In our “What Star Wars Can Learn From” series, we’ve been examining lessons the Star Wars franchise can take from other successful series. Cooper kicked off the series with a look at Avatar (the Airbender franchise, not the blue people and special effects franchise). Now I’d like to take a look at the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It is, like most things these days, a multimedia franchise, but I’ll be focusing on the triple-A video games, which are the heart of the series and the only part with which the vast majority of people are familiar.
For the benefit of those not familiar with Assassin’s Creed, it is a series of video games published by Ubisoft in which users play the role of a modern-day man (Desmond Miles in all the games up to now) experiencing the adventures of his various ancestors through advanced technology. The core of the games is in the stories of these ancestors, members of an order of Assassins who fight against Templars who wish to create a “better” and more orderly world without respect to the freedom and rights of ordinary people. These ancestors appear across a range of historical settings, interacting with real historical figures, while living out a sort of “secret history” that plays with the idea, essentially, “What if every conspiracy theory was actually true and all rolled into this one struggle?” There have been five releases up to now, following three Assassin ancestors, and a sixth coming out on current-gen consoles this very day with a new Assassin, plus the PlayStation Vita release Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, which followed an additional Assassin and will receive a full console port next year. Read More
The Dark Empire Sourcebook. One of its only weaknesses is the lack of original art.
Everybody knows Dark Empire. Well, not quite everybody, because, as a comic, it has the tendency to fly below the radar of newcomers to the universe — until they read something about Emperor Palpatine’s resurrection and Luke’s turn to the dark side, prompting outcries of, “Whaaaaaaaaat?” But among those fans who have graduated to familiarity with the web of the Expanded Universe, Dark Empire is among the highest-profile comics. Less familiar is the Dark Empire Sourcebook.
West End Games, the original masters of Star Wars lore, effectively built the Expanded Universe in the eighties, releasing a wealth of foundational information about the Star Wars galaxy and its many characters in their role-playing game sourcebooks. When Timothy Zahn revitalized public interest in Star Wars, he did so by building on the base of WEG’s material, which remained a crucial and ever-growing part of the fabric of the galaxy, even though its effects were mostly behind the scenes to those only reading books and comics. In response to the EU flurry of the early nineties, WEG released sourcebooks tailored to the big new novel and comic releases, providing a wealth of background information about the characters, worlds, and events of the stories for gamers to use. These resources are also invaluable to the true devotee of the Expanded Universe. Anyone interested in digging beyond the books and comics into the backstory and nitty-gritty of universe-expanding facts will find tremendous joy in WEG’s sourcebooks, and the Dark Empire Sourcebook is among the best of those releases.
Dark Empire was a seminal comic, but its timeline placement was always awkward; it was conceived as a directly post-Return of the Jedi storyline, only to run into Zahn’s trilogy during development. The comic was booted past Zahn’s trilogy, six years after the end of the films, creating some issues. Most significantly, the flourishing New Republic of Zahn’s trilogy was now a ragged Rebellion once more. Rather than dance around that issue, the sourcebook tackles the matter head-on, going into great depth to explain precisely how the resurgent Empire under Palpatine’s secret guidance drove the New Republic back before its factions split into the messy civil war seen in Dark Empire‘s opening.
That is only one aspect of the rich fabric that the Dark Empire Sourcebook weaves. Want to know the secrets of Palpatine’s recovery, about his secret machinations behind the scenes while he regained his strength, about his arcane explorations of the dark side of the Force? All there. Want to read about his mysterious throneworld Byss and learn its story, or that of the criminal warren Nar Shaddaa? They’re there. The sourcebook takes pains to set up the background of the entire New Republic era, explaining the New Republic’s rise and fall and the Empire’s fragmentation and inner workings. The treasure trove of background goes beyond that, all the way to Han’s past in the Imperial Academy and as a smuggler, the state and nature of the criminal underworld, and ancient Jedi history. If the ships appearing in the comics are your interest, there are profiles full of interesting facts. The book includes fleshed-out and poignant biographies for minor characters with tiny appearances in the comic. General Veers’s Rebel son, a New Republic soldier’s doomed college romance, a speeder thief conscripted into the Imperial motor pool, Palpatine’s personal assistant Grand Vizier Sate Pestage; all get their stories told. And let’s not forget its use of Ars Dangor, the most important yet most obscure political figure in the Empire.
“Fat, drunk, and blowing up moons is no way to go through life, son.”
