annabrietta's review
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
a_chickletz's review
1.0
If this was a person I'd ignore them completely.
This book, the final book of the trilogy, is the most lamest story about a Star Wars character I ever read.
I have never seen so much 'ha-ha' moments where the author thought it'd be witty to make Han say re-used dialogue from the first two films. I wanted to ban the word 'sister' from his vocabulary. What was once a sarcastic quip, now becomes an overused trope.
I HATE BRIA SO GOD DAMN MUCH. I hate how the entire series revolved around her stupid ass and how Han kept moping about her. Everything he shared with Bria made me think... wow, Leia is not only so much better but my god, she wasn't that special.
I wanted to fucking roll my eyes at how everything about Han's character came about in the very last book - of course it did - because the author had no other way to include it in the other two. A bit rushed, me thinks. Also: Han and Lando, the reason they were angry at one another? ... Bria. Stupid Bria.
I refuse to accept this series as the au for Han Solo. I will wait until someone else writes a far more better backstory for Han.
sboard's review against another edition
3.0
Better than The Hutt Gambit, not as strong as Paradise Snare. This one started off pretty rough, but around the halfway mark the story picked up again (with great pacing) and wrapped the trilogy up nicely.
blancwene's review
2.0
For 2020, I decided to reread (in publication order) all the Bantam-era Star Wars books that were released between 1991 and 1999; that shakes out to 38 adult novels and 5 anthologies of short stories & novellas.
This week’s focus: the third book in the Han Solo prequel trilogy, Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin.
SOME HISTORY:
In an interview with TheForce.net, A.C. Crispin expected Rebel Dawn to be released around Christmas of 1997, but instead it wasn’t published until March 1998. I don’t believe that Crispin turned in the manuscript late, so why the delay on Bantam’s part? I can only guess that with the license switching over to Del Rey in 1999, Bantam wanted to drag out their remaining releases, since the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy was likewise spread over two years. Rebel Dawn made it to number fifteen on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for the week of March 29, 1998, and was on the NYT list for three weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
My recollections of this book was that Chewie finally got to visit his homeworld again, Han’s betrayed by his ex-girlfriend, and that it ends just as A New Hope begins. Which was pretty much right on the money!
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
The Millennium Falcon is "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy." So when Han Solo wins it in a game of sabacc, he and Chewbacca become the top in their class. But an old flame of Han's, who is now the leader of an insurgent Rebel group, offers him a shot at an incredible fortune, and Han can't resist. Too bad for Han that the planet of Ylesia is far from a pushover, that the Rebels have an agenda of their own, and that smuggler friends can often turn into enemies…
THE CHARACTERS:
I was surprised how willing Han was to abandon his friends in this book. When Salla Zend decides that their relationship should get a lot more serious, Han bolts for the Corporate Sector. He reunites with Muuurgh and Mrrov before the Battle of Ylesia, but never follows up with them after Mrrov is injured. In a similar manner, when he realizes that the Rebels aren’t going to pay the smugglers, he doesn’t do anything.
So from that, I was expecting for Han to be a lot more street-savvy and reluctant to commit to people and causes, which made it a little weird that Han was so naive when it came to Bria. She approaches him with an opportunity to make a lot of money, and he initially brushes her off. But then he comes around to the idea, and they rekindle their relationship (with Han thinking that they’ll live happily ever after). It’s hard for me to reconcile the Han who thinks he’ll get a HEA with Bria the Rebel officer with the Han who leaves his friends behind because it’s too hard to help them out.
But on the whole, I felt like Crispin really gets Han’s voice, and while I don’t buy the Bria romance subplot, I could accept a lot of the other stuff that happened to him.
Chewie only gets some development on the romantic front. He visits his family on Kashyyyk, he finds out that the girl he left behind is still unmarried, and they get together and start a family! (His child’s name, on the other hand, is unfortunate. Poor Lumpy.) It was nice to see Chewie so happy. I guess I have some questions about the Life Debt, though--after his wedding, Han thought he’d stay on Kashyyyk for a little while, so I wasn’t expecting Chewie to immediately leave so that he can follow Han around on his aimless journeys. At least he’s loyal?
