The previous Star Wars Adventures Digest, Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya, was a great comic. Unfortunately, Princess Leia’s adventure is more of a mixed bag – it’s not bad, but it’s not great either. The plot is thin, barely there at times – and while a superior artist would be able to convey more of the story through the art, here again this volume at times falls short. After the break, I’ll give more of a plot summary and finish up the review.

Right up front we’re told this story takes place approximately one year before The Empire Strikes Back. I’m fine with that time period, though I know some people feel it’s already crowded with adventures for the Big 3 from the old Marvel comic series. Honestly, my bigger gripe is that Han and Leia act more like they do in Empire – a lot of that same banter – and while maybe that’s to be expected, I’d have liked to see more of her chilly attitude towards Han (like she was at first on Hoth) than the more romantic angle.

But the story picks up, as most of these digests do, right in the midst of the action. Han and Leia are in the midst of escaping from an Imperial base from which they’ve stolen the data on secret Imperial shipping lanes. Once Chewbacca rescues them, Han decides to take a detour to deliver some cargo that’s long overdue before finishing up the Alliance mission, much to the consternation of a princess whom Han thinks should act less like a commando and more befitting of her title.

Or course, this will come back to haunt him, as they both get dragged into a caper where they unwittingly are smuggling a kidnapped princess – and Princess Mi acts every bit the role you’d expect from royalty, the complete opposite of Leia. On their tale are the original kidnappers, now trying to cover up what they’ve done, the Genosian whose cargo Han didn’t deliver on time and his large droid K1L-R, and the bounty hunter Dust. Mostly it’s a series of misadventures where our heroes are running for their lives from any one of these three groups – until finally both princesses are captured by Dust. From there it becomes a story of how Leia, Han and Chewie can figure out how to get out of this mess.

As I said, there just didn’t feel like there was a lot of depth to this story, and there were times when I think the story was relying on the art to explain what was going on – and the art failed. At the same time, there are pages where the characters are nicely drawn – and the robot named K1L-R and Dust the bounty hunter were both great character designs and always looked good; but Chewie was kind of hit and miss – and Han just never looked right to me. In all, I found it to be a mostly forgettable tale and can’t really say I recommend it – though I will close with one thing that I found intriguing. When the reader last sees Dust, his helmet has been shattered – and his face is revealed for the first time. His skin color is blue, and despite the fact that his eyes are white (and mismatched) – he bears a striking resemblance to Cad Bane. I hope to see more of Dust again in future volumes of Star Wars Adventures.