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

Scoundrels

AUTHOR: Timothy Zahn
COPYRIGHT: 2013
TIME FRAME: Rebellion

Scoundrels was released about a year ago, which makes it the most current Star Wars novel I have read or reviewed so far. And boy is it a welcome change from the short story anthologies. Nothing too serious or political in this one, it's just pure fun. Essentially, it's about Han Solo organizing a sort of Ocean's Eleven team to help him pull off a heist. The book has a cinematic feel to it with all the sort of spy tricks and escapes you'd expect from that type of story.

Lando Calrissian is brought in, and the novel does a good job of, if not answering, at least referencing the event(s) that caused the rift between him and Han. It's a good bit of set-up for Empire Strikes Back. From just a few lines in that movie ("That was a long time ago, I'm sure he's forgotten all about that", "You've got a lot of guts coming here after what you pulled"), Timothy Zahn has managed to craft story turns and character moments that work well but never undercut the lighter feel of the novel. And of course the title itself is a nod to Empire Strikes Back.

What I most appreciated at first is that the book makes a point of addressing one of my biggest criticisms of the original trilogy: why doesn't Han pay off Jabba? We know he didn't leave immediately at the end of the first movie because he saved Luke at Yavin. And then Empire starts with him leaving because, "If I don't pay off Jabba the Hutt, I'm a dead man." But I never understood why he hadn't already paid them off before the Rebels all moved to Hoth. And when we factor in now the in-universe notion that just like in the real world three years went by between movies, WHY didn't he go already? He hasn't paid off Jabba in three years? Zahn neatly finds a way to explain away these discrepancies and I am grateful for it. It turns out that Han lost the reward money from the end of A New Hope to pirates. So right away that gives a nice in-universe explanation so I'm not lead to believe it's been sitting in a cargo hold for three years. That also provides Zahn with the impetus for this novel's story, with the promise of a take so large that when split eleven ways Han could still pay off Jabba and to spare. And if that wasn't enough, Zahn works events into the story that lead Jabba to increase Han's debt exponentially, making it understandable why it would take longer for Han to scrounge up that amount of money, and why he would turn back to the Rebels for it.

It's nice to see Han back to his more independent rogue self, not quite fully tied to the Rebellion as he will be later. Zahn has a lot of practice now in writing the character, and you can really hear Harrison Ford in the way he's written.

Scoundrels is full of the kind of twists, double-crosses, and secret agendas that I've now come to expect from Zahn's work. And yet for all the fun, there are some very nice character bits from the other members of Han's team. Winter is still recovering from the destruction of her homeworld Alderaan. She remembers Princess Leia and hasn't heard yet if she survived. I very much enjoyed the relationship between the twin sisters Talia and Bink, each of whom has very reasonable explanations for the way they live their life, even if the other sister can't see it. These are little moments in the book, but the add a nice flavor of depth to the proceedings, just enough to humanize and keep things relatable. The book certainly could have proceeded without these few quiet moments, but they are wonderful enhancements.

I don't want to spoil the story too much, as that would detract from the joy of reading it. But it's the most fun I've had reading Star Wars in awhile. My only criticism is a reveal that comes at the very end of the book which I consider completely unnecessary. It's not enough to sour me on the entire book, though I was left wondering why it had to be there. It's the sort of thing that might have seemed really cool back in 1997, but now elicits an eye-roll from me.

Scoundrels is all the fun of a heist movie with all the fun of Star Wars. It's Han Solo, Chewie and Lando, what more could you ask for? I highly recommended it.

GRADE: A

Tales From the Empire

EDITOR: Peter Schweighofer

COPYRIGHT: 1997

SERIES: Tales From... (well, sort of)

TIME FRAME: Rebellion through New Republic -- covers stories from shortly after the Battle of Yavin to after the Thrawn trilogy

Unlike the other short story anthologies in the Star Wars "Tales From..." series, the stories published in this volume all originally appeared in Star Wars Adventure Journal. This publication is a tie-in to the officially licensed Star Wars role-playing games put out by West End Games. Given its association with role-playing games, some of the stories included are by first-time freelancers and some stories have an RPG feel to them as if based on personal game campaigns. Because these expanded tales do not revolve our the series' classic protagonists, sometimes we instead get carbon copies of these "types" which isn't always enjoyable by comparison.

