maeverose's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.5
Having finished this book I feel very silly… I only read it for one very specific thing. I am not the target audience. I’m not a fan of the OG trilogy characters (I know, I’m sorry), the synopsis didn’t sound at all interesting to me… I literally only read this because I heard there were Pau’ans and Utapaun related facts in it…….. I like Pau’ans…
Needless to say I was very bored for most of the book because that was (understandably) a very small focus. I doubt there’s anyone else out there wanting to read for the Pau’an stuff but if there is - spare yourself. I did skim quite a bit. I didn’t care about the plot and definitely not the domestic stuff with Han, Leia and baby Ben. Or Lando’s ‘romantic’ endeavors. I didn’t even end up liking the Pau’an character… I really just read over 400 pages of stuff I did not care about… for a crumb of Pau’an content. I did this to myself. I have some regrets.
Something to note: This book has a handful of pretty gruesome scenes. Definitely worse than the violence/gore you’d get from the movies, so a warning if you’re squeamish when it comes to gore. There’s also a lot of sex jokes.
Likes:
Needless to say I was very bored for most of the book because that was (understandably) a very small focus. I doubt there’s anyone else out there wanting to read for the Pau’an stuff but if there is - spare yourself. I did skim quite a bit. I didn’t care about the plot and definitely not the domestic stuff with Han, Leia and baby Ben. Or Lando’s ‘romantic’ endeavors. I didn’t even end up liking the Pau’an character… I really just read over 400 pages of stuff I did not care about… for a crumb of Pau’an content. I did this to myself. I have some regrets.
Something to note: This book has a handful of pretty gruesome scenes. Definitely worse than the violence/gore you’d get from the movies, so a warning if you’re squeamish when it comes to gore. There’s also a lot of sex jokes.
Likes:
•The casual lgbtq rep. There’s a non binary character who uses they/them pronouns and everyone immediately accepts it like they would anyone else’s pronouns. There’s also a very brief moment where a male character mentions his husband.
•I love that there’s a character named Florx Biggles. It’s giving Glup Shitto and I love it.
•Peekpa and her little tree trunk mug….. I want a tree trunk mug
Thats it.
Dislikes:
Dislikes:
• I don’t see the main antagonist’s motive.
• It’s ableist. Most (if not all?) of the bad guys are described as being disfigured or disabled in some way, and without spoiling anything, that’s kind of a significant part of the plot. This inherently villainizes disability, even if that wasn’t the intention. I also found the language used to describe their disfigurements offensive.
• The dialogue. You can tell it’s an intentional choice, trying to be witty, but it’s way overdone imo. They almost never talk like actual people. It got annoying pretty fast. It also made the more gruesome scenes feel off tone-wise (namely the first ‘Lando: Mesulan Remnants’ chapter).
• It’s too long. There’s lots of filler and way too much time spent trying to be funny rather than on actual plot. There were scenes that were way longer than they needed to be because the characters were throwing quips at each other for pages.
•I found all the timelines hard to keep track of. They jump around too much.
• I was uncomfortable with the objectifying way some of the women were described. This book really felt like it was just written for cishet men. It made me uncomfortable. Lando was also very straight (I think the whole thing about him being pansexual came about after this was written, so I can’t really fault the book for that but worth noting) and there’s even straight droid sex mentioned??????? Yeah…
Really wishing I hadn’t bothered reading this
Spoiler
Why did he just become a completely different person after being kidnapped? You could say trauma but that’s a pretty extreme change. Why did he suddenly care so much about the liberation of droids and genocide of ‘organics’? It seems pretty unrelated to the traumatic experience.• It’s ableist. Most (if not all?) of the bad guys are described as being disfigured or disabled in some way, and without spoiling anything, that’s kind of a significant part of the plot. This inherently villainizes disability, even if that wasn’t the intention. I also found the language used to describe their disfigurements offensive.
• The dialogue. You can tell it’s an intentional choice, trying to be witty, but it’s way overdone imo. They almost never talk like actual people. It got annoying pretty fast. It also made the more gruesome scenes feel off tone-wise (namely the first ‘Lando: Mesulan Remnants’ chapter).
• It’s too long. There’s lots of filler and way too much time spent trying to be funny rather than on actual plot. There were scenes that were way longer than they needed to be because the characters were throwing quips at each other for pages.
•I found all the timelines hard to keep track of. They jump around too much.
• I was uncomfortable with the objectifying way some of the women were described. This book really felt like it was just written for cishet men. It made me uncomfortable. Lando was also very straight (I think the whole thing about him being pansexual came about after this was written, so I can’t really fault the book for that but worth noting) and there’s even straight droid sex mentioned??????? Yeah…
Really wishing I hadn’t bothered reading this
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Blood, Medical trauma, Genocide, Kidnapping, Body horror, Body shaming, Death, Gun violence, Medical content, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Drug use, Xenophobia, Gore, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Child death
Minor: Cursing and Misogyny
domestic stuff, toxic masculinity
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