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| Original cover art by William Schmidt. |
Having fought and
escaped the tyranny of the evil Corporate Alliance in two previous adventures,
daring and charismatic space smuggler and dedicated believer of free
enterprise, Han Solo, with his trusty furry friend and co-pilot Chewbacca, are
now just about carving out a living for themselves, and getting in and out of a
few scrapes, within the far Outer Rim areas belonging to the ominous Tion Hegemony,
a sector long ignored by the grasp of the Empire. But when another yet deal
goes pear-shaped, it isn’t long before the duo join forces with an old friend
and his small band to locate and acquire the thousand years lost ancient
treasure of space pirate Xim the Despot, believed to be located on a now
legendary missing ship in the depths of space. But getting to all that fortune
and glory surely isn’t going to be easy, especially when they’re pursued by a
fearsome trio of mining colony rogues- a lethal brother and sister combo, encounter
a race of primitives worshipping alien technology and are forced to battle a
generations deactivated army of robots now given a new purpose in destruction!
The third and
final adventure in the late, great Brian Daley’s Han Solo Trilogy may be the
weakest overall, but it still satisfies as a conclusion, especially with its
lead-in to the pair’s fateful meeting with the rebellion. And there’s still
more great material to be found and enjoyed here than in many of today’s STAR
WARS novels. It certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome at a briskly moving 180-page
count. The characterizations of our often luckless but resilient heroes, whom
the author clearly has such a genuinely soft spot for, continue to be on the
money, once more accompanied by the Daley created, story driven necessity
characters of droid Bollux (now name changed and known as “Zollux” in the UK
edition) with his super computer with attitude symbiote, Blue Max, for a story
whose elements celebrate genres like the heist-thriller and the kind of chases
and action hearkening back to the classic films of Steve McQueen, sprinkled with
more than a little bit of the 1930’s cliffhanger serials that would inspire
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK- right down to a scene not too dissimilar to the
opening scenes of TEMPLE OF DOOM- where our heroes travel down a snow-capped
mountain!
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| Hungarian cover art for the HAN SOLO AND THE LOST LEGACY paperback. |
Links to the
aforementioned EPISODE IV appear in other parts of the book, too: the zippy seeker
weapon used by Luke for lightsaber training, plus a kind of foreshadowing of Threepio and the
Ewoks as Zollux becomes an almost God-savoured figure by a group of primitives
worshipping wreckage belonging to Xim the Despot.
There are also some
intriguing new planetary environments, whilst the villains, including a wily
and fast-on-the-trigger-finger bounty hunter- Gallandro- hired to find Solo by
the Corporate Alliance, are many and varied. The emergent robot army, sinister
and bulky in firepower to anything seen with the Battle Droids of the Prequels,
provide a memorable and action-packed finale. And let’s not forget the obligatory
plucky heroine that scoundrel Solo gets to flirt with in his pre-Leia days. Oh,
and there’s a unique alien historian resembling a centipede. What’s not to
like!
AFICIONADO RATING:
Tightly constructed, crisply written and a great read. 3.5 out of 5.
