Calling this book Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka is like calling it Lando Calrissian and the Chai Tea

A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 25

So, this is the end of the Lando Calrissian Adventures trilogy and... We've come so far. Physically. Lando as a character has not moved from day one of this trilogy, but he sure has travelled! And now we are at the conclusion of this trilogy with Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka (1983).

I wanted to take a moment to talk about the title of this book before we get into evaluating its merits beyond that. We learn that ThonBoka translates directly to Starcave. This book is named Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of Starcave. A writer with good comedic chops and an eye for satire might use this title and play with the idea of language, on communications and understanding. A writer more interested in serious themes could even play with the notion of conquest erasing language along with people, as the Centrans in book besiege ThonBoka and starve the inhabitants, the Oswaft.

L. Neil Smith decides that his vacuum-breathing inhabitants of ThonBoka will use their specific abilities during the climactic battle. At no point in the book, however, is the title something that could fit in as a nod to the themes, to the overarching story, or to any character. Make of that what you will.

Calrissian remains the relatively passive protagonist he's been established to be in the preceding novels, Vuffi Raa his droid companion continues to call him "Master" so he can reiterate his catchphrase throughout the book, and the book decides that now is the moment that they shall examine the degree to which a droid can be culpable for their actions. I am once again reminded of the fact that I desperately wish this novel was interested in actually exploring this topic, in exploring the sentience and subsequently the personhood of droids. But alas, this is not to be for me. Instead Vuffi Raa's people are foreshadowed throughout the entire book such that their appearance in the end feels less like a deus ex machina (but reader, make no mistake, a deus ex machina it is).

At the close of the book Calrissian reiterates his desire to settle down, a desire that has been present from the very beginning of these novels because he must be dragged into every single plot by force. So no changes to him there. The main villain of this trilogy has a plot so inscrutable and so nonsensical I begin to wonder how this character even is supposed to exist within the confines of the cartoonish evils of the Empire. How are you too cartoonishly evil for Star Wars? I never thought it could reach that point, but here we are. I wish this book was clever enough to work around the necessity of having a villain largely unrelated to the main line of Star Wars, but. Rokur Gepta is an almost comically unsuitable villain.

There is no connection to Lando, not really. There is a ridiculous degree of power he employs but the origins of that power and its effects on others don't matter. Hell, even the book's setting in a libertarian pseudoutopia doesn't get any sort of significant examination. Smith just seems to lack an eye for where a topic he's brought up can be pushed more. Where it should matter to the largely shenanigans-heavy plot.

Action scenes remain a general strong point for a book with mostly readable prose. This is technically proficient writing. But, I cannot help but wonder why these books exist when so little of note happens within them. Lando Calrissian as a character is intriguing to us in the Empire Strikes Back because he is a former scoundrel trying to go straight. One that might make unsavory dealings with the Empire just to keep himself out of trouble, but to keep his associates out of it as well. A man driven into action because he feels threatened and because he grew to care for the friends he'd made.

I see none of that interest in the Lando Norris of this trilogy. He has almost no characterization beyond getting tugged into adventures this way and that by bumbling into them, and getting saved by his droid companion who generally cannot fail and reliably is the only one moving the plot forward. And it negatively impacts the color of his actions in the films: Was helping Luke and Leia get out of the Empire's clutches and eventually sticking it out with the Rebellion? Or was this yet another adventure he got dragged into with no agency of his own?

Now allow me to break character for a moment. I do like this book and this trilogy. I think this and the first book are both what I generally enjoy in pulp science fiction: good action, decent enough prose, absolutely balls to the walls ideas for different kinds of aliens and phenomena in space. This is fun to me. I'm having fun. But it doesn't square away with the films in character. Which is the real sticking point for me. I am very happy to take stories that are very different in tone, in desired audience, in themes from the original films. But this just feels so divorced from the films to a point where any attempt to tie them in feels hamstrung, haphazard, and ultimately ineffective. So I invite you to ask yourself, why is this a Star Wars book?

I love pulpy sci fi though. It's fun. But I also think these books illustrate the difference between "fun" and "good" remarkably well. Though these books are deeply amusing, there's just nothing to dig into, and any attempts to dig are met with a concrete frustration. The title tells you that right from the outset. Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka is Lando Calrissian and the Chai Tea is Lando Calrissian and the Redundant Redundancy is Lando Calrissian and the Sellout Cashgrab.

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon

A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 24

THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU TRAILER PREAMBLE: Look I am just a bit nervous for this movie. Mostly because they've been very cagey on what the story is supposed to be, and because the show is imo a very good example of wasted potential. I would be happy for this movie to be a pretty baseline competent action movie, but I do think the effects in the trailer looked... not super convincing? Idk something about live action Zeb doesn't work for me. Hopefully everything looks a lot better in the finished article.