The Dark Empire Sourcebook offers more than pure information drops, too. It reprints a New Republic proclamation explaining why it continues to battle the Empire in its darkest days, complete with signatures from senior officials. There is a personal letter between New Republic historians. The sourcebook contains Ackbar’s inner thoughts about the struggle against the Empire and the rebuilding of his homeworld after the attacks shown in Dark Empire. There is a transcript of expulsion proceedings against Han’s Academy friend Mako Spince (featuring a “Dean Wyrmyr”) for blowing up a moon during a prank gone wrong, and an extract from a book by Palpatine. Vignettes tell short stories, including one about Boba Fett’s escape from the sarlacc. And that is only a sampling of the in-universe and narrative delights available nowhere else.
Richly packed with all kinds of fascinating and obscure information, laying out crucial background for the entire setting, and offering all kinds of curiosities for the dedicated fan, the Dark Empire Sourcebook is a must-read. Even among the many excellent West End Games sourcebooks, it stands out for its ambition, scope, and excellent job tying together and setting down the foundation for the then-infant New Republic era. It makes the comic itself a far more rewarding and intriguing read, meshing it into the rest of the stories around it. Any fan interested in the nitty-gritty of the universe owes it to him- or herself to look into the WEG sourcebooks, and the Dark Empire Sourcebook is among the first ones to seek out.
Yeah, Sherlock Holmes would be the iconic image to use here . . . but hardboiled detective stories always get so much cooler covers
The term “genre” generally suggests a creative niche — a specific type of art that is for some people, but not for everyone. Science fiction and fantasy, horror, romance — they’re all seen as being for specific audiences, not broad-spectrum stories with universal appeal. Mystery, on the other hand, is a wildly popular genre. From Sherlock Holmes to CSI, mysteries are among the most well-known, widely consumed, and, to a lesser extent, acclaimed books, TV shows, and films out there. It seems like it would make sense to fuse Star Wars with such a booming genre, wouldn’t it? Heck, how could Star Wars escape dipping into such a prolific and fundamental genre now and then?
It’s easy to understand how mysteries can be so popular. The genre is based around the investigation of some type of mystery, usually a crime, creating a clear narrative and providing ample avenues for conflict, suspense, action, and revelation. Mystery provides all the fundamentals of a thrilling story in a neat package.
As with any mammoth genre, there are countless varieties of mystery story. Some are focused on creating complex puzzles for their heroes, and implicitly the reader, to solve, as in the classic locked-room murder. Others, in a trend started by hard-boiled detective fiction, are less interested in the intricacy of their solution, and emphasize the action and atmosphere of a criminal case. A mystery may save its solution until the last moment, or give away the perpetrator early in order to focus the story not on the answer, but on the protagonist’s pursuit of the truth and/or the suspect. Some follow police investigators, some private eyes, some lawyers, some ordinary civilians sucked into a case. And that’s barely getting into the variety of forms and tones mysteries can take. Some of these forms may be more easily adaptable to Star Wars than others, but all are worth thinking about in this context.
Of course, there are many Star Wars stories that have revolved around some kind of mystery — so many stories of all kinds do. If I started listing all the stories with some kind of mystery element, I could start with the Thrawn trilogy’s Delta Source and keep going all night.
So instead, I’ll simply state that I think this is something that could be played up even more. When information simply drops into characters’ laps, or disseminates instantaneously without effort, it’s boring. When they have to work to discover something, when there is an actual process of investigation, it better exploits the story potential of any mystery, and adds excitement to the process. To pass over the mystery aspect ignores the narrative potential of one type of drama — the investigation — in favor of solely focusing on action sequences and getting to that drama faster. Variety is the spice of life, not twenty-four lightsaber fights one after another.
Obi-Wan as detective: the best part of Episode II
There are some Star Wars stories that have been entirely structured as mysteries, though fewer than you might think. It’s worth noting that a significant chunk of Attack of the Clones was a mystery plotline — Obi-Wan investigated the case of Senator Amidala’s attempted assassination, in the process stumbling upon yet another enigma, the secret clone army, in classic mystery fashion.
Within the Expanded Universe, Survivor’s Quest stands out as a mystery. Not only does the question of Outbound Flight‘s fate hang over the story (to be answered not within, but via prequel), but more importantly, the story is structured as a classic closed-environment, who’s-the-killer mystery. Luke and Mara travel aboard a starship with an expedition featuring personnel from multiple factions; when sabotage starts occurring and it becomes clear that someone must be secretly undermining the mission, they must figure out who. The book is a good example of how a story need not be strictly a murder-case-style professional-detective story to function as a mystery within the Star Wars universe.
