Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run – A Han Solo & Chewbacca Adventure. Written by Greg Rucka, illustrations by Phil Noto. Young Adult Hardcover, 192 pages, Disney-Lucasfilm Press, 2015. (9 out of 10)
Part of the publishing enterprise that is “The Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is a set of three young adult (YA) novels. The three split apart our trinity of original trilogy heroes, with one focusing on Princess Leia, one on Luke Skywalker, and the other on Han Solo (and Chewbacca). This first review is of “Smuggler’s Run,” the Han Solo book in the series, by Greg Rucka. All three of these books fill in some gaps between original trilogy movies, but each also has a framing scene that takes place 30 years later, in the same time as the new movie, “The Force Awakens.” With the erasure of the Expanded Universe a few years back, there are more of these gaps in the cleaned-up canon than there used to be, so there’s a clean slate for authors to venture onto. Rucka, like the other authors, seems to be having a blast. The handful of illustrations by Phil Noto help tell the story, and had me wishing there were more of them.
This story takes place shortly after the first Death Star is destroyed, as the Rebels are scrambling to evacuate Yavin 4. Han is on his way out the door to pay Jabba with his reward money (which ironically, is the most responsible thing for Han Solo to do at this point), when Leia pulls him and Chewie in and gives them a new mission. Which Chewbacca actually convinces Han to take. It’s good to have a furry conscience.
Turns out there’s a team of Rebel agents who’s been compromised. They’re the ones who keep the secrets of the Rebel bases safe (including that the next one would be on Hoth), and they’ve been attacked. Of the six agents, only one has survived, and Leia needs him extracted before the Empire gets to him and tortures the information out of him. After getting the promise of even more money, Han and Chewie head to a new destination in our favorite galaxy, Cyrkon. You know how Mos Eisley is described as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”? It’s like the whole planet is like that. Han runs into bounty hunters trying to find him for Jabba, and we end up meeting the real Big Bad for this book, Alecia Beck.
Beck is with the Imperial Security Bureau (like their CIA or KGB or Gestapo or Stasi or…you get the idea), and is a fascinating character. We don’t get much of her background, but she’s complex enough that I’d love to see her show up again. As an ISB agent she’s not the captain of a starship, but she has the captain of her star destroyer in the palm of her hand. She’s got a cybernetic eye implant that makes her visually interesting, with the additional trauma that whatever mangled her face has done to her psyche. She’s fierce, and she’s terrifying. I love it.
Honestly, this is a fairly simple, straightforward story. It’s intended for young adults, but it gets intense. There’s death, there’s debauchery, there’s the kind of stuff that makes Star Wars have a gritty side that Star Trek doesn’t. Most of all, there’s Rucka’s ability to capture the character and voice of Han Solo that made us all love him in the first place. He’s a scoundrel, but he’s our scoundrel. We get to see his impeccable piloting skills, his bond with Chewie, and his undeniable heroism that he tries to avoid, but always comes calling. Most Star Wars books try to wedge (ha!) every character into every novel, so we know what Admiral Ackbar and Threepio and Lando and Nien Nunb and Bib Fortuna are all doing at any given time. These books, by narrowing their focus, have delivered some fun reads for kids or adults. If you’re needing a fix between now and the time the Force wakes up, this would be a good one.