Other stories are from established authors in the Star Wars expanded universe, like Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole, who use the Adventure Journal as opportunity to tell more stories with their own Star Wars characters who appear in later novels.

I do wish the book had more of a chronological organization to it, as stories jump all around the timeline. The current "official" timeline that is being published at the start of Star Wars novels now lists both Tales From the Empire and Tales From the New Republic shortly after Episode IV, and that is lazy and inaccurate. At least half of the stories here are set after Jedi. There is a certain logic to some of the organization, ending with a short story that finally includes Darth Vader, the only original series character to appear in the anthology. But when we have one story where a character is one age and then later one about his childhood, it's sometimes hard to keep straight where they are.

I would recommend reading these stories only after reading some of the other works referenced in them. Or perhaps alongside them, for example the short story that sets up the X-Wing series with that series. Reading this anthology on its own, especially before reading the other works, has far less of an impact.

While the anthology is sometimes a mixed bag, I found it more consistently enjoyable than Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina, and some of the freelancers tell very good stories. I wonder why these stories specifically were chosen out of the many the Adventure Journal had published, and whether other stories were never anthologized.

"FIRST CONTACT"

AUTHOR: Timothy Zahn

The first story in this collection is fittingly from the man who almost single-handledly began the Expanded Universe as we know it today. "First Contact" is about a smuggler, Talon Karrde, and his dealings with a weapon smuggling operation fronted by a big game safari. While there is a sort of mystery at the heart of the story that slowly unfolds, I didn't get the sense that Zahn really cared about most of that. The notion that the beasts hunted are actually sentient is never fully explored to any sort of conclusion. It's just a fact introduced and then ignored. What is the "First Contact" of the title? It would seem to be the ending of the story, when Karrde leaves with a female smuggler by the name of Mara Jade. These are characters who figure prominently in Zahn's other Star Wars books, but the reveal of Jade's name at the end is only going to matter to people familiar with these later stories. It's a good story, but a bit unfocused for me.

GRADE: B

"TINIAN ON TRIAL"

AUTHOR: Kathy Tyers

"Tinian on Trial" addresses an issue in the Star Wars universe that has been bothering me for some time now: what good is the Stormtroopers' armor? It seems to provide no defense against blaster fire at all! So Kathy Tyers posits that the armor has weak points that are being targeted, and builds her story around characters who have developed a kind of shielding which would make Stormtroopers impervious to blasters. Tinian is a young woman whose parents created the weapon, and is in love with a man who is in tune with the Force. But when the Empire double-crosses them to take the device as their own, Tinian is forced to defend herself against the Empire she thought she could trust in the name of those she loves. I liked the idea that the Empire has been working on some way to improve Stormtrooper defenses. This was a good story in that vane of nice people realizing just how corrupt the Empire is, and the things that lead people to turn on their government. The title is somewhat deceptive though, since Tinian is never actually "on trial". 

GRADE: B

"THE FINAL EXIT"
AUTHOR: Patricia A. Jackson
Here we have a story that definitely seems to have begun as a home game. And unfortunately, that's to its detriment. There are a lot of Star Wars-y things like the Force and smugglers and Jedi but it never feels to me like it belongs here. The characters all seem to be pale imitations of actual characters. The plot concerns a Corellian smuggler (Han Solo knock-off) who is transporting a Jedi (sound familiar?). Only this time, the Jedi is a "dark Jedi" (whatever that is) who also happens to be a famous actor and is on some secret mission for the Emperor or something. Oh, and we meet his kid who wants to be just like him when he grows up, so there are shades of Anakin Skywalker too. This story just doesn't make any sense to me. It's one thing to suppose there are a few other Jedi in hiding like Kenobi and Yoda who weren't killed by the Empire. But to then suggest that one of them is being groomed by the Emperor, I just don't buy it. I understand this was published before we learned of the rule of two with the Sith and all, but even given that, I don't understand why if Palpatine has Vader, he would be screwing with some other Jedi's head instead of just killing him. And the whole "oh, and he's an actor" bit doesn't really add to the story either. The actual writing of the piece is fairly good, but I just can't get past some of these elements.
GRADE: D