I wish the universe didn't feel 2 meters wide. It all feels so small and cramped because nothing has the liberty to just exist for its own sake. What's such a shame to me is that that was such a strength of the Mandalorian as a show at first! It was all of the parts of the galaxy that had been touched and ravaged by the empire without being directly involved. And now it's like. Everyone knows everyone and it's all on top of each other. A shame. Well. That's enough doomposting for now I hope the movie proves me wrong!

ONTO THE BOOK REVIEW NOW

SO, this is L. Neil Smith's second book in his Lando Adventures trilogy and OH BOY this one is a funny one. I kind of glossed over this in my review of the first book, mostly because it wasn't super relevant beyond Lando's catchphrase being "Don't call me Master" (which, yes, is also repeated ad nauseum in this book, never fear), but L. Neil Smith is like. Very much a libertarian.

So at the end of the last book, Lando gets a ludicrous amount of money in the form of "life crystals" and by the beginning of this book this money has all been pissed away in taxes. That's right baby, the real enemy is, as ever, The Fed! I'm only mostly joking, but the opening of the book is laughable. Lando's ineptitude at "playing it straight," as it were, has rid him of all his money ever, so he really has no choice guys, he has to go back to gambling. He has to take these odd jobs that land him on the wrong side of the law.

I'm not a particular lover of law enforcement myself, but it's laughable to me the degree to which this book just repeatedly makes Lando the victim of The Man. He's a very passive character in these books, admittedly. Doesn't seem to know anything about anywhere he ends up, doesn't seem to want anything really, takes jobs he doesn't have the ability to do, he's being dragged through these plots kicking and screaming by Vuffi Raa, his droid sidekick.

It's a real struggle to get through. At the end of the book as he's being tortured, Lando learns that all of his struggles to live a legal life were from one man who wanted revenge on him from the previous book. But Lando barely knows the guy.

So... what works, then? The prose is fine. Like I said last time, Smith's writing is of a standard pulpy flavor, and it works well. I again enjoy a lot of the ideas that Smith comes up with for the world, the planets genuinely feel very different from each other and though they aren't really explored (which is a weakness on the whole: there's some things that have big implications for the worldbuilding in the franchise, but they simply cannot be explored because... it's a spinoff novel. Biting off a little less could provide for a more satisfying story). I do think the action is well paced and written. It's easy to follow and it's compelling.

Vuffi Raa is a real character and not just a cardboard cutout and I wish we saw more of that dynamic. Lando is a sort of roguish simulacrum of his self from the movies. I know that the Billy Dee Williams charisma is damn near unmatchable, but it's a shame to see Lando seem so passive and not give much to the book. I guess if you wanted to project onto him that would work, but I hate projecting onto someone so bland! The closest we get to him having a personality or agency is at the end of the novel, when Raa suggests giving the money they've come into back to a planet and Lando says "forget it."

Soooooo. Should you read this? I think if you read the first one, and enjoyed the first one, this is likely going to hit the same notes for you. If you're looking for a good book, no, not really. It is very funny to see the obvious influence of Smith's personal politics on how he approaches the story, and I think some concepts are cool, but on the whole it is less esoteric than the first book, which is a shame for people who, like me, enjoy the more balls to the walls approach to sci fi. It feels more like it's in the Star Wars universe because of that though– it doesn't feel totally disjointed.

I find this a weakness, you might find it a strength. It just makes me think more about how there's basically no interaction with the rest of the world from the other Star Wars media, even when there really should be! So... ymmv.

I know these retrospectives have been slow recently. In real time I am actually a little ahead of when I post these and I have hit a bit of a wall with one of the future ones (you'll see when we hit the tabletop game. Oh god.) (there's just... so much of it). So I slowed up my pace with these accordingly.

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu (1983)

A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 23

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I, however, say you can absolutely judge a book by it's title, and oh boy does this title say a lot in its 7 words. It says "Hello reader, you're going to need to buckle up for this one." It says "Prepare for pulp! Cowards, beware!"

When I read Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy, I commented on the dryness of the prose and the quick turnaround time for publication. L. Neil Smith wrote this book and the two others that make up the Lando Norris Adventures trilogy within the span of nine weeks in 1983. They were released at a truly breathtaking pace. A breakneck pace, really. Keeping that in mind, a lot of this book and its subsequent sequels starts to make sense.

