Customer Reviews

Han Solo at Stars' End (Classic Star Wars)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Han Solo at Stars' End was the third Star Wars novel ever published, after the original film novelization and Alan Dean Foster's lively Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and yet it remains today, nearly a quarter of a century later, one of the best pieces of Star Wars literature ever published. This book is the first of a trilogy that has since come to be known as the Han Solo Adventures (not to be confused with A.C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy), which tell of some of Han Solo's greatest adventures in the years before A New Hope. In these books, Brian Daley has really captured the essence and character of Han, Chewie, and the Falcon as they were at the start of the first film.

The plot of this book is fairly simple and straightforward. After a run-in with the Corporate Sector Authority (basically the equivalent of the Empire in this sector of space), the Millennium Falcon needs some repairs, so Han heads to an "outlaw tech" base to get her fixed up. When he arrives, he finds out that Doc, the head of the techs, has gone missing, and that the price of the Falcon's repairs will be to find and rescue him. Along the way, Chewbacca too is captured, making the whole affair personal.

Brian Daley has really written an action-packed whopper of a Star Wars book here. There are no subplots to bog down the pace of the book, no Luke and Leia to follow around on their own quests. This is pure Han Solo adventure start to finish. There are original and inspired firefights, sometimes in zero-G, and we get to see why Han has his reputation as an excellent pilot and a quick-draw marksman to be feared. There's a dogfight in here that puts to shame most of what Mike Stackpole has written, some unprecedented maneuvers with the Falcon, buildings getting blown off the face of planets (literally!), and several very interesting characters are introduced, including a fellow named Rekkon who I'd like to see more of someday. Han and Chewie are always perfectly in character as well, and there is a droid duo introduced here that is even more unlikely, and - dare I say it? - at times even more amusing than Artoo and Threepio.

Brian Daley, in this and his other books has I believe done more for the Star Wars Universe than any other author since. In this volume he introduced the Z-95 Headhunter, dinkos, the Fondor shipyards, several of Han's future friends, enemies, and companions, the Corporate Sector, and many themes and sequences that future Star Wars authors will attempt to emulate with varying degrees of success.

In Han Solo at Stars' End, Brian Daley has created a masterpiece. Short but concise and relevant, this is one of the most fun, action-packed, and ultimately most satisfying Star Wars novels that I have read in a long time.

Han Solo at Star's End is a grand, rousing action adventure. I truly can say that it has influenced me greatly. The courageous Solo rescues his friend Chewbacca and the other prisoners of Star's End in one of the most exciting and enjoyable action sequences ever written. One of the best works of fiction I've ever read.

As noted, "Han Solo at Stars' End" was among the first Star Wars novels to be published. At its time, this was an exciting and unique landmark in Star Wars as the characters began developing outside the movies. Presently, the Star Wars Universe has expanded to a place where a location in book stores is devoted to this separate genre.

This novel may seem decidedly one sided because of the focus on one character. Chewbacca almost seems secondary at times in the plot. Though Han Solo is an interesting and complex character, the plot is somewhat thin with him as the total focus. This is not to suggest that the plot is bad. It just seemed as though the plot was not developed to its full potential. The subplots seems far less important to the point of being trivial until Chewbacca's problem. Little is even noted about the villian known as "the Authority".

Han Solo is a younger scoundrel in this book, but his smuggling operation needs assistance from the best illegal ship builder in the galaxy. Unfortunately, that ship building is imprisoned at the Authority prison known as Stars' End. A colorful list of characters accompany Han Solo on his mission, though details on their origins are somewhat vague.

The other books in this series may make this book seem better rounded in the end. Though I do intend to read the other books in the collection known as The Han Solo Adventure, I have lowered expectations. Still I expect that I will enjoy them to some degree.

Many genre's suffer from the downgrading of their literature from the height of Top Sellerdom to the racks of Young Adult fiction. Jules Verne, HG Wells, and now the Star Wars and Star Trek novels are falling into this abyss.

This and the other Star Wars add-on novels were fine when first printed. But are now the type of books that young adult readers even find boring.

Very light reading for the Star Wars fan.