Lando’s grown a mustache, so he’s changed a tiny bit, but otherwise it’s the same. He wins money; he loses money. I thought that he had signed over most of the used spaceship lot to Roa in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], but he must still have an owning stake in it since he wagers any ship on the lot during the sabacc tournament.
I was actually expecting Han and Lando to fall out over the Millenium Falcon, but Lando took that loss remarkably well. Instead they fall out over the Ylesian mess, which...fair enough, Lando has many reasons to be pissed off.
I thought Bria was an unnecessary presence in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], but in Rebel Dawn she’s almost too involved in the narrative. In [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698], Bria was struggling with addiction. She has since traded that weakness for an absolute dedication to the Rebel cause. Suddenly Bria is at the center of the Corellian resistance (or whatever it was called), working undercover, being credited with bringing the Rebel Alliance together. In Chapter 7: Bria convinced Bail Organa to drop his pacifist stance! Bria single-handedly jumpstarted the Rebel Alliance! And after betraying Han, she’s part of the team that dies while stealing the Death Star plans. It’s a bit much.
If you thought that there was a lot of Hutt politics in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], you ain’t seen nothing yet! Crispin clearly likes Hutts scheming, so in Rebel Dawn we get Durga trying to uncover who murdered his parent and falling under the control of Prince Xizor and Black Sun; Teroenza the High Priest trying to gain full control of Ylesia; and Jabba taking his aunt’s place as head of the Desilijic clan.
ISSUES:
I hadn’t noticed this stylistic quirk in the previous two books, but in Rebel Dawn I found Crispin overusing epithets, particularly for Han and Lando: she often refers to them as “the Corellian” and “the gambler.” As I said in my review of [b:Rogue Squadron|513176|Rogue Squadron (Star Wars X-Wing, #1)|Michael A. Stackpole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327860341l/513176._SY75_.jpg|987443], I don’t like epithets because they feel a lot more awkward than the character’s name. It’s fine to repeat a name! Epithets weaken your writing!
Like with the first two books, Crispin tends to summarize events instead of actually presenting them in detail. Chapter Five opens with “Over the next five months, Han Solo and his Wookiee First Mate rose to the top of the smuggler heap.” But we don’t see any of their escapades, apart from the foolish race that led to the destruction of Salla Zend’s Rimrunner.
Han and Chewie leave for the Corporate Sector at the end of Chapter Six, and are essentially missing from the narrative for three whole chapters. (Han appears at the end of each chapter for a brief interlude detailing his escapades during the Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley.) They don’t reenter the story again until Chapter Ten. While I liked this method for fitting the Lando Calrissian Adventures into the timeline during [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], I don’t think it works as well when the main character goes missing for huge blocks of time. Rebel Dawn without Han devolves into lots of Hutt politics + Bria’s subplot.
Why not set the sabacc tournament at the end of [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985]? That way, Han can win the Millenium Falcon, have his Corporate Sector adventures between books 2 and 3, and then more of Rebel Dawn could have been dedicated to actual examples of Han’s smuggling escapades.
The timeline at the end also felt off to me. Han leaves the Battle of Ylesia with a bunch of slave children in tow; gets a job from Jabba transporting spice; dumps the spice because an Imperial patrol is after him; takes the children to Corellia; comes back to retrieve the cargo but it’s gone; Jabba gives him ten days to pay him back; and then we’re on Tatooine, smack dab at the beginning of A New Hope. That felt way too fast! I always got the impression that Han had been hiding from Jabba for a while, not for barely two weeks.
But I think the biggest problem I had with Rebel Dawn was that the biggest event in Han Solo’s life before the Original Trilogy was this doomed romance with Bria Tharen, and how it affected him for years afterwards. I can buy that her betrayal at the end of [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698] was very upsetting. Han dwells on this for TEN WHOLE YEARS, only to be betrayed by her again.
I guess I don’t agree with Bria being so integral to Han’s life, and I also don’t agree with Crispin’s assumption that Han won’t commit to the Rebels because a Rebel woman broke his heart. Han probably has many other reasons why he won’t commit to their cause!
IN CONCLUSION:
Ranking the Han Solo trilogy from top to bottom, I would say that I liked [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985] best, with all its continuity nods and its glimpses into Han’s smuggling career. Then [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698] is in the middle, because I did like seeing Han taking his first solo steps in the galaxy. And Rebel Dawn comes in last place, mostly because Bria ruins everything for me. But it’s still (for the most part) a fun read, and serves as a nice bookend to A New Hope.
