Tales from Jabba's Palace edited by Kevin J Anderson (1995)

 Tales from Jabba's Palace

from wookiepedia
Sweet Collage!

Decided another short story collection would be a good palate cleanser before I jumped into the kid books that round out 1995. My plan is to plow through those, do a little break at the end of 1995 for "extras" (RPG books, video games, etc.) and then take it a bit slower on the X-Wing and Shadows of the Empire stuff. 1996 is really the year the EU kicks into high gear.

Speed round on the individual stories, followed by my overall thoughts on the collection as a whole. I'll probably do about half tonight and half tomorrow.

A Boy and His Monster: The Rancor Keeper’s Tale by Kevin J. Anderson: 3/5 You know, Anderson has really been improving these last couple outings. A little light horror, explaining how the Rancor got to Jabba's palace (the Jawas found it on a crashed ship). Chapter titles are cute. Goes a little long and gets off into the weeds a little a few times, but overall fun enough.

Taster’s Choice: The Tale of Jabba’s Chef by Barbara Hambly: 2/5 Not as offensively bad as most of Hambly's stuff, but just kind of forgettable and pointless.

That’s Entertainment: The Tale of Salacious Crumb by Esther M. Friesner: 1/5 Salacious Crumb is a prop not a character. Why is this here?

A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: Oola’s Tale by Kathy Tyers: 4/5 This one is doing a fair amount of overall background work for the collection as a whole. It's also the first one that actually relates to a character that we give a crap about.

Let Us Prey: The Whiphid’s Tale by Marina Fitch and Mark Budz: 2/5 This is as good a place as any to point out a common flaw in the stories here. Most of them center around someone trying to kill Jabba. As we know, Jabba is going to get choked to death by Leia on the sail barge. That means no any story that revolves around attempting to kill Jabba has to end in failure or a fake cliff hanger. Hard to get invested that way.

Sleight of Hand: The Tale of Mara Jade by Timothy Zahn: 2/5 This one was really disappointing. I think Zahn's goal here is to show how subservient Mara is to Palpatine. Fair enough. And she has to suck up to Jabba some for her disguise, okay. But then she starts simpering around Boba Fett (who she starts a conversation with, despite thinking he might wind up recognizing her), gets caught by one of Jabba's guards (gets out of that at least), and then doesn't make the sail barge because Jabba tells her not to? The Empire's most badass secret agent can't stow away or something.

More tomorrow!

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