Star Wars was showing its cracks long before George Lucas sold the franchise and all its intellectual property to Disney. Many who have read the expanded universe will recognize the failings as the stories shifted from focused adventures to galaxy-threatening apocalypses with every book. The early books by Timothy Zahn or Michael A. Stackpole had the main cast, and a slew of others, fighting new enemies who weren’t wielding world destroying weapons. At some point that wasn’t enough and every threat had to be one faced by the entire galaxy, and so new weapons of planetary destruction were found.
Disney in purchasing Star Wars sought to rein in the expanded universe and decided once more what was canon. With it came the launch of Honor Among Thieves the second book in the new Star Wars (Empire and Rebellion) series, the review to the first book, Razor’s Edge, can be found here. The new series takes readers back to a time before Thrawn, before Wedge Antilles and Rogue Squadron took Coruscant, before the Vuuzhong Vong and any number of other threatens entered our heads. It returns to the original trilogy and what happened between Episodes IV and V. That’s where the writing team of James S.A. Corey picks up the story of Han Solo and his attempts to leave the Rebellion, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker to pay back Jabba the Hutt and get the bounty on his head removed.
Honor Among Thieves takes place during a time when many have wondered at Han Solo’s decision to forego paying back Jabba the Hutt. It should have been a simple milk run for him to deliver the money, or at the very least wired the funds thus reducing any risk to his and Chewbacca’s hides. James S.A. Corey attempts to address this issue through the growth of Han Solo personally, to get him from his “cocky don’t care about anyone but me” attitude of A New Hope to “I’ve got a stake in this fight and now I’ve got a rank” behavior of The Empire Strikes Back. The problem is that Corey does this at the cost of Princess Leia, who is offered a chance to helm something resembling a “world destroying weapon” that would ensure the restoration of the Republic.
In that very moment Corey and Disney have fallen back on old problems, namely that Honor Among Thieves has a super weapon that everyone is racing to get their hands on. Of course Han Solo is his brash and cocky self who shoots first and plans later, while Chewbacca is as ever the sane one, though this time he’s more there for gags as both C-3PO and R2-D2 are barely seen. To further illustrate the changes Han Solo is undergoing, a new character from his past is introduced who plays far greater a role than Chewbacca does, but this character provides little information as to what made Han Solo the man he is today. For that you may want to read the Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin.
Corey does an admirable job at creating an action adventure set in the Star Wars universe, the Millennium Falcon gets to shine… or fail to shine like so many times before with the hyperdrive failing to provide the instant escape it could. The shame, as mentioned before, is that they crossed over into relying on an ancient civilization and some unheard-of-before-now technology that could change the course of the war. In focusing on the old characters and a time period long neglected by the rest of the expanded universe, save for the comic books, Corey has sought to bring the Star Wars novels back to the rip-roaring fun they were, and with a title like Honor Among Thieves this should have been a heist story. Sadly it isn’t, but it’s still a good inclusion into the Star Wars expanded universe, but let’s just hope that there will be no more planetary annihilating weapons to come.
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This Week’s Posts and Book Giveaways: (Monday) Excerpt of Ecko Burning by Danie Ware; (Tuesday) Podcast on Bloodsounders Arc with Jeff Salyards; (Wednesday) Interview about Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson; (Thursday) Review of Veil of the Deserters by Jeff Salyards
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Review by: Gregory Pellechi
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Good review and I agree with much of what you say. As far as a heist story, Scoundrels just came out a year ago, so that would really be treading on similar territory. This just felt like the story that didn’t need to be told to me, trapped between so much continuity that it handcuffs the writers.
I adored the AC Crispin trilogy when I read it years ago. I felt the Han Solo in this book departed from the broken character that Han Solo is. He is a man hardened by life, not one with a big ego because of his successful conquests.