

GRADE: B -- I want so much to give it an A, but my issues with the ending and the unsettling Luke/Leia stuff made me feel I had to dock it a bit. But this is still one of the best Star Wars novels I've read so far, albeit very different from the stuff to which we've grown accustomed.

Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine

AUTHOR: Voronica Whitney-Robinson (with Haden Blackman)
COPYRIGHT: 2004
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- about a year after the Battle of Yavin

"Sooner or later, everyone betrays the ones they love to the Empire. It's inevitable."

Imperial bioengineer Dusque Mistflier is at a casino resort in Naboo where a tournament is being held pitting various creatures against each other. She is there to collect genetic samples from these creatures. But while there, she crosses paths with a mysterious man named Finn who recruits her to help him on a dangerous mission for the Rebellion. It seems there's a holocron that contains a list of all known Rebel agents and sympathizers which the Rebellion, in their hurry to evacuate, left behind on Dantooine when the base was abandoned. Finn suggests being able to use Dusque's Imperial credentials to gain access. So the two go on a treasure hunt to the titular ruins of Dantooine, where a relationship grows and loyalties are tested.

This is a tie-in novel with the Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game Star Wars Galaxies: An Emire Divided. It's debt to the gaming world is evident from the way the story is handled. There are a number of strange creatures and several different locales. The story is oddly paced, with what are essentially several "fetch quests". Dusque and Finn don't set off for the actual holocron on Dantooine until two-thirds through the book. Along the way, there are cameo appearances from Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia, and my favorite is a brief interaction with Lando. The book does manage to still feel like a novel, but the debt to the gaming world is obvious. Reading it reminded me of some of the stories from the Star Wars Journal; it has a similar feel. Dusque is a good character (and it wouldn't be Star Wars without silly names, right?), and the book reads very easily.

I like that it's a story that takes us to the abandoned base that Leia referred to in A New Hope. Although the actual ruins are an old Jedi training area outside the base. As usual with this type of story, it's primarily a character piece about confronting one's loyalty to the Empire and what that means. While it does feel like I've read it all before in several other books, I thought it was nicely handled here. The author definitely takes us into the mind of the protagonist rather nimbly. And her scientific specialty allows for interaction with all sorts of wildlife with a perspective that other characters wouldn't afford. Sometimes it reads like Jurassic Park.

My problems come with some of the "fetch quest" nature of it, as it takes some time for the supposed main plot to get going, and ultimately the finding of the holocron seemed very easy. But perhaps it was just a macguffin and was never meant to be anything substantial to the story. The ending was sort of a cheat to me (SPOILER ALERT!). Finn turns out to be an Imperial spy this whole time who wanted the holocron for himself. Dusque manages to find out and destroy it before Finn can transmit much data to the Empire, only for Finn to stab her and leave her for dead. She's saved by Luke, but it's still a sudden twist. I just find it hard to believe that an Imperial agent was able to get so deep into the Rebellion like that. And then we are meant to accept that he didn't give Vader the location of the Rebels because of his love for Dusque. But how did this guy ever infilitrate them in the first place? Was he a guy on the fence who got in with the Rebellion and changed his mind? The ending suggests he was on assignment from Vader, which opens all kinds of plot problems. It just felt like a twist too far for me to accept. Maybe if it were a stand-alone novel and didn't have to fit into future existing canon it might have worked, but I had a hard time swallowing it. I could have believed if he was a rogue pirate or something, but an Imperial?

So the ending is a bit much, but it's an otherwise engaging book for Star Wars fans looking for some light reading. Whether it inspired anyone to play the online game, I can't say.

GRADE: C

Choices of One

AUTHOR: Timothy Zahn
COPYRIGHT: 2011
SERIES: Hand of Judgment
SEQUEL TO: Allegiance
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- between ANH and ESB

The Rebellion is looking for a new base, and they've just heard of a location that may be too good to be true. Han's loyalty to the Rebels' chain of command is tested as his feelings for Leia grow. Meanwhile, Mara Jade has a mission of her own which brings her to the same location, and she's brought along some friends to help her on the job: the Hand of Judgment. As with previous Zahn novels, the plot of Choices of One relies on secret identities and loyalties, twists, and a mastermind playing all our characters for saps. Ultimately this is a story about a fight between Grand Admiral Thrawn and the warlord Nuso Esva who has a master plan of assassination attempts and deceit which plays all our characters off each other. After truths are revealed and the dust settles, the Rebels are back to looking for a new place to call home, but Thrawn notes to Vader that they have stocked up supplies suggesting a move to a cold world...