Scourge, recently, featured a Jedi investigating the death of his apprentice. Millennium Falcon used twin investigations to uncover the ship’s history, riffing on The Maltese Falcon in the process. Twilight built a mystery around the amnesiac Jedi Quinlan Vos. Star Wars mysteries are out there.
Coruscant Nights: not quite the noir this cover promised
Overall, however, stories about characters puzzling out mysteries are rare, especially as mystery elements usually take a backseat to action-adventure. Coruscant Nights was sold on the concept that it was a film noir-inspired trilogy about a Jedi on the run working as a private detective. As it turned out, there was a Jedi on the run, but he wasn’t really a private detective, and aside from the cover art, the story never bothered to be particularly noir. In one book, the protagonists were handed a murder case, but the book never truly functioned as a mystery. The story instead revolved around the characters’ other, Jedi-on-the-run/proto-Rebellion concerns, largely ignoring the murder case, until an outside character showed up at the end of the book to hand them the solution on a silver platter. Mystery plotting can be hard for authors without expertise.
Yet a few more straight Star Wars mysteries are an avenue the Expanded Universe really should pursue. Mystery is a popular genre that scads of people are willing to read. It is full of fairly talented authors who would be willing to write a tie-in for the exposure and payday. And most of all, it’s a great way to add distinct variety in the types of stories the universe is telling and sources of drama it’s using (which are growing increasingly repetitive) in a way that could avoid being a niche story type that would carry only a limited group of readers with it or not be sustainable as a significant segment of the storytelling.
Corran Horn and partner Iella Wessiri, Star Wars detectives just waiting for a story
It’s not inconceivable that a classic detective story could fit into the Star Wars setting. One of the most popular and significant figures in the EU, Corran Horn, has a past as a police detective, a setting that could draw many fans. Jedi can also be used as investigators on relatively traditional cases. Corran investigating high-profile murders or thefts as a Jedi could be just as intriguing. Ben Skywalker, trained in police techniques during his teenage years in the Galactic Alliance Guard, would likewise prove a potent protagonist in Jedi-starring detective fiction. Have him liaise with a police unit on Coruscant for a few years, getting readers invested in a larger cast of ordinary cops, and you could have the X-wing of police series on your hands. The partnership of Jedi Nejaa Halcyon and CorSec officer Rostek Horn, fighting crime on the streets of Corellia, could be great story material that would move beyond a solely Jedi-centric storyline.
And those are just existing characters with strong detective hooks; there is nothing stopping authors from writing about Luke, Jaina and Zekk, or Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan tracking down jewel thieves, assassins, or serial killers. Or from creating a comic about Han vowing to find the murderer of an old smuggling buddy in the shady depths of Nar Shaddaa, or a novel about Lando Calrissian gambling aboard a luxury spaceliner when a prominent passenger is killed and he’s caught up in the mystery. That doesn’t even touch on new characters.
A professional thief in the big (big, big, big) city. Let’s see some stories about the heroes trying to catch her.
Beyond the most recognizable traditional detection setups, there are yet more stories available. Stories about characters tracking down piracy or smuggling rings’ secretive operations and mysterious, powerful backers would revolve around the same mystery elements if the story focused on the process of acquiring and following clues. A Rebel cell figuring out which of its members is an Imperial mole could be structured as a mystery. So could the hunts for an assassin lurking on Coruscant before he strikes the Galactic Alliance’s chief of state, a saboteur threatening a Republic base, or a spy who has stolen crucial New Republic data.
The opportunities mystery stories offer the Expanded Universe are virtually endless, and the genre is in prime position to be exploited. Fewer galactic wars and more mysteries could keep the galaxy far, far away just as exciting, but with much fresher and more diverse storytelling.
Inspired by my friend Barriss_Coffee’s lament of his treatment, I recently realized that Count Dooku is among the major film characters most mishandled by the Expanded Universe. Unfortunately, in this it only follows the example of the films. Yet it is not hard to imagine an excellent use of Dooku’s tremendous potential. A few books and comics have done so, but all too much of the prequel EU has done Dooku a serious disservice by treating him one-dimensionally and neglecting him as a character.
