Tuesday, July 31, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older




Star Wars Last Shot is at best a mixed bag.  Released in time for this year's "Solo: A Star Wars Movie," Last Shot is not really a tie-in (there's no connection between it and the movie) but just a new story featuring Han Solo and Lando Calrissian going on an adventure after the original trilogy that has roots in each of their pasts.  As I've said in prior Star Wars reviews, it is tricky for me to review new canon Star Wars books due to my love of the old Star Wars EU (now christened Legends) and the inevitable tendency for me to compare new books to the old.

And indeed, Last Shot called to mind several old Legends stories - the main antagonist's plot brought to mind "The New Rebellion", and Han's mid-life crisis brought to mind "The Last One Standing" (from Tales from the Bounty Hunters).  As with any type of book, odds are the ideas within are not wholly original, and the question is whether or not those ideas as presented in the new book are executed well and whether the book is....well, fun or interesting as a result.  Unfortunately, Last Shot fails in that regard -the package works as a whole barely, but the plot structure is often a bit confusing, a bit silly, and just not the most interesting use of the characters.

More after the Jump:

-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Impresario Lando Calrissian is in a big business, running Calrissian Enterprises on Bespin, where his company manufactures droids to distribute across the Galaxy.  He's even showing off the business to a group of young Twi'leks, chaperoned by a beautiful Twi'lek woman, Kaasha Bateen, who used to be his lover.  Lando kind of wishes Kaasha would perhaps be something more....but his joys are interrupted when an intruder turns one of his droids into a killer and demands that Lando locate a device that was once on board the Millennium Falcon 10 years ago....

Of course the owner of the Falcon 10 years ago was one Han Solo, now trying to deal with the burdens of being a respectable figure in the New Republic, and being a good father to young 2 year old Ben Solo.  Han feels out of place in this role, and worries about being a bad father, having had no role model himself.  So when Lando comes along and needs his help, Han jets off for the adventure, with Leia's blessing.

But Han and Lando's mysterious enemy has ties to both of their pasts, and his aim is something far grander, which threatens the entire Galaxy.....
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Last Shot is structured in a particular way - every chapter begins with the location in the setting and the time period it's taking place.  It does this because the story bounces around between four different timelines:  The present adventure being the main one, Han's adventure 10 years ago where he came into contact with the main antagonist and the central macguffin, an adventure with Lando 15 years ago where he also came into contact with those two, and the origin story of the main antagonist which starts 20 years in the past but moves a bit forward in time.  The problem is that none of the past stories are particularly interesting on their own, and the story jumping back and forth (or then leaving one for a while) between them got a little confusing, leaving me wondering "wait, where are we now and why?" even in the most important present day story.

As I mentioned above, Last Shot features elements that will be familiar to old canon readers from other books - Han is suffering a midlife crisis like in "The Last One Standing" and the bad guy is planning on causing devastation using droids manufactured in one place (and beyond) throughout the galaxy (see The New Rebellion).  The problem is that Last Shot doesn't do much interesting with these things - Han's Midlife Crisis is resolved by Leia essentially being a saint and nothing else, and has zero impact on the plot, and well....the droid danger was silly the last time it appeared in The New Rebellion, and it isn't any better here.  Honestly, it makes even less sense here.

The characters of Han and Lando are fine, and the new characters are never grating or awful (there's an Ewok code-slicer which my old EU brain had to get used to, since old EU ewoks weren't advanced enough for such a job but I guess new ones are), so the story works....but it just never is interesting and as mentioned above is kind of uninteresting.  Lando's love story just feels kind of there and is resolved the same way - we don't see interactions between the two that would leave the reader thinking Lando and Kaasha are good for each other, we don't see enough of Kaasha herself to really care about her, and we don't see enough to really get a great sense of why they'd suddenly believe they're right for each other - that again it's uninteresting.  And the main antagonist's story, which I guess is meant to humanize him, failed to make me care about him (the book could've just done a two page monologue from the antagonist instead and saved all the pages).

In short that's the problem with this book.  It doesn't present an interesting story, doesn't do anything interesting with the characters we know and care about, and doesn't present us with new interesting characters to care about we haven't met before.  It's just....there.  I've read worse Star Wars books, but I've definitely read better.
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