4. Han Solo's Revenge by Brian Daley (1979)
Summary: After his pirate movie theater gets taken down by a religious mob, Han Solo goes back to smuggling. He accidentally takes a contract as a slave trader, frees the slaves, and goes to get his money from the head of the slavers. The Falcon almost gets repoed, and Han and Chewie link up with Fiolla, who thinks the slavers are led by Corp Sec higher ups. They get followed and almost assasinated a bunch of times. Eventually, they get on a space cruise ship, it gets attacked by the slavers (disguised as pirates). Eventually, they find the evidence they need and (after a brief hostage standoff) take the money and run.
What it introduces: SWOOPS! Which is actually kind of weird. I (and I think most people) generally think of swoops as speeder bike's bigger, badder cousin. But here we are, four years before speeder bikes show up in ROTJ with Han riding around on one.
That's really it. I'll be honest, this book felt kind of pointless.
Commentary: Let's start with the good. I love the opening scene here. Han Solo and Chewbacca have set down an a primitive world, and are showing the locals a crappy old holo movie. They're making decent money (although mostly in local artifacts that they'll have to have to convert to cash), and it sets up a running joke/issue with damage to the Falcon's control system. He tries to change to showing a new movie, starts a riot, and gets chased off world.
One of the things I love the most about the Star Wars universe is that someone, somewhere, has written about everything in it. Backwater planet with a traveling movie theater? I don't think I've ever read another sci-fi story with that, but here it is.
It's mostly down hill from there, though. Han Solo's Revenge is by far the most forgettable of Daley's trilogy. It's not offensively bad, just bland and predictable. Many of the same issues as Stars End (easily resolved faux-conflicts, twists that're obvious chapters in advance) make a reappearance.
I realized a few of the notes I made for Stars End were actually from this section of the book (my epub is a later omnibus reprint with all three together) so I have even less to say than I would have. I partially blame the book for this, since one of my notes was to mark that the same description of Han's blaster shows up, almost word for word, in both:
At his side was a constant companion, a custom-made blaster that was fitted with a rear-mounted macroscop. It's front sight blade had been filed off with the speeddraw in mind.
That's not even that good/interesting of a description to reuse!
This is sort of an attempt at a Raymond Chandler/Alfred Hitchcock noir/suspense double-triple cross plot, but it never really goes anywhere. Fiolla and the other Corp Sec agents can't actually catch Han, she can't really be a bad guy, but she can't really do anything since she's not going to show up again after this book anyway. A little more continuity across the trilogy would've really helped these minor characters (Doc and his family, Fiolla, etc.) develop. Bollux and Blue Max are the only characters (besides Han and Chewie) who carry through across all three books, and they never really get past their schtick of rough around the edges C-3PO and naive R2D2. We do get introduced to Gallandro, a hired gunman with a faster draw than Han. He shows up again in the next book, and actually gets to have some semblance of actual character.
Review: 2/5 Skippable for just about anyone, but not bad enough to hate on. Maybe a real niche read for someone who wants some sci-fi noir. It's not a big genre, but there's still plenty better. I don't even know that I'd say its necessary for someone reading this specific trilogy to read this one.
I'm like four books ahead at this point, and I can confirm the scores will start going up.
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