Conceptually, Dooku is a great character. Played by the iconic Sir Christopher Lee, he is a former Jedi Master of great power and prestige who left the Jedi Order, disgusted with its ineffectuality and subservience to the corrupt Republic, after the death of his maverick apprentice Qui-Gon Jinn. He fell into the orbit of Darth Sidious, who convinced the prideful Jedi that the key to reforming the galaxy was in Sith authoritarianism and turned him to the dark side. Dooku then spent ten years plotting with Sidious to bring about the rise of the Sith. He made use of his image as a disaffected Jedi Master to pose as an idealistic reformer who led a secessionist movement and created the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which he then led in a puppet war designed to bring about the rise of a Sith-controlled Empire.
There’s a lot of meat in that character concept. A respected Jedi Master who leaves the Order for essentially sound reasons but is corrupted through pride into a devious Sith Lord, only to pose for the public as a principled firebrand throughout a political crisis to dupe the genuinely ineffective into a phony war? That’s a layered character, one perfectly suited to the dark charm and gravitas of Christopher Lee.
Yet the prequels themselves did the character few favors. Due to Lucas’s unfortunately on-the-fly writing habits during the prequels, he wasn’t set up by The Phantom Menace. In Attack of the Clones, Dooku was barely introduced. He was mentioned in early exposition, then ignored for the rest of the movie, until he turned up on Geonosis near the end. The scene in which Dooku told Obi-Wan of the Republic’s corruption and Darth Sidious’s role offered a tantalizing question of his motivations, but that mystery was never really explored. From holding Obi-Wan prisoner to attempting to execute the heroes to whipping out a red lightsaber and Force lightning for their duel, there was never any real question that Dooku was a villain, robbing his reveal as Sidious’s apprentice Darth Tyranus of any punch at the end of the film. Dooku’s treatment was perfunctory; rather than build him up or hold him as a presence over the film, or play on the question of his agenda, the film ignored him and his Separatist crisis while it focused on Kamino and romance, then gave Lee only a handful of scenes near the end to set up the battle, then duel the heroes. Compare Dooku’s facetime (or even add on his presence in exposition) to that of any other Star Wars villain, and you’ll realize just how much he was ignored by his own film. Not only wasn’t his potential fully tapped; he wasn’t even used outside the third act.
He was treated even more poorly in Revenge of the Sith. Having been awkwardly dropped into the end of the previous film, he was summarily dismissed in the opening sequence of Revenge. He walked into a room, dueled the heroes, and died, so that the role of main Separatist villain could be taken over by General Grievous. The character who was supposed to be a pivotal figure in the Clone Wars, a character of great potential played by an iconic actor, was hustled in and out of the films with little attention paid to his narrative role and no sense of respect for his potential.
Dooku greeted as as a liberator on Tibrin — an understanding of his public image we don’t see enough
The Expanded Universe, theoretically, is the place to remedy this sort of inattention, expanding the characters beyond their limited screentime. This was especially the case for Dooku, given that the films left the Clone Wars, Dooku’s heyday as a major character, to the EU to tell. Yet the EU has largely failed to run with the ball. His backstory has been relatively little touched; the fandom is still waiting for a real exploration of his time as a Jedi, his decision to leave, and his fall to the Sith.
Yet even more frustratingly, the complex and intriguing character promised by his character outline has largely failed to manifest in the Clone Wars EU. In part, this is symptomatic of the shallow handling of the Separatists in general, as my colleague Jay has pointed out. But it is not entirely a result of that issue; it also stems from a seeming lack of interest in using Dooku himself, rather than using his underlings as lead villains. In the television series, which could have done the most to develop and exploit the character, Dooku was largely limited to appearing as a traditional, generic evil overlord who chewed out his minions and cackled evilly. In most of the Clone Wars works, he appeared only briefly, sending off some lackey to battle the heroes. Supposedly a major film villain, he seems lucky to get any serious attention as a character at all.
Frustratingly, very little has been done to honor Dooku’s public role as an honorable reformist, or explore the complexity of his character. During the Clone Wars, he has mostly been portrayed as a generic evil overlord with minimal story involvement. Before the Clone Wars, he has been reduced to essentially a handful of cameos. The potential of this multilayered character, the tragic arc of the flawed crusader turned deceitful, devious tyrant, has been mostly untapped.
Fortunately, it has not been entirely untapped. John Ostrander has proven one of the few authors working on the initial Clone Wars run to truly get the character of Dooku and put him on the page. His run on the Republic comic series showed Dooku as a charismatic, sophisticated deceiver, malevolent in private but benevolent in public, who seemed to genuinely believe he would make the galaxy better through the power of the dark side but was unhesitating in plunging into secret wickedness.
