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As the year winds down, I have been racing to tick one last book off my reading list. I recently inherited a collection of vintage Star Wars paperbacks from my father—including the original trilogy novelizations and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye—and I decided to dive into Brian Daley’s 1979 classic, Han Solo’s Revenge.
Set well before the events of A New Hope, the story finds Han and Chewbacca in a familiar position: they are broke, desperate, and running out of options. In their haste to land a payday, they accept a high-stakes contract without asking enough questions, only to realize they have been ensnared by a ring of slavers.
After a tense confrontation where the slavers attempt to seize the Millennium Falcon, Han and Chewy manage to reclaim their ship. However, Han is not one to walk away empty-handed. His quest to collect his promised fee leads him into an unlikely partnership with Fiola, a woman looking to expose corruption within the "Authority" (the corporate sovereign power in this sector) to advance her own career. While Fiola is hunting for a promotion, Han is simply hunting for his money and trying to keep his skin intact.
It was a nostalgic blast to spend time with these characters again. For the most part, Han acts exactly as you would expect him to—cocky, resourceful, and cynical. However, there were moments where the characterization felt a bit "surface-level." It occasionally felt as though the author had watched the Mos Eisley Cantina scene and simply pasted that specific persona across every page, sometimes even echoing movie dialogue in a way that felt like a recreation rather than a new beat.
That said, the dynamic between Han and Fiola was a highlight. Writing in the late 1970s, Daley followed more traditional archetypes that feel refreshing in today's climate. Men act masculine and women act feminine. Fiola is capable and can certainly hold her own in a fight, but the story never feels the need to diminish Han to make her look better.
If this story were written today, you can almost guarantee the head of the Authority would be a "girl boss," the slaver leader would be a misunderstood anti-heroine, and Han would be reduced to a bumbling sidekick providing the setup for Fiola’s witty one-liners. Thankfully, this book avoids those modern tropes. The villains are unapologetically villainous, and the heroes are not undermined by contemporary social checklists.
The book features a surprising twist at the end that I genuinely didn't see coming, which provided a nice spark to the finale.
Is it "elevated" literature? No. The prose occasionally uses vocabulary that feels a bit dated or carries meanings that have shifted in the decades since it was printed. But as a fast-paced, "pulp" space adventure, it succeeds. If you are looking for a quick, fun read that captures the spirit of the original Star Wars era without the baggage of modern reboots, I highly recommend picking this one up.