By which I mean, of course, that they're not very good. But let's just talk about the first one, the Mindharp of Sharu. The novel that brought Sabacc to Star Wars is a bizarre romp through spacetime. And it is spacetime to this book, which veers far nearer to soft science fiction pulp than it does to the fantastical orientations of most Star Wars media so far. You KNOW I love it when Star Wars does dinosaurs, which this book does, but this book also gives you the spooky scaries of non-euclidian geometry (yes, conversations with the ever-shifting dimensions of a freaky hallway are important to me thank you very much).

Esoteric details abound, as Lando is tossed about by the plot until the mystery is solved. The use of passive voice there is deliberate. Smith isn't a bad writer, the prose is pretty solid if occasionally hokey (some of the alliteration feels heavy-handed, and a lot of the repeated bits aren't very funny) but the story happens to the characters. It's not very developed. One of the particular weaknesses of the novel for me is the book's noncommittal approach to different planetary cultures. Sure, it matters nominally, but the significances are all superficial, even for the parts of the story when they enter the pyramid (yes of course there's a pyramid, it's pulpy eighties far). I think the closest to interesting this book gets when it comes to examining anything is the following passage.

This, however, just isn't the focus of the book and so it glances off the narrative windshield, ne'er to be explored in depth. And put a pin in that for later Star Wars properties because Lando and droids and their existence is perplexingly a frustration that comes up again. I really do think that the sentience of droids something that's ripe for exploration in the Star Wars media landscape, but it just doesn't happen. Probably because it has deeply uncomfortable implications for the universe. But I think that a little discomfort is worth a good story! I would love to see it pushed. This is not the book to do it, unfortunately.

Yet another aspect of this book that I find lacking is the fact that there is a planet that has magical crystals that extend lifespans by four times their natural durations... and it's a prison colony? It's not being extracted? Stripped? It's not a huge point of interest? Obviously that'd have huge implications for the rest of the Star Wars universe, but this is a spinoff novel series, so it can't. And so this is where I think, if these books had a little more time in the oven, this concept would've been reworked. A prison colony mining a resource that is useful, but not this kind of transformative critical magical crystal. Even if you're taking these books in a vacuum, there's just no sense of how the broader components of this universe universe interact with each other/

And I think if your main character's catchphrase for the novel is "Don't call me Master," you should be prepared to explore that! Not just drop it in at every opportunity without digging in!

This is also really just one of those series that feels very divorced from the Star Wars universe that we've seen in the first three movies and even some of the other standalone books. Both Brian Daley and Alan Dean Foster's spinoff novels stick very closely to concepts and ideas that exist in the films– lightsabers, droids, aliens. There's a sort of internal logic to Star Wars worldbuilding conventions where by virtue of the limitations of filmmaking at the time all places we visit have the same gravity, so do ships, there's explosions in space, and spacetime doesn't exist. This book pushes outside of that into realms more firmly associated with science fiction staples, and though I don't mind that, it definitely leaves the book feeling distant from the films and the other books. It's not necessarily a bad thing; I think it wouldn't make the novel better to adhere to those conventions, but it is worth keeping in mind.

This novel is for you if you know what you're getting into. It's very pulpy, in a way that almost seems dated for 1980s science fiction even. I don't think it rises above its concept, but there are some fun details and if interesting ideas are what you're looking for in your reading, then this book might work for you. I'm not going to pretend I didn't have fun. My collection of books is CHOCK FULL of cheese of this nature. But this cheese simply does not hold up to critical scrutiny.

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

Many Returns of Many Jedi, and an interesting novelization: A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 21

There are so many Return of the Jedi adaptations into so many kinds of media. I am overwhelmed

Yes, that's right, it's my big adaptation roundup post for the last movie in the original trilogy. It's got some hits, some misses, and a lot of print media. We're actually going to hit a relatively quiet patch in terms of new Star Wars releases now, mostly because though the franchise had a good chunk of serialized properties, the lack of new movies made for a relatively quiet period. This will really take a turn when we hit the 90s, with the release of one novel.

The novelization of this movie is actually something I find supremely interesting. I'm going to be discussing that at length, because I think it makes some bold choices to tell a story that isn't entirely the same in theme to the movie. And this is something that I actually like. Whether or not it's good is perhaps a different question.

If you want substance from this post, skip to where I talk about the novelization! I'm a lot lighter on the stuff with less to dig into. So I don't clog your feed, I'm going to put the "read more" thing here because this is a Large Post. If you want to look at another post in this series, CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

Onto the show! Starting with...

Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (1980): A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 14

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

We've finally hit the conclusion of Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy with this one, and I won't pretend I'm not glad. Again a lot of your enjoyment of a Star Wars novel is going to depend on what style of pulpy cheesy goodness you are willing to engage with and what style you absolutely bounce off of. Me personally, I tend to gravitate to overwrought melodrama when I'm looking for pulp, so Daley's dryness just doesn't work for me.