"MISSED CHANCE"
AUTHOR: Michael A. Stackpole
Forgive me, as it's been about a month since I read some of these and don't remember them well. "Missed Chance" is a sort of prequel to Stackpole's X-Wing series of novels. It follows Corran Horn as he gets involved with a rag-group of characters and finally is convinced to help the New Republic. Like I say, some of these run together in my head and I don't remember all the particulars, but it was a good read. As I mentioned in my review of the first Star Wars novelization, sometimes the space battle scenes don't read well or are hard to visualize. That did make a little tough for me on this story (though I'm sure there are other readers who love that stuff). That was really my only criticism, though.
GRADE: A

"RETREAT FROM CORUSCANT"
AUTHOR: Laurie Burns
The fun part of reading or writing stories in an existing universe is imagining the everyday workings of the society. Several of the stories collected here involve working-class people in some Star Wars version of a regular job. Set after the reign of Grand Admiral Thrawn, "Retreat From Coruscant" is about, well, the Rebellion's retreat from Coruscant after it is surrounded. What makes it stand out is that they escape by booking transport on a mail courier. It's a fun escapade that balances the mundane of the world (mail delivery) with the fantastic.
GRADE: B

"A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW"
AUTHOR: Charlene Newcomb
Peter Schweighofer tells us in the introduction that this story was inspired by a painting done for one of the games. You would never know it; it's a masterfully executed piece that explores those things that caused people to rebel against the Empire. It's shortly after Alderaan has been destroyed. Celia's brother was serving in the Imperial forces and had been killed by the Rebels. What follows is a fascinating look at the universe from Imperial sympathizers and how the nature of right and wrong is not necessarily about galactic politics, but personal. It's quite moving at times, and I hadn't really expected much from the cute Star Wars title. But that title ends up packed with symbolism. One of the standout pieces of this collection for me.
GRADE: A

"BLAZE OF GLORY"
AUTHOR: Tony Russo
A rollicking adventure following a band of mercenaries as they take down a slave trade operation. Most of the characters get their own little moments of exploration, and as you'd expect from the title, one of them goes out in a blaze of glory. Again, I no longer remember the particulars, but a perfectly serviceable story. Nothing sticks out as bad, nothing jumps out as memorable, so I'm going to give it a solid grade in the middle.
GRADE: C

"SLAYING DRAGONS"
AUTHOR: Angela Phillips
From the title and the opening paragraphs, I thought I was going to hate this story. I thought it would just be crazy fantastical nonsense with dragon-slaying. Instead, it refers to an old story from Alderaan with a dragonslayer, but that is not the focus. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the story of nine-year-old hacker Shannon and her cousin Deen. Deen has been working with the Rebels, which the family does not support. It's a nice little family dynamic story. Shannon sneaks off to join Deen and the story ends with a great moment where family have to decide where their loyalties lie.
GRADE: B

"DO NO HARM"
AUTHOR: Erin Endom
Another story from a certain point of view. "Do No Harm" is about a young doctor who is assigned to a team breaking into an Imperial prison to free an aging Rebel leader. Over the course of the story she's quite adamant that she is a healer not a killer, reluctant even to be involved if the objective is more about slaughter than rescue. If they can't get him out, she's asked if she can euthanize him so he can't be interrogated. She initially refuses this, but along the way finds herself put to the test in her role as healer; to save a life, will she take one? (boy, this is good stuff; I should write copy!) I really enjoyed this one, as it's an adventure told by someone who doesn't want to be on one, and reluctant heroes are always fascinating.
GRADE: A

"SIDE TRIP"
AUTHOR: Timothy Zahn and Michael A. Stackpole
This "short novel" as the front cover calls it is broken up into four sections, with Zahn and Stackpole splitting duties between them. Working together, they craft a tale that brings Stackpole's Corran Horn character together with Zahn's Thrawn and it makes for a great read. It's a sort of origin story for Corran, as he's a young boy working with his father in Corellian Security. It begins with some smugglers running guns for the Rebellion who get caught up with the Imperials, drafted to transport cargo to Corellia. To protect their own cargo, they agree.

