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| Chewbacca, fornt and center. |
Del Rey Books
April 1979
Six months after the
publication of Han Solo at Stars’ End,
Brian Daley released his second Star Wars
novel, Han Solo’s Revenge. It’s been
nearly that long since my review of that book. This novel has an undeniably
more complex story than the first Han Solo book, and I occasionally had a
difficult time figuring out who’s who and what the motivations behind some of
the characters were. Case in point: Han motivation – his titular revenge – and the difficulty I had reconciling it.
Han and Chewbacca,
desperate for credits, take a blind assignment which turns out to be
transporting slaves. Refusing to take part in such a vile enterprise, they turn
the tables on the slavers, freeing the captives and killing the slavers. Han,
however, still feels that he is owed the 10,000 credits promised him for
delivering the slaves. Even after Han learns that the slavers had no intention of
making good on the deal (they in fact were simply going to kill Solo), he still
wants the money. Not only did Han not complete the job, thus not earning the
money in the first place, but how did he honestly expect to collect that money?
This is Han’s sole motivation throughout the book, and it’s such a shaky
motivation that it really does put the book’s plot in jeopardy – especially
when, at one point, Han was more than willing to sacrifice himself for a
stranger in the hopes that, should he survive, it would lead to the people that
owe him.
I also got a little
frustrated with how dense and oblivious Solo was portrayed when the new
holofeature he was showing to the Kamarians backfired on him. Han was
ridiculously slow to act and only made a bad situation worse. Despite all this
however, Han Solo’s Revenge is still
a great book for all the same reasons that made Brian Daley’s first book great.
Not only did Daley absolutely nail Han’s characterization, he does an admirable
job treating Chewbacca as a fully-fledged character that has a lot to offer,
rather than having him stand in the background. The sequence where Han and
Chewie turn the tables on the slavers is great because it’s mostly Chewbacca
performing the heroics, as Han is essentially taken out of the fight until the
end. Later in the book, Chewbacca gets an entire chapter devoted to him and his
misadventures therein. Unfortunately, this is the most tedious chapter in the
book and could easily have been left out as nothing of any importance happens anyway.
Another great thing about
Brian Daley is how well he understood Star
Wars, down to the smallest detail, even with only one released film. He
notes exactly how Han Solo wears his holster, and the fact that he wears flight
gloves and uses a headset comlink to communicate when piloting the Falcon. Daley recognized that Han and
Chewbacca had their hands full piloting the Millennium
Falcon because “. . . Han and
Chewbacca habitually spaced by themselves, Han reaching back to his left to
carry out navigator’s chores and the Wookiee leaning to his right to run the
commo board when needed.” While Han and Fiolla were aboard the luxury liner
Lady of Mindor, Daley makes mention
that Solo wore the collar on his white tunic closed, just as Solo wears it
during the ceremony scene in Episode IV A
New Hope. There’s even a moment when Han Solo is removing a restraining
bolt from Bollux, that when the bolt was removed, “There was a pop and a tiny burst of blue discharge around the bolt’s
base.” If you watch carefully when Luke removes the restraining bolt from
R2-D2 in Episode IV, the same quiet pop and tiny energy discharge occurs.
There were two short
scenes in this book – each a respite from the main plot – which I really
enjoyed. The scene with the Sljee waiter was very entertaining in a frustrating
way (much like the opening chapter on Kamar). The way Han treats the poor alien
server would normally knock my opinion of his character down several notches –
but hey, it’s Han. Plus Fiolla makes it all right in the end for the flustered
Sljee. The meeting with Roa, his wife, and Han was also great. It shows a
sliver of Han’s past as well as showing Han’s potential (and ultimately
accurate) future. Roa and his wife, in such a short scene, immediately felt
like interesting, three-dimensional characters.
8 / 10