Next up: Corran Horn’s big hardcover adventure (and the first Star Wars story told in first person): [b:I, Jedi|758654|I, Jedi (Star Wars)|Michael A. Stackpole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327870262l/758654._SY75_.jpg|1134006] by Michael A. Stackpole.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/KYDfXaS_mLk
TheForce.net interview with A.C. Crispin: http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/crispin.asp
This week’s focus: the third book in the Han Solo prequel trilogy, Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin.
SOME HISTORY:
In an interview with TheForce.net, A.C. Crispin expected Rebel Dawn to be released around Christmas of 1997, but instead it wasn’t published until March 1998. I don’t believe that Crispin turned in the manuscript late, so why the delay on Bantam’s part? I can only guess that with the license switching over to Del Rey in 1999, Bantam wanted to drag out their remaining releases, since the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy was likewise spread over two years. Rebel Dawn made it to number fifteen on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for the week of March 29, 1998, and was on the NYT list for three weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
My recollections of this book was that Chewie finally got to visit his homeworld again, Han’s betrayed by his ex-girlfriend, and that it ends just as A New Hope begins. Which was pretty much right on the money!
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
The Millennium Falcon is "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy." So when Han Solo wins it in a game of sabacc, he and Chewbacca become the top in their class. But an old flame of Han's, who is now the leader of an insurgent Rebel group, offers him a shot at an incredible fortune, and Han can't resist. Too bad for Han that the planet of Ylesia is far from a pushover, that the Rebels have an agenda of their own, and that smuggler friends can often turn into enemies…
THE CHARACTERS:
I was surprised how willing Han was to abandon his friends in this book. When Salla Zend decides that their relationship should get a lot more serious, Han bolts for the Corporate Sector. He reunites with Muuurgh and Mrrov before the Battle of Ylesia, but never follows up with them after Mrrov is injured. In a similar manner, when he realizes that the Rebels aren’t going to pay the smugglers, he doesn’t do anything.
So from that, I was expecting for Han to be a lot more street-savvy and reluctant to commit to people and causes, which made it a little weird that Han was so naive when it came to Bria. She approaches him with an opportunity to make a lot of money, and he initially brushes her off. But then he comes around to the idea, and they rekindle their relationship (with Han thinking that they’ll live happily ever after). It’s hard for me to reconcile the Han who thinks he’ll get a HEA with Bria the Rebel officer with the Han who leaves his friends behind because it’s too hard to help them out.
But on the whole, I felt like Crispin really gets Han’s voice, and while I don’t buy the Bria romance subplot, I could accept a lot of the other stuff that happened to him.
Chewie only gets some development on the romantic front. He visits his family on Kashyyyk, he finds out that the girl he left behind is still unmarried, and they get together and start a family! (His child’s name, on the other hand, is unfortunate. Poor Lumpy.) It was nice to see Chewie so happy. I guess I have some questions about the Life Debt, though--after his wedding, Han thought he’d stay on Kashyyyk for a little while, so I wasn’t expecting Chewie to immediately leave so that he can follow Han around on his aimless journeys. At least he’s loyal?
Lando’s grown a mustache, so he’s changed a tiny bit, but otherwise it’s the same. He wins money; he loses money. I thought that he had signed over most of the used spaceship lot to Roa in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], but he must still have an owning stake in it since he wagers any ship on the lot during the sabacc tournament.
I was actually expecting Han and Lando to fall out over the Millenium Falcon, but Lando took that loss remarkably well. Instead they fall out over the Ylesian mess, which...fair enough, Lando has many reasons to be pissed off.
I thought Bria was an unnecessary presence in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], but in Rebel Dawn she’s almost too involved in the narrative. In [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698], Bria was struggling with addiction. She has since traded that weakness for an absolute dedication to the Rebel cause. Suddenly Bria is at the center of the Corellian resistance (or whatever it was called), working undercover, being credited with bringing the Rebel Alliance together. In Chapter 7: Bria convinced Bail Organa to drop his pacifist stance! Bria single-handedly jumpstarted the Rebel Alliance! And after betraying Han, she’s part of the team that dies while stealing the Death Star plans. It’s a bit much.