This one in particular feels a little like it ran out of steam. Makes sense, because the trilogy was published in very quick succession, but it is a bit of a letdown. Though I do give it style points for giving the world a Harrison Ford-adjacent crystal skull before Indiana Jones came out. That's some real cross-contamination in a way I can enjoy.

I don't know how familiar you are with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom but WOW does it feel like the serial numbers have been filed off from that movie and subsequently its plot has been transplanted to Outer Space. The beats and action sequences feel so familiar. And I haven't even watched that Indiana Jones movie since I was about 9 years old! In fact, if you want to read this book... just watch the movie I can't lie. I was kind of charmed by how familiar it felt, but also very much convinced that this works far better on film than it does on the page. At least, on these pages. I don't know the intricacies of when the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom story was set in stone but the similarity feels like surely something was going on there. Maybe there were discussions behind the scenes.

That said, I had a laugh with Han's merry adventures in the land of grave-robbing. Sure, dude! Why the hell not? There's dinosaurs. They can talk. I am not joking.

I haven't got much to say about this trilogy that isn't "Well, it's what you would expect." It's intriguing to me that some aspects of it have been canonized, as it were, in the current state of Star Wars.

I can see why someone might enjoy this through the lens of nostalgia. There's a lot of plot and Han sounds like the Han of a New Hope. But is it... good? No. Not in terms of the mechanics of writing or in cohesion. And while I have you here, I guess it may be as good a time as any to open a discussion that will be a through line of my retrospectives

Does This Feel Like Star Wars? (and what does that even mean)

It's a bit hard to nail down what exactly is the quintessential style of Star Wars in these early novels and the other media published. Alan Dean Foster writing is a totally different wheelhouse to Brian Daley, the Marvel comics vary from run to run in terms of story construction, and even art style!

There's also a huge tonal and stylistic shift in the movies alone– New Hope and Empire are very different in feel (and to some extent look as well! Empire had significantly more budget to play with and it shows in the sets and lighting and costumes). If I was a real coward I would then go on to say how this is just proof that the conception of something "feeling like Star Wars" is all horseshit and people use it only to exclude what they dislike and include what they like.

But while I think that is true to some extent, I think we're going to have a much more productive conversation about what the fuck is a Star War if we reframe this discussion– every single piece of media in this universe is made to feel like "Star Wars," and tells you a LOT about what the author/creator thinks the ~essence~ of Star Wars actually is.

That's part of why early Star Wars is so disparate though. There was just so much less content shaping the collective imaginations of creators that they are all picking up on different things and riffing off of different things. And so this is also why later Star Wars is going to start feeling more standardized (read: homogenized). Things get reinforced and settled the more people play with them.

Star Wars is a social construct! I'm only half joking. It's being added to and those additions invariably reshape its identity constantly. By engaging in the act of creation within Star Wars, Star Wars is changed. So the better question to pair with "Does This Feel Like Star Wars," is actually "Is It Good For Star Wars To Feel Like This," which is a more subjective question but identifies what the underlying intentions behind a statement of "This doesn't feel like Star Wars" actually are.

Star Wars does not exist. Long live Star Wars!

Han Solo at Stars' End: A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 9

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

Avid fans of a certain Revenge of the Sith novelization may recall that Matthew Stover said that this book is his favorite EU novel. And I'll call back to this when (and if) we get to Shadows of Mindor, because it is rather relevant to how he does Han Solo there. Respectfully to him, it's DEFINITELY not my favorite.

This isn't to say I think the book is complete garbage. It's got stuff I admire and enjoy, and stuff I very much could've done without. You'll notice my personal preferences for literature start to creep in here. I think your ability to enjoy this book as a whole hinges entirely upon whether or not you're willing to buy the plot as its sold to you. It is a very short book, it is very quickly paced in the sense that a LOT of stuff happens, if you are not on board with that, you will struggle with this book.

I... struggle with this plot. This book's story cannot be boiled down to a core incidence. Sure, Han Solo goes to Stars' End (a Corporate Sector secret prison). But the actual story the book is trying to tell is... a series of events through which the character of Han Solo is moved. There are ideas of action scenes that would probably be pretty fun in the hands of an author with a little more punch behind their words, or in the context of a TV show or movie or comic. But in this book it is a struggle to get through them because the prose gets mired down in repetitive language, descriptions that don't build out the story, and explanations for things that probably could've been cut down or cut out entirely to not break the flow and immersion of the story.

