Star Wars: Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (Book Review)
Welcome my next read of the Star Wars Expanded Universe/Legends:
Cover by William Schmidt (image courtesy of Wookiepedia)
Here we have the last volume of Brian Daley’s work on Han Solo’s Adventures. We also see a change to the cover design that continues through the upcoming Lando Calrissian series to artist William Schmidt. The Star Wars font remains fluid here, and compared to the previous covers is ever so slightly more eye-catching. Even the typical branding we see later as Star Wars deepens into cultural zeitgeist is nonexistent at this stage. The pale skull of Xim’s logo is more literal than stylistic. Personally, I like the change, but like the previous covers, they don’t grab the reader as much as the later works—we’ll see more of that with Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy.
Released on August 12, 1980 (four months after Empire Strikes Back), we pick up some time after the events of Han Solo’s Revenge with Han and Chewie into a new adventure. The droid pair Bollux and Blue Max are still here. Han is at the end of his large payout from the last big adventure, even working for someone he despises. He has an opportunity for a new score, so he ditches his day job in spectacular fashion and heads off to meet up with an old friend, Badure, whom he did some smuggling in the past and owes something akin to a Life Debt. We have another woman (Hasti) who joins the plot to find a missing ship, the Queen of Ranoon, the treasure ship of Xim the Despot, a tyrant long before the age of the Galactic Empire. The ship was lost long ago, and it’s a story of hunting down the contents of the treasure ship itself.
There are some fun Star Wars tidbits worked into Daley’s story. Han Solo gets his chin scar here (the result of a car accident in 1969 by Harrison Ford1), received as the result of a knife cut. Daley hints at the piping along his trousers was more than a stylistic choice, but the result of military service.
“Didn’t you notice the red piping on the seams of his shipboard trousers? They don’t give away the Corellian Blood-stripe for perfect attendance.”
Daley deftly weaves the ending of the novel to line up as a precursor to the events of A New Hope—the off ramping of the droid pair Bollux and Blue Max, a discussion of another Kessel Spice run, and Jabba the Hut (a misspelling here, though I’m unsure if Daley was aware of Lucas’ script spelling of Jabba the Hutt). The hinging problem is that as a Star Wars fan, I know Han Solo doesn’t score big because he’d not be in the tight spot we find him in at the midpoint of ANH, which ultimately puts him into the hands of the bounty hunter Boba Fett in ESB. It’s a problem we’ve seen before (Titanic, anyone?) but with careful writing and framing can be sold to the reader. I find this a light, but a middling story. Daley throws out complication after complication, but rather than the hero (Han and Chewie) overcoming them, they are often overcome by other characters, and losing agency is this story’s weakness. We get the thinnest of character in Han Solo himself. We know he’s a smuggler, a hotshot pilot, a crack shot, and skirts the edge of amorality. Daley does attempt to add some depth with his concern for his new crew and a deeper past with the Corellian military and what got him drummed out, but nothing affects who he is or adds more than just shading. Badure, Hasti, the new antagonists, and a different plot keep the story fresh rather than treading old ground, and this is credit to Daley’s blank canvas approach to each story. The opening scenes hint at a galaxy spanning treasure hunt, but ultimately we end up on a planetary walk that’s not all that satisfying, but it’s another short novel. Ranking the three novels, I’d put Revenge above Lost Legacy, but both above Star’s End—the longer I sit with it, the sillier the circus performer bit becomes.
Next up in Legends is a set of novels written after Return of the Jedi, focusing on the character of Lando Calrissian, one of smoothest and classiest rogues of the Star Wars universe. Come along for the next jump!
May the Force be with you.