Han Solo, the most famous Corellian of all time, is here found at some unspecified time before he met Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia (Wookieepedia's chronology places the book two years before Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (1977 & 2004 Versions, 2-Disc Widescreen Edition). And the late Brian Daley (theretofore known only as a fantasist, having published The Doomfarers of Coramonde and The Starfollowers of Coramonde in 1977 and '79) brings him to life with slam-bang style in a story that could just as well have been created for the big screen. The first line--Han's ("it's a warship all right. Damn!")--grabs you by the throat, and the momentum scarcely lets up for a moment from then on. Han and Chewbacca, broke and in debt as they will be on Tatooine some time hence, are picking up a semi-dishonest credit or two in the Corporate Sector Authority, "one wisp off one branch at the end of one arm of the galaxy" where the CSA "had been chartered (presumably by the Empire, though that's not specified) to exploit...the uncountable riches" of tens of thousands of solar systems. A gunrunning gig loses the Millennium Falcon her sensor dish, and then the Authority's Security Police get much too interested in her clandestine modifications. Now Han needs a Waiver that will let him slip by them, and he knows just where to go for one: the outlaw-techs bossed by the veteran known as Doc. But when he tracks them down, he finds that Doc has vanished, and his daughter Jessa is willing to do the repairs he needs and provide the Waiver--*if* Han will go to the Authority Data Center on Orron III and pick up some other people who are searching for "lost ones." Han doesn't like the idea, but he finds he doesn't have much choice, and so begins a wild voyage that involves him with a murderous traitor, Security Police, and a paranoid Authority Vice-President who's become convinced of the existence of a far-ranging "conspiracy against the Authority and against me personally," and climaxes with 50-odd pages of fast-moving action in (or should that be on?) an Authority station at the very end of the galaxy which Solo, by overloading the powerplant and cutting out the overhead deflector shield, has blown into sub-orbit!

This is the Han Solo with whom half the fandom fell in love (the other half being the "Luke-aholics," as we called them back in the day)--sharp-tongued and clever, keen-witted, devoted to his freedom, his ship, and his partner, sometimes crazy-brave, utterly apolitical ("We're not the Jedi Knights, or Freedom's Sons"), quick-tempered and determined to get every bit of money that's owed him ("Take the occasion when Big Bunji was careless enough to forget to pay you, and you two strafed his pressure dome"), given to wild improvisational plans that somehow almost always work; Daley even hints, more than once, that he's an unconscious Force-user ("reflexes that were more like precognition," "the instincts that had given him a reputation for telepathy"). There are tantalizing suggestions of a more legitimate past--he apparently learned to fly at an Academy, though what one isn't specified, and was cashiered in disgrace after he tried to "do the right thing," leaving him angry and bitter. Yet when his back is to the wall he always listens to the better angels of his nature, even if self-mockingly ("Got a flight helmet for me? Something sporty, in my size...with a hole in it to match the one in my head"), and he can inspire deep devotion in those who work with him ("My mate, Atuarre, said not to bother coming back without you, and...my cub, Pakka, would have come if I had not"). There's plenty of great technical throwaway (Daley later went on to write seven original hard-sf novels) and a splendid dogfight that matches the one over the DeathStar (one wonders how the author, who served in the Army, got so knowledgeable about how such things work). There's a character who has more than a hint of the Jedi about him, a pair of mismatched but comradely droids, and a felinoid mother and son who team up with the smugglers in a bid to find their missing husband and father. The only real flaw is that Daley writes several nonhuman characters as speaking a language his readers can understand, while Chewbacca's dialogue is always revealed through Han's responses to it. If you're a Hanatic, as I was, you must absolutely read this book and its sequels.

I first read this book at age 10. I am now 41 and it is still a classic. I am not a huge Star Wars fan or anything but this is a great read with charactors we all know and love. Very interesting to see Han Solo outside of the Star Wars movie genre. Buy it!

The plot kept getting better.When I started reading it seemed the book would never end then the plot took a turn.From that point on I was hooked.Then it got better.I loved the part where the robot kicked the other well trained robots b**t(what ever its name was).

It's a good book could be a little better but it's still good. I also have the guide to to weapons and technology so I understood all the Disruptor stuff. This is a book for real star wars fans though you have to under stand allot.

This is a combined review of The paper back book and the comic from Dark horse, Classic star wars - Han Solo at stars end - Volume 5. This comic is based on the stand alone novelette written by the late Brian Daley. For those who had read AC Crispens Han Solo Trilogy (my favorite of the entire EU), Crispen left time in his story to accommodate Daley's stories about Han and Chewy taking a trip to the corporate sector. Virtually nothing is known about the corp sector except what Daley told us in his 3 novels about his favorite character, Han. One of those 3 stories is HS at SE.

This comic has good inking and binding but the pencil and artwork is of comic strip quality. I give the story a 5, inking a 3 and pencils a 2, then I round up because the stars are Han and chewy for 4 stars

The plot kept getting better.When I started reading it seemed the book would never end then the plot took a turn.From that point on I was hooked.Then it got better.I loved the part where the robot kicked the other well trained robots butt(what ever its name was).