Solo 03--Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (Daley, Brian)

Rating: 3
Year: 1980
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Wars
Read again? In another decade

Ooops. I read 'em out of order. This is the third in the set that isn't so much a trilogy as three stand-alone stories.

Daley's back at the thesaurus for this third Solo book, filling in the syllables to let us know that we're reading Science Fiction, not your common dimestore paperback.

Han and Chewie are in the Tion Hegemony, a galactic backwater, having skipped out of the Corporate Sector. Times are bad, business is slow, and they end up working as pit crew for an arrogant air-show flyer. Then they get an offer: ship some educational materials to a university on another world.

It turns out they were recommended by an old pal, Badure, who has a line on something big--a treasure vault containing the last hoard of tributes to Xim the Despot (I wonder if he called himself that?). This is Science Fiction, so we have to have a history expert who just happens to be a Space Caterpillar. He's seeking his fortune and glory before he becomes a Space Butterfly (but Daley calls that a "chromawing").

Badure also warns Solo that he's being stalked by the notorious assassin Gallandro, fastest gun in the galaxy, who has a score to settle.

Then there's the army of Xim's war robots, talking dinosaurs, and Daley's thesaurus, which should be named as a character itself.

Marginally better than "Star's End," but still firmly on the "B" list; Daley's plots flow right downstream with few twists or turns. His characters are simply there, barely fleshed out, not particularly compelling--and they all sound alike.

But it's Daley's narrative style that suffers the most; those extra syllables don't make the prose seem sophisticated, just clumsy.