The other catch is that they are provided with a guide on this mission: a bounty hunter named Jodo Kast in Mandalorian armor. This must be why the cover image is one of Boba Fett, though Fett never appears in this book. Even if the cover is meant to be Kast and not Fett, Fett's ship never appears either. So it's a bit of false advertising there, but I'm sure it helps sell books.

Zahn covers the first part of the story and the last part, while Stackpole takes over for the middle portions which focus more on the smuggler's dealings with Corran Horn when they get to Correlia and the whole situation gets crazy. The plot picks up speed with shifting loyalties, drugs, and the Black Sun criminal underground. I can't do it justice, but each "chapter" as it were ends with a rousing cliffhanger.  The story is full of surprises, such as the fact that "Jodo Kast" is really Admiral Thrawn. In the end, Darth Vader himself makes an appearance, having orchestrated the whole episode himself to wipe out Correlia's arm of Black Sun. And Thrawn got something from Vader in return: command of the Noghiri.

The whole story is intricately plotted, well-paced and fun on its own, but it's ties to other novels in the expanded universe give it an extra punch. You'd expect no less from these authors. I can't grade it as four separate pieces, but as one.
GRADE: A

OVERALL ANTHOLOGY GRADE: B

Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker

AUTHOR: George Lucas (but likely ghost-written)
COPYRIGHT: 1976
SERIES: movie novelization
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- up to and including Battle of Yavin

To my knowledge this is the very first Star Wars book. While attributed to George Lucas, it is likely to have been ghostwritten by a science-fiction writer from a draft of Lucas' script. Similiarly, the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was attributed to Gene Roddenberry. Who is the true author of this novelization? A possible culprit is Alan Dean Foster, who went on to write the Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Much of the vocabulary, especially toward the beginning, is rather verbose. The author uses words like "loquacity," perhaps to make the story feel more like a serious science-fiction tale.

This book is unlike other novelizations that have come in recent years. It contains photos from the movie, like many novelizations do. In fact, I seem to recall the paperback edition having different pictures, but perhaps my memory is faulty. This book dates back to an earlier version of the script, and obviously predates the "Episode IV: A New Hope" title. There is no opening crawl, though we are given a prologue which explains the state of galactic civil war. Unlike the film, it does not tell us about the stolen Death Star plans right away; we learn this from dialogue later. Much of the dialogue in the book differs from the final version onscreen. Sometimes explanations are much longer. For example, Kenobi explains to Luke that Jedi scientists have determined the Force to be some sort of energy field, but that science has not been able to fully explain it. For those who complain about midichlorians in the prequels, it's clear the Lucas always intended there to be an extent of scientific knowledge about the Force, but that the rest is taken on faith. At times the dialogue is a bit more expository. For example, we learn that Darth Vader explicitly allowed the Falcon to leave the Death Star because he deduced the droids they were tracking on Tatooine must be aboard. When Luke suggests that Han Solo help the princess because she's rich, Solo counters that her planet just blew up and all her riches with her. Luke then suggests that she still has powerful friends. Some of this is unnecessary, but an interesting look into how much the dialogue in the film was pared down to its basics. The now-familiar Leia transmission to Ben Kenobi is almost entirely different.

What makes the book valuable are the details which the movie's visual medium just can't convey. We are told more about moisture farming and life on Tatooine. We learn some about the Jawas and the Tusken Raiders (who were never identified as such on film until The Phantom Menace). There are even descriptions of how the blaster fire melts through people's heads and such. Some of the visceral descriptions are quite fascinating. Though these descriptions only lead me to further wonder why anyone in this universe wears armor if it does nothing. Ever think about that? Why do the stormtroopers wear those uniforms if they cannot protect them against blaster fire?