Jedi: Count Dooku presented Dooku as cunning and manipulative: “In your hands, even mercy can become a weapon!”
Ostrander’s Dooku was especially well-done in Jedi: Dooku, which began with Dooku capturing a ship with several Jedi aboard, among them one who has had her doubts over the Republic’s rightness in the past. By claiming that his prior actions were misunderstood, proclaiming brotherhood with the Jedi, and letting the captured Jedi go, Dooku played to his political-idealist public image while sowing seeds of doubt within the Jedi Order about their leaders’ truthfulness, Dooku’s nature, and the rightness of their cause. Dooku later went to Tibrin, where he defeated its pro-Republic leader, executed the unpopular tyrant and had his head displayed rather than accept his offer to join the CIS, ordered the entire inner circle of the government slaughtered, and emerged before cheering crowds as the planet’s savior. Ice-cold, crafty, and bloody-handed in private; a benevolent liberator in public, conscious of his principled, wise public image and using it as a weapon. At the end of the comic, Dooku revealed that he knew all along that Quinlan Vos, the Jedi agent posing as a convert to infiltrate his inner circle of darksiders, was actually a double agent. He had been pushing Vos toward a genuine fall, and using a combination of exhortation about the genuine grievances of the Separatist cause, seductive invocation of the power of the dark side as a force for change, and emotional manipulation of Vos’s past and the secrets of his family, he managed to push Vos into murdering a relative in anger.
This version of Dooku brought out all the qualities Dooku ought to have. He was a sophisticated, icy chessmaster, a devil who could almost casually corrupt men’s souls, but also capable of playing the charismatic firebrand, the grandfatherly and regretful reformist, with consummate ease. Ostrander honored the complexity of Dooku’s character rather than reducing him to a one-dimensional cackling supervillain.
Yoda: Dark Rendezvous treated Dooku as the multilayered, fascinating character he is
The other major triumph in Dooku characterization was Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. Sean Stewart’s plot was premised on the idea that Dooku attempted to lure Yoda into a trap with a message of regret for falling to the dark side and starting the Clone Wars, asking to broker a truce and return to the Jedi. Yoda pursued the meeting, even knowing it was a trap, because he believed that Dooku, consciously or not, actually did wish to be redeemed and escape the grip of his Sith Master.
Dark Rendezvous thus focused on Dooku’s multiple layers as a fallen Jedi through his relationship with Yoda. A prideful and ambitious, but talented and idealistic youth, he forged a bond with Yoda; after his fall to the dark side, Yoda appealed through that bond to convince Dooku of the truth: that the dark side was in irretrievable conflict with the principles that had led him away from the Jedi and ultimately to the Sith. Dooku appeared to be on the brink of expressing his suppressed remorse and returning to the light side, until Anakin and Obi-Wan arrived — plunging Dooku back into wrath and pride at the intrusion of a pair of Jedi he envied and resented. Stewart thus explored Dooku’s psychological complexity and history by addressing the inherent contradiction of seeking good ends through evil means and the character flaws that made Dooku ripe for evil.
These were not the only times the Expanded Universe did Dooku justice, but they were the best at using Dooku’s multilayered potential. They stand in contrast to so many works that have used him superficially and failed to honor his depth as a character. If only The Clone Wars had taken a hint from these works, the series might have delivered a rich, menacing, and complex villain. If other prequel works would put him front-and-center instead of treating him as dismissively as the films, they might find a great character around whom a lot of drama can be built.
Many of you may have heard the sad news that Ann C. Crispin passed away of cancer at age sixty-three last week. One of the small comforts when an author passes is that she will be able to live on through her writing. To Star Wars fans, that means The Han Solo Trilogy, her main work in the universe. I don’t feel qualified to offer a eulogy to Crispin, who had an extensive career in the science fiction and fantasy community, but I can pay tribute to her Star Wars books, which were among the first I read as a boy stepping into the Expanded Universe.
Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy is one of the great achievements of the Bantam era. It’s unique in being the only story designed to be a more-or-less complete backstory of a major film hero. A side benefit of this, at least for someone with my taste for synthesis, is that the HST is one of the first major works of EU continuity synthesis, drawing from all over to build a story on what had gone before. Crispin draws characters, backstory, and details of the setting from The Han Solo Adventures; the Thrawn trilogy; The Jedi Academy Trilogy; the Marvel comics; Darksaber; The Corellian Trilogy; Shadows of the Empire; the X-wing books and comics; The Lando Calrissian Adventures; The New Rebellion; I, Jedi; The Crystal Star; the Glove of Darth Vader series; and Dark Empire — and that’s just off the top of my head — and weaves them together into a powerful story that stands on its own merits as an examination of Han Solo’s character, a chronicle of his adventures, and a record of his maturation via a rich character arc. It’s quite an accomplishment. Crispin’s writing is mature, dealing with relationships, death, addiction, and depression honestly and seriously, but it never loses the sense of hope and adventure that distinguishes Star Wars. The books are rich but fun.