If you thought that there was a lot of Hutt politics in [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], you ain’t seen nothing yet! Crispin clearly likes Hutts scheming, so in Rebel Dawn we get Durga trying to uncover who murdered his parent and falling under the control of Prince Xizor and Black Sun; Teroenza the High Priest trying to gain full control of Ylesia; and Jabba taking his aunt’s place as head of the Desilijic clan.
ISSUES:
I hadn’t noticed this stylistic quirk in the previous two books, but in Rebel Dawn I found Crispin overusing epithets, particularly for Han and Lando: she often refers to them as “the Corellian” and “the gambler.” As I said in my review of [b:Rogue Squadron|513176|Rogue Squadron (Star Wars X-Wing, #1)|Michael A. Stackpole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327860341l/513176._SY75_.jpg|987443], I don’t like epithets because they feel a lot more awkward than the character’s name. It’s fine to repeat a name! Epithets weaken your writing!
Like with the first two books, Crispin tends to summarize events instead of actually presenting them in detail. Chapter Five opens with “Over the next five months, Han Solo and his Wookiee First Mate rose to the top of the smuggler heap.” But we don’t see any of their escapades, apart from the foolish race that led to the destruction of Salla Zend’s Rimrunner.
Han and Chewie leave for the Corporate Sector at the end of Chapter Six, and are essentially missing from the narrative for three whole chapters. (Han appears at the end of each chapter for a brief interlude detailing his escapades during the Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley.) They don’t reenter the story again until Chapter Ten. While I liked this method for fitting the Lando Calrissian Adventures into the timeline during [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985], I don’t think it works as well when the main character goes missing for huge blocks of time. Rebel Dawn without Han devolves into lots of Hutt politics + Bria’s subplot.
Why not set the sabacc tournament at the end of [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985]? That way, Han can win the Millenium Falcon, have his Corporate Sector adventures between books 2 and 3, and then more of Rebel Dawn could have been dedicated to actual examples of Han’s smuggling escapades.
The timeline at the end also felt off to me. Han leaves the Battle of Ylesia with a bunch of slave children in tow; gets a job from Jabba transporting spice; dumps the spice because an Imperial patrol is after him; takes the children to Corellia; comes back to retrieve the cargo but it’s gone; Jabba gives him ten days to pay him back; and then we’re on Tatooine, smack dab at the beginning of A New Hope. That felt way too fast! I always got the impression that Han had been hiding from Jabba for a while, not for barely two weeks.
But I think the biggest problem I had with Rebel Dawn was that the biggest event in Han Solo’s life before the Original Trilogy was this doomed romance with Bria Tharen, and how it affected him for years afterwards. I can buy that her betrayal at the end of [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698] was very upsetting. Han dwells on this for TEN WHOLE YEARS, only to be betrayed by her again.
I guess I don’t agree with Bria being so integral to Han’s life, and I also don’t agree with Crispin’s assumption that Han won’t commit to the Rebels because a Rebel woman broke his heart. Han probably has many other reasons why he won’t commit to their cause!
IN CONCLUSION:
Ranking the Han Solo trilogy from top to bottom, I would say that I liked [b:The Hutt Gambit|598938|The Hutt Gambit (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #2)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718935l/598938._SY75_.jpg|1194985] best, with all its continuity nods and its glimpses into Han’s smuggling career. Then [b:The Paradise Snare|617086|The Paradise Snare (Star Wars The Han Solo Trilogy, #1)|A.C. Crispin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328111695l/617086._SY75_.jpg|2112698] is in the middle, because I did like seeing Han taking his first solo steps in the galaxy. And Rebel Dawn comes in last place, mostly because Bria ruins everything for me. But it’s still (for the most part) a fun read, and serves as a nice bookend to A New Hope.
Next up: Corran Horn’s big hardcover adventure (and the first Star Wars story told in first person): [b:I, Jedi|758654|I, Jedi (Star Wars)|Michael A. Stackpole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327870262l/758654._SY75_.jpg|1134006] by Michael A. Stackpole.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/KYDfXaS_mLk
TheForce.net interview with A.C. Crispin: http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/crispin.asp
delliomellidom's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
2.5
lah_reads's review
5.0
I really enjoyed this installment. The different clans if hutts got a little mind boggling from time to time, and I kept catching myself cheering for one sure, then the other as the points of view changed. There was also that sensation of knowing that Han, Chewie, and the Falcon would love to fly another day while still reading on the edge of my seat, anxious to see if they were going to make it.
verkisto's review
3.0
With Rebel Dawn, Crispin gives us a Han Solo with which we're familiar. It makes sense (this is the closest we get to the events in Star Wars, so he ought to be by now), but in the previous books, we only see hints of him. Still, Crispin is showing us Han's development, so seeing hints in the previous books is to be expected.