As it's based on an earlier draft, the book's description of the final Death Star run differs. Luke is in Blue Squadron, not Red, and the Red group is basically what the Gold Squadron is in the film. Actually, the book mentions four groups: red, blue, gold and green, but we never really hear from the other two. One failing of the book, but this is perhaps a flaw in the medium, is that space-bound action sequences generally read as boring. Luke and Han shooting down the TIE fighters is great onscreen, but in print is limited to descriptions of colors and readouts and explosions.

A benefit to the novel is its inclusion of scenes which would ultimately be deleted from the final film. For thirty years, before the Special Edition, the appearance of Jabba the Hutt at Mos Eisley could only be read about here. There are those who argue it's redundant in the film and they are correct. The movie scene essentially reiterates information we already got in the Greedo scene. But in the book, half of that information is saved for the Jabba scene. So Greedo doesn't go into Solo dropping his cargo; he just shows up ready to kill or take Solo's ship. It's so refreshing to read that exchange without any hint of Greedo firing. The other significant portions of deleted material deal with Luke and his friend Biggs. Lucas has said he always wanted to follow the droids until they get to Luke, and that the scenes with Biggs were insisted upon by the studio. Which is why the scenes on Tatooine were not reincorporated into the Special Edition or subsequent releases. They are still fascinating to read, however, and have a sense of nostalgia for teen hangouts and fast cars that clearly comes from the same mind that gave us American Graffiti.

Lucas has said that Star Wars was heavily influenced by Kurosawa's film The Hidden Fortress. This connection is made much more explicit in the novel, as the secret Rebel base is referred to over and over as their "hidden fortress". Perhaps Lucas ultimately decided this was too on-the-nose, as the final film uses simply "Rebel base" almost exclusively.

Some of the divergent elements are fascinating as well. Chewie is described as having "glowing yellow eyes". The description of Jabba seems intentionally vague. It mostly seems to work as applied to his eventual form, but it seems to also refer to the actor the scene was originally shot with. "A great mobile tub of muscle and suet" sounds about right, but then it's said to be "topped by a shaggy scarred skull." So Jabba has hair? Also of note is that Hutt has only one T in this book. The opening prologue is said to be taken from The Journal of the Whills, From the First Saga. The notion of the Whills is something I wish had not been abandoned from the early screenplay; I'm curious what Lucas had in mind. I like that it contributes to the sense of the story as an ancient tale being told. The prologue describes many things that eventually play out in the prequels, showing just how much Lucas had in mind this far back. We learn of the rise of Senator Palpatine who elects himself President of the Republic (ultimately Lucas would change the title to Chancellor) aided by "the massive organs of commerce". This explains why Episode I deals with matters of taxation and trade routes. We are then told that he declared himself Emperor and had the Jedi wiped out "through treachery and deception". The strangest thing about all this is that the prologue strongly implies Palpatine as the only Emperor, but later dialogue between Luke and Obi-Wan suggest there have been multiple Emperors. In discussing Anakin Skywalker, Kenobi says, "Vader used the training I gave him and the force within him [the Force is never capitalized in the novel] for evil, to help the later corrupt Emperors." This is the only suggestion of there being more than one, and it's clear Lucas quickly abandoned the idea, if it was even his to begin with. It does seem very inconsistent. Also of note is that Vader is described as "a boy I was training," perhaps suggesting even then that Lucas believed Jedi training began at a very young age. In the movie all we get is that he was "a pupil of mine."

While this early novelization of Star Wars is not without its flaws, it is a remarkable time capsule and overall a good read. The extent of Lucas' imagination regarding the world of the film is seen more clearly than even the film can show at times. The subtitle From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, with it's use of a plural suggests there are more stories to come, which indeed there were. But perhaps my favorite element of this book is that the prologue closes with a quote attributed to Princess Leia:

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes."

GRADE: A