Han Solo and the Lost Legacy
caps off Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy, and was published four
months after The Empire Strikes Back
was released.
Frozen
in carbonite, book trilogy ended. 1980 was a rough year to be Han
Solo.
After
making haste out of the Corporate Sector, Han, Chewie, Bollux and
Blue Max are bumming around a backwater sector called the Tion
Hegemony doing odd jobs like working for a flying circus.
Adventure
comes calling in the form of one of Han's old academy instructors
turned treasure hunter: Trooper Badure. Badure's recruits Han to get
to the planet Dellalt to find a long-lost treasure ship, The
Queen of Ranroon. The ship
belonged to a fabled pre-Old Republic conqueror, Xim the Despot, and is said
to be guarded by a legion of his deadly war robots. The ship has been
the stuff of spacer legends for generations.
After
a high-speed chase across a university, Han agrees and meets the rest
of Badure's team: Hasti, a miner who's sister discovered the clue to
the treasure's location and was killed for it, and Skynx, an eager
Ruurian historian who's just about the most adorable fuzzy
caterpillar person in the galaxy.
Dellalt
proves to be a dangerous world, with a criminal mining operation, a
reclusive group of deadly cultists in the mountains, and
centuries-old war robots that are just as deadly as their reputation.
And
then Gallandro shows up with a grudge against Solo for being
humiliated in Han Solo's Revenge.
Considering
Raiders of the Lost Ark
came out a year later in 1981, the comparisons are inescapable. A
character played by Harrison Ford goes on a hunt for ancient treasure
and has to deal with angry natives and hostile armies. Probably
coincidental, but the pulp element convergence here is striking.
Gallandro
himself works as a stand-in for the sinister Setenza from The Good, The Band and the Ugly. His
moustache is a little more flamboyant, but there's a lot of Lee Van
Cleef in the character. He is one of the few people in the galaxy
that Han is legitimately frightened of.
Like
the rest of the trilogy, Daley's action sequences are fast-paced and
exciting. The aforementioned university chase (which itself has a lot
of similarities to one of the few bright spots in Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull), then
there's a mountain chase on a giant metal disc, and a large-scale
battle at the climax where everyone's fighting everyone as the war
robots advance.
This
time, though, there's a tinge of melancholy throughout. Its been a
fun ride, but the party's coming to a close. Han makes more mistakes.
Hasti, the potential love interest, rejects his advances, saying she
wants something real and not a love-em-and-leave-em type. The ancient
labor droid Bollux has a touching conversation about obsolescence and
free will with the war robot commander. Skynx the academic is rushing
to get as much adventure and knowledge into his life before he
matures to a full adult and turns into a near-mindless butterfly.
Bollux and Blue max have to leave Han by the end because they're not
in the movies.
The
passage of time undercuts everything in this book, and by the end,
Han & Chewie have managed to piss off everyone important in the
Corporate Sector and Tion Hegemony, so they bounce around the idea of
doing a simple spice run for Jabba the Hutt.
The
Han Solo Adventures are a blast to read and can be found individually
or in omnibus formats. If you're of a tabletop persuasion, its
essential reading for a Scum & Villainy type of game. Highly
recommended and essential Expanded Universe reading.
Brian
Daley would continue on with a few Star Wars projects, but not more
novels. He wrote the script adaptations for the Star Wars Radio
dramas (1981, 1983 and 1996, respectively). The audio dramas are
really quite good, by the way, and expanded on a few themes that
weren't in the movies.
Daley
himself died in 1996 of pancreatic cancer shortly after recording of
the Return of the Jedi radio
drama wrapped. According to his official website, which is still up as a memorial to him, some of his ashes were to be scattered at the
Little Big Horn Spirit Gate memorial to help defend it from
inter-dimensional threats.
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