Rebel Dawn also takes us back to the plot that started this trilogy: Bria; and the drug trade on Ylesia. More to the point, we finally get closure on the relationship between Han and Bria that began in The Paradise Snare, while we see what becomes of that drug trade some ten years later. We get to see characters who have featured in the other two books, and we also get to connect this story with some of the events that are mentioned in Star Wars. Specifically, we see how Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando, and we see the events that led to Han dumping the spice that put him on Jabba's bad side.
The thing is, Crispin moves so quickly through those events that if you blink, you might miss them. These are seminal moments in the world of Star Wars, and I would have liked to have seen more time devoted to them. Instead, we get a lot of backstory for other characters, enough so that Han doesn't feature for a good third of the story, save for a few interludes to keep us posted on what's going on with him. Near the end of the book, we do get a definitive answer about the apparent misuse of the word "parsec" regarding the Kessel Run, which is nice. If anyone tries to raise that argument with you again, just point them to this book for clarification.
I noticed in this book that Crispin tells a lot, which hurts her characterization. The characters were still drawn well, but some scenes felt emotionless, when they should have been key moments where the reader should have felt something for the characters. Instead, we get a sense of their feelings, even when we should be feeling grief or anger over what's happening.
The trilogy is strong, but I can't help but feel like it could have been so much more. Crispin spins a good tale, and I powered through the last half of this book in one day, but it lacked the OOMPH that would have made this a great series. Still, it ranks among the better books in the Expanded Universe, and I'd recommend it for folks wanting to delve outside the movies to see what else the EU has to offer.
Rebel Dawn also takes us back to the plot that started this trilogy: Bria; and the drug trade on Ylesia. More to the point, we finally get closure on the relationship between Han and Bria that began in The Paradise Snare, while we see what becomes of that drug trade some ten years later. We get to see characters who have featured in the other two books, and we also get to connect this story with some of the events that are mentioned in Star Wars. Specifically, we see how Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando, and we see the events that led to Han dumping the spice that put him on Jabba's bad side.
The thing is, Crispin moves so quickly through those events that if you blink, you might miss them. These are seminal moments in the world of Star Wars, and I would have liked to have seen more time devoted to them. Instead, we get a lot of backstory for other characters, enough so that Han doesn't feature for a good third of the story, save for a few interludes to keep us posted on what's going on with him. Near the end of the book, we do get a definitive answer about the apparent misuse of the word "parsec" regarding the Kessel Run, which is nice. If anyone tries to raise that argument with you again, just point them to this book for clarification.
I noticed in this book that Crispin tells a lot, which hurts her characterization. The characters were still drawn well, but some scenes felt emotionless, when they should have been key moments where the reader should have felt something for the characters. Instead, we get a sense of their feelings, even when we should be feeling grief or anger over what's happening.
The trilogy is strong, but I can't help but feel like it could have been so much more. Crispin spins a good tale, and I powered through the last half of this book in one day, but it lacked the OOMPH that would have made this a great series. Still, it ranks among the better books in the Expanded Universe, and I'd recommend it for folks wanting to delve outside the movies to see what else the EU has to offer.
ehsjaysaunders's review
4.0
A satisfying conclusion to a solid trilogy that gives us enough insight into Han's past without compromising some of the mystery required for a lovable rogue. Again, the Hutt interplay is fantastic (I actually find myself rooting for the cold-hearted Durga), Han, Lando, and Fett all play off each other nicely, and Bria Tharen comes fully into her own as an integral piece of the Star Wars galaxy. And, yes, it's a bit cheesy, but I personally love how multiple threads come together to set up A New Hope without, y'know, being just a prequel... These books are Han's real life, pre-Skywalkers, in my mind, and they brilliantly do their own thing while honoring the lore that came before.