Last Shot

About on par with A New Dawn, definitely better than Lords of the Sith.

I wanted to like this book. I started it three times, hoping to find a groove on this one. After getting a bit more than halfway, I found reading felt more an obligation than a pleasure, so, for now, I am going to step away.

The story starts off on Cloud City with a bang. A good way to start off the book. After that, the book starts feeling less like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and more like our Star Wars heroes in this galaxy. The bywords used in the book are from our universe rather than the Star Wars universe, for instance. For me, that really spoils the feel of the galaxy. It is really out of context.

I like that the author aims to further develop the characters of Han and Lando, but I found it started feeling like a drama in a sci-fi disguise. Once again I felt the sexual aspects of the story are foreign to the universe. Battlestar Galactica reboot would be a better fit.

One of the devices used by the author is to tell three stories in one book. Han's past, Lando's past, and the shared present. It reminds me of the flashback sequences on Arrow, but with the added complexity of two characters flashing back. I found that I struggled to keep all three stories fresh in my mind. I think all three stories have potential, but they may be more accessible if the past and present stories were told sequentially rather than in parallel.

It's easy to pick apart a book when I'm struggling through it, and I must admit that some seem nit picky. However, this really caused a lot of confusion for me, making me have to reread sentences to understand, which spoils the fun. One character is referred to in a plural pronoun regularly. They, their, them. I kept trying to figure out who else was being referred to. If this was Zaphod Beeblebrox with two heads, or the royal “we” of a king or queen, I would have followed it easier. I am sure the author has a reason for using that verbiage, but that reason wasn't clear to me. Unfortunately, the effect was that I was lost in what was happening in the story telling.

Perhaps I'll come back to this another time and see it in a different light, but for now, I'm going to move on to something that will be a pleasure rather than an obligation to finish.

I wanted to love this book. Daniel José Older's short story and narration was the standout for me in “A Certain Point of View” and I really hoped he could do a lot with Lando especially in this novel.

Unfortunately, Last Shot is okay to good, not great. While he Older had me at “Ewok Slicer” it just feels like the book dragged on throughout. You could almost ditch part I completely for example and give us even more Lando & L3. It takes a while but the plot does get going eventually and it's a nice smuggler anthology in a way.

One thing is clear though: Lando > Han in almost every respect. I think part of this is that canon really hems Han in now with both Solo and the OT+Force Awakens movies. Stuff happens to Han whereas Lando is still an intriguing mover and shaker who's allowed to develop outside movie canon. This may be what contributes to the sense of a lost opportunity to do even more with the two scoundrels than Older was allowed to.

As an aside, the audiobook itself is great. Three narrators, including Older himself and they all do a very good good job. I just love how you can practically feel Older grinning through the spoken word and it went a long way towards enjoying the overall story.

The story is good but I listened to the audiobook. Normally I really love the Star Wars audiobooks because they do sound effects and he voices are well done. However, this book was read by 3 different readers and it really bothered me. Hearing 3 different Lando and 3 different Han impressions was really distracting and irritating. The Ben Solo voice was the worst impression of a child I have ever heard. I dropped my rating almost 2 stars because of those 2 issues.

There were some fun moments in Last Shot, and Older has a great grasp of the two protagonists and what makes them tick. Ultimately, though, this suffered from the same problem the Solo movie did, which is that it insists on making Han Solo the protagonist when he's the least interesting part of the story.

Lando's amazing in this. Leia's great, in the small role that she plays. Fyzen Gor is an interesting antagonist. More minor characters, like the Sana Starros, the Gungan security guard, and the Ewok hacker, steal every scene they're in. Han Solo? He mostly shows us why Luke Skywalker was the protagonist of the original Star Wars movies.