A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I started reading these books…

The Star Wars Expanded Universe is a big place, and one that’s easy to get lost in. That’s why it’s my mission to help to guide you through the EU with (generally) chronologically ordered reviews of Star Wars novels. This week, I continue to review Brian Daley’s Han Solo Adventures with Book 2, Han Solo’s Revenge. Han Solo at Stars’ End was an important part of kick-starting the Expanded Universe. Can the sequel (to a prequel, even) live up to its predecessor?

Han Solo and his Wookiee friend and first mate Chewbacca are hard up for cash. Nothing they do seems to work, so they throw caution to the wind and enter their bid for a mysterious “no questions asked” contract that guarantees nothing but a wad of cash. This contract also serves as a reminder for Han that no matter how broke you are, you haven’t quite reached rock bottom.

We open on our anti-heroes on the world of Kamar where Han, much the way his friend Lando Calrissian would be doing in Han’s situation, is using the last of his possessions (other than the Falcon) to run a holotheatre for the insectoid locals. A friend of Han’s shows up, allowing Han to make the transition to Mr. Exposition. While he doesn’t explain why he never followed through with the apparent agreement made in the previous novel, we do find out about the source of Han’s financial troubles, and how he came to be on Kamar with a holoprojector. Our other characters carrying over from the previous novel - Bollux and Blue Max- arrive. Bollux, despite having his body virtually destroyed in Stars’ End, has had his original body rebuilt. We get some sort of explanation, but the real reason is that it’s been less than a year since the last novel, and it takes Sci-Fi fans over twenty years before they can start to accept plausible changes in their favorite robotic characters.

When Han tries to change the holo being shown, it’s revealed that the Kamarians didn’t really care about the theatre- they cared about the water world they were seeing in the documentary it projected. Trying really hard to sell the Sci-Fi setting, Han replies to this revelation with “How would I know what went wrong? What am I, a telepathist?” You know, because telepath doesn’t sound Space Opera enough.

Despite the ending of Stars’ End, in which it was pretty clear that Han had a group to go home to if he really needed it, and that he was interested in helping them out, Solo’s broke and out of options. His friend volunteers information about a big pay deal rumored back in the Corporate Sector. It’s pretty shady, but since Han forgot about all of his friends, he has no choice and meets a man named Zlarb (brought to you by the letter Z, making stupid names badass since the 1950s). Zlarb, though, is not very big on human resources- he holds Han and Chewie at gunpoint as he loads a herd of Oompa Loompas covered with white fur (except that they’re experts at genetic engineering rather than candy making) onto the Falcon, and tells Han to take off.

Bollux is fitted with a restraining bolt, which are very convenient devices in that they always seem to impede just the right part to allow someone to get past it. When a restraining bolt is placed on a high functioning droid like Artoo Detoo, it allows the droid full function, only holding them in place or preventing them from taking certain specified freedoms. When placed on a labor droid with a symbiotic sentient computer probe inside it, it shuts down the primary processors, preventing Bollux from controlling his own metal body without blocking any other signals. That, and Blue Max can do literally anything unless it’s convenient to the plot for him to be naïve at the moment.

Blue Max uses Bollux’s body to hack into the Falcon, providing a distraction that allowed Han, Chewie and the Oompa Loompas- I mean the Lurrians- to rise up, kill Zlarb, and turn the tables on the rest of the slavers. Han then searches Zlarb’s body and finds a Malkite poison kit, which allows him to remind any readers that forgot the slaver was a bad guy. After all, it has been an entire seven pages since Zlarb had last done anything bad. A guy can forget a lot in that kind of time, am I right?

After killing the man who was supposed to kill him instead of paying him, Han gets the brilliant idea to keep going and get the money that’s coming to him, even though there was never any money to begin with. Why? Because Han is this guy:

Leia: We’ve been driving a long time, what direction are we going?
Han: We’re going the right way.
Leia: Are you sure? Do you even know if we’re going East or West?
Han: We’ll come across something soon, we’re fine.
Leia: Do you want to stop and ask for directions?
Han: No. I’m not lost.
Leia: Then where are we?
Han: Going the right way, that’s where.

Following this single-minded and very short-sighted plan of Find the Person with Enough Money, he lands on Bonadan.

On Bonadan, Han finds people he’s not going to shoot just yet. How can he, if he needs their money, right? Or he needs somebody’s money. Bonadan is interesting because firearms are all sort are banned planet-wide. There seems to be a lot of places like that in the early EU, despite the fact that firearms seemed to be carried anywhere and everywhere openly and without question in the films. Anyway, we get some conversation where we meet a pretty young lady (pretty enough that Han decides to buy her a drink, despite his plans to rob her) who seems to be Zlarb’s superior, or customer, or whoever. They agree to handle their business elsewhere, and part ways. Once they’re apart, Han gets jumped in the dark, in a fight scene that’s somehow written as the literary equivalent of AVPR.