The Paradise Snare
The Paradise Snare
The first book of the trilogy, The Paradise Snare opens with Han’s escape from the cruel con artist Garris Shrike, who, Fagin-like, runs a gang of child thieves and grifters. Han’s past with Shrike is established via backstory, but the novel focuses on nineteen-year-old Han’s efforts to define himself as a man outside the stifling, repressive confines of Shrike’s custody.
Han strikes out to get a job as a pilot on Ylesia, a religious colony, in order to earn enough money to accomplish his real dream: gaining admittance to the Imperial Academy. A mixture of streetwise and naive, young Han grows through his partnership with his copilot Muuurgh, his budding romance with the young religious pilgrim Bria Tharen, and his growing realization that Ylesia is not a peaceful paradise, but something far more sinister.
The climax of the book is astonishing, putting the young, still-idealistic Han through triumph and all-too-real heartbreak. Crispin brings great emotional depth and realism to Han’s story and takes on the issue of addiction head-on, growing Han as a character — something all too rare with the major protagonists — and giving the reader tons of space adventure. It definitely makes the most of its position as Han’s origin story.
The Hutt Gambit
Skipping past Han’s time in the Imperial Navy, The Hutt Gambit opens with a depressed Han mourning the death of his dream, kicked out of the Fleet and blackballed from legitimate shipping jobs. His idealism crushed by the ugliness of the Empire and his dashed hopes, he retreats into the cynical shell we see in the films, reluctantly taking on Chewbacca as a partner.
The Hutt Gambit
Just as The Paradise Snare was the story of Han’s maturation, this is the story of Han’s recovery of hope as he takes back control of his life, is drawn into the criminal underworld, and finds success there. Crispin deftly draws from all kinds of sources to build a portrait of Han’s early career as he takes on smuggling jobs for the Hutts and establishes himself in the smuggling communities of Nar Shaddaa and Smuggler’s Run. His friendships with Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian blossom, he is introduced to the Millennium Falcon, and he begins working for Jabba.
The deadly criminal politics of the Hutt clans provide a meaty background for the action, into which Crispin delves with aplomb. The machinations of the rival Desilijic and Besadii clans underlie the trilogy, while tensions between the Hutts and the Empire lead to the book’s climax, in which Han and his Academy-dropout friend Mako Spince organize the smugglers and pirates of Nar Shaddaa into a defensive force that repels an Imperial strike that includes Soontir Fel. Han’s role as a military leader is an excellent example of the way Crispin foreshadows his inevitable development as a hero and his inherent nobility under the cynical exterior masking his emotional wounds without becoming too heavy-handed.
Rebel Dawn
Rebel Dawn
In Rebel Dawn, the narrative continues to follow Han as he wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando. He ends up taking a jaunt away from Nar Shaddaa, allowing Crispin to excellently integrate Brian Daley’s venerable Han Solo Adventures (themselves the certain subjects of a future Top Shelf), while the other characters around Han take over the narrative briefly. The Shakespearean machinations of the rival Hutt families remain riveting, while Bria gives the reader entry into the early days of the Rebel Alliance.
When Han returns to Nar Shaddaa, Bria draws him into a Rebel plan to raid Ylesia. Betrayal ensues, and between that and the failed spice run that puts him in debt to Jabba, we see Han increasingly alienated and angry, moved into place for A New Hope.
These three novels are examples of the Expanded Universe at its best. Not just for Crispin’s masterful synthesis of sources, but for their emphasis on mature character development, exciting adventure, and classic universe-building that turns the underworld and Hutt elements of the universe into a vibrant, vital setting. They not only develop a rich and endearing portrait of Han, but give Chewbacca and Lando more respect and development as characters than almost any other EU work. The Han Solo Trilogy is among the very best that the EU has to offer, and it is a great pity that I have to speak of it in the context of Ann Crispin’s death. Though she has passed on, it is a great comfort to her fans that she left behind such excellent and enduring work by which we can remember her.