Choices of One continues Zahn's effort to connect the dots to Empire Strikes Back, and the ending certainly accomplishes that. While Allegiance had an interesting story regarding the deserting troops, the way the Rebels were brought in wasn't satisfying for me. This time around, the plot works much better for getting Luke, Han and Leia involved. There's maybe not quite enough of the Hand of Judgment this time around; they are not main characters in this story, more like supporting players. But they are given a nice little send-off, when Thrawn asks them to join him and help train his forces in the Outer Rim. That's a satisfying resolution to their story. Zahn is also using these books as much to set up his existing characters as to tie in to the films. So we spend more time with Mara Jade, and this time Grand Admiral Thrawn. There's not as much of Mara this time around, but she does interact with Luke this time. I think this is their first meeting (I don't remember them meeting in the last book).

While some of the story points are definitely stronger than in Allegiance, I'm starting to grow weary of Zahn's plotting style. It's always some crazy scheme to get eight characters to the same locale, and then surprise! some of them are being played by a master manipulator. After several of his books in a row, this formula is growing tiresome. It starts to feel as if EVERY character is really a nice guy protecting his family, or really a traitor all along, or is a double agent of some sort. There is just a lot going on; at times too much for me.

I do give Choices of One credit for having a great space battle, the first one I've really enjoyed so far in any of these novels. I've mentioned it's hard to write them so they sound interesting, and Zahn succeeds here.

Han's character arc is nice here, though it mostly amounts to proving to everyone that he's smarter than they are. His growing relationship with Leia is a highlight. As for Luke, Zahn inches him further in his knowledge of the Force. He's being manipulated too. Because of his lightsaber training, he's being set up to take the fall for muder. It's interesting to note that he's told to act like he's a Jedi even though he's not, a tactic which he utilizes again at the start of Return of the Jedi.

It's difficult with these books to say whether they would be better after having read some of the later books published first. Is this book better as a prequel, knowing what goes on in the Thrawn trilogy, or is it better on its own? Ultimately it has to stand on its own as a work and while I think Choices of One improves significantly over Allegiance in several points, it lacks a little of the novelty the prior book had. It is another solid Star Wars novel that's everything you'd expect from Timothy Zahn.

GRADE: B

Allegiance

AUTHOR: Timothy Zahn
COPYRIGHT: 2007
SERIES: The Hand of Judgment
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- between ANH and ESB

Another day, another Timothy Zahn Star Wars novel. The main thrust of Allegiance is a story of five stormtroopers who desert their posts and strike out as individual Robin Hood figures, essentially. The book questions the nature of allegiance. It also suggests a difference now between clone troopers and volunteers. The troopers who come to call themselves the Hand of Judgment are volunteers. They believe in their oath to serve the Empire and its people, but when ordered to murder aliens without cause, they find themselves in moral crisis. Events transpire that lead them to desert, and it's a wonderful character exploration. I find many Star Wars stories set in this period deal with issues of loyalty and what makes people continue to side with the Empire or join the Rebellion, or exist somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile, there's some plot involving pirates or something that gets a lot of various characters involved. This seems to be something Zahn is fond of: taking a lot of disparate characters and getting them muddled in the same events from different perspectives, with lots of surprise reveals and confusions about who's on whose side. It wore thin with me a little this time around though.

And as we also might expect, Zahn spends a significant portion of this book with his creation Mara Jade. At this point, she is working directly for the Emperor as "the Emperor's Hand". What I like about how he writes her is she never seems to be a "dark Jedi" or using the Dark Side of the Force. But she does have skill and use it to her advantage. At this point she's sort of the anti-Skywalkwer (which I'm sure is the intention).

Zahn also attempts to help connect the dots between episodes IV and V here with little character moments. Han Solo essentially decides to stick with the Rebellion in this book. Han and Leia's feelings for each other continue to slowly bubble. We see Vader's personal searches for Luke and Leia, which helps explain later events in Empire Strikes Back. These little touches are nice.

And yet, I found that for the most part, when the book shifted to the series' main heroes I got less interested. There isn't much for Luke, Han and Leia to do in this story and I kept wanting to get back to the Hand of Judgment and watch them use their know-how to save more citizens. There is an amusing portion where Leia is undercover as a waitress, but that only goes so far.

Allegiance is a pretty good story that tries a little too hard for me to be a novel. But when the new characters are more interesting than the series' protagonists, that is both high praise and a little troubling. Still, it's hard to be too bothered by another Star Wars book by Zahn, and the book does have a point with its themes of loyalty. The fragility of the Rebellion at this point is really brought out. And yet I felt like there was something missing for me. A good read, though for me not Zahn's best.

GRADE: B