Han uses LEDs on the expensive drink that he bought for the pretty girl at the spaceport as a source of light and gets away, only to run across her in yet another fight. Han helps her out, this fight a bit clearer and displaying some of Han’s ability as he fights at a disadvantage. They escape after a swoop chase that would give The Phantom Menace a run for its money- a fact referenced proactively when Han mentions that he used to race swoops back in the day.

Back at the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca meets a Tynnan named Spray, a skip tracer attempting to repossess the Falcon- at least, that’s who he says he is. He collects the Tynnan, who is so brave and/or single-minded that it’s somewhat amusing, and at Bollux’s direction goes to join Han at a place called “Landing Zone”- a restaurant of some sort well-known to spacers on Bonadan, where they’re served by a comic-relief alien (a Sljee) who can’t distinguish between mammals, even by gender or species. Before Chewie arrives, the woman reveals that that, rather than a slaver, she’s actually an undercover Corporate Sector Authority executive named Fiolla, investigating the slave ring. Fiolla mentions that her investigation has led her to believe that it might reach as far as Odumin, the sector manager (Corporate Sector equivalent of a Moff), wrapping up as Chewie and Spray come in.

The four talk, Han and Chewbacca remaining barely civilized at the idea of their ship being taken from them. Fiolla, in need of a ship herself, is willing to pay Han and Chewie’s debt in response for help in her investigation. The smugglers find themselves short on options, and agree to take Fiolla (and Spray) where needed. That’s right, we now have a cast, a plot, and a direction, and a completed running gag. And we’re only halfway through the novel.

Han and Fiolla go to collect her belongings and partner at her hotel, where two things become clear: one, somebody ransacked the apartment, looking for something. Two, Maggs, Fiolla’s assistant, is nowhere to be seen. The two reason that he was taken captive, and using Han’s only remaining tip- that funding for the slave ring seemed to go through Ammuud- they set off to leave the planet. Unfortunately, they can’t get to the Falcon without being seen. Han uses light signals to give instructions to Chewbacca, after which Fiolla uses a Men in Black standard “we’re your superiors, never mind a close look at our identification” to get the spaceport crew off their case.

Han and Fiolla are forced to take a cruise ship to Ammuud. Why? Well, this way, they get some time alone. Daley can tease us with a possible love interest that will probably never take off. Han gets to meet yet another friend, to prove he knows every outlaw or former outlaw that happens to pass through the Corporate Sector, and Fiolla wears a shimmersilk gown. Why? Well… basically, just so that there will be a chance to write a character in a shimmersilk gown.

Chewbacca, the droids and Spray are also making their way to Ammuud. One noteable scene is that Spray actually manages to defeat Chewbacca at dejarik, something that I cried foul at when I first read it but actually makes sense later on. Of course, neither group makes it straight to Ammuud and the incredibly convenient plot points that wrap up the novel. There are some difficulties, some personal revelations about the spacer, and even some filler. Yes, you heard me right. In a novel that’s less than two hundred pages long and took the first hundred to get the plot set up, there is filler.

Like I said, the plot as it progresses once they finally get to Ammuud is incredibly inconvenient. They arrive at just the right time and face just the right obstacles that it’s rather anticlimactic- there’s no big fight (although Gallandro, a mercenary, appears in such a way that you know with each line he’s being built up for a fight with Han). No, the real draw of the ending is the big reveal of what the hell’s going on. Forgiving for a moment that most of it needs to be revealed to both the readers and the main characters rather than being found out the way the killer in Stars’ End was figured out, there’s really some surprising mystery novel reveals here. I recommend a notepad and a pencil at the end, just to keep track of what you find out. (Hint: The Tynnan isn’t working for Insterstellar Collections Limited).

Han Solo’s Revenge is a decent novel, but it’s no Stars’ End. There are some interesting mysteries and decent characters, false leads to distract the reader and false leads that really should have gone somewhere (like Han and Fiolla, at least on a Bond tip). In the end, Revenge is the Matrix: Reloaded of the Han Solo Adventures: it takes what was a decent standalone novel and sets it up to be a trilogy, but in a way that seems to disregard much of the ending of the original so that it fits the extended story better. I’d recommend it to serious fans, but as it’s rather short (even shorter if you take out Chewbacca’s filler scene) and not very essential to much of anything, it can be skipped over without much loss.