This isn't to say it's all bad though. I think that if there is anything that this book deserves a lot of praise for it's Brian Daley's characterization of Han Solo. He had a tricky job to do– no Empire, no real interaction with A New Hope, but Han still has to feel like Han (and that's a relatively limited pool of character information to pull from at the time this book was being written). And it is uncannily good. There are lines of dialogue that I can absolutely hear in Harrison Ford's voice. It's a remarkably spot-on interpretation of Han Solo from the first Star Wars movie, and yes, that obviously means parts of it have aged hilariously as the movies and associated properties have strayed from the original versions.

Oh yeah. George Lucas would stray from that one... oh how we have strayed. It's a strong characterization and plays well, unfortunately the plot just doesn't have the legs to hold it up, and it ultimately doesn't go very many places when it comes to depth of character and theme to supplement the plot.

I think comparing this to Splinter of the Mind's Eye is very funny. There's a lot less excess when it comes to the language, and I think they are both similar in quality, which is to say... not exactly a classic. I am in all honesty much more fond of Splinter though, mostly because the sincerity of the cheese is appealing to me, where I think this novel lacks the cheese to really pull off a plot this pulpy. It's just dry.

On the other hand, you might actually prefer something that is a lot less... purple than Splinter, because oh man is Splinter purple. Splinter is the most purple thing in the world. And in that sense, this book is bright yellow. It is a quick read, it's got all of the pulpy plot points and set pieces you could want, and it has robot gladiatorial combat. I don't hate it. I just found it a little less funny than it could've been, and subsequently much less enjoyable to read.

Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978): A Star Wars (retrospective) Story, Part 5

TL;DR: I'm going through all of the Star Wars media I can get my hands on in order of its initial publication. I shall discuss it all. Maybe someday I'll even finish it! CLICK HERE FOR THE MASTERPOST

BRIEF INITIAL DIVERSION, feel free to skip this if you dgaf about my Star Wars opinions: SO the Maul Shadow Lord trailer dropped and. Ok dude. I guess we'll get into it if I ever reach the 2000s and beyond, but... Man there really is a sameyness to modern Star Wars, isn't there? I'm tired of this grandpa. I will ofc watch it. But. Yknow. Will I enjoy it? Probably about the same amount as every other story about a gruff guy and his kid in Star Wars. Which is a lot of em rn. The animation looked gorgeous though and I wouldn't mind if it took a more noir-style approach (it probably won't)

I'll withhold more judgment until we get more of a sense of the plot, but I do kind of fear that this time period is very saturated for TV purposes, that the themes are going to feel very similar in nature to a lot of similar existing content, and the character is... played out. I guess. Idk I feel a bit sacrilegious saying I would've preferred Maul to never come back to life because he was such a beloved part of other content, but.... it just feels like he's back to life because it's Cool and not because there's a real story to tell there with him.

With that out of the way, I must needs talk about the actual purpose of this post. A recap of the novel that was supposed to become the low-budget sequel to the 1977 smash hit Star Wars, in the event that it hadn't been a smash hit.

She Splinter of my Mind Till I Eye

Look man, everything George Lucas said about his masterplan for all the movies that were going to happen is, shall I say, lightly exaggerative. There may have been a plan. Inklings of a plan. That changed at any given moment. Which in that sense is like me saying I have a plan for my day-to-day interactions.

This novel is like. Pure cheese. It hits like crack to me. I love it. To very briefly summarize the premise, Luke and Leia (Han is Sir Not Appearing In This Book because they weren't sure if Harrison Ford was coming back lol) along with the droids (sorry, 'droids!) get stuck on a planet (there was supposed to be a dogfight, George nixed that idea because it would've been expensive). To get off the planet, they have to find pieces of a kaiburr (YES THE FIRST SPELLING OF KYBER WAS LIKE THAT. IT'S AMAZING) crystal and bring them to a force-sensitive shopkeep. They get captured by imperials, hijinks ensue.

Remember how I said the first novel is charmingly a product of its time? This one is even better insofar as pure cheese goes. This place? Has everything: drunk fuzzy aliens, a collection of magical crystal shards with healing powers, The Specter Of Twincest (Leia was... super not planned to be Luke's sister lol), using spily pads (space lily pads) as a boat, a bigass worm, Luke doing Theft much to Leia's disapproval, Leia using a lightsaber, and Vader falling in a hole.

That last bit is not innuendo he deadass falls down a hole. A good and noble Star Wars deathn't trope, in its early iteration.

Look, you can probably guess that the prose in this novel is similarly hokey and purple to the first one, you can probably guess from my featured list of plot points that it is a very silly story, but I do just have such a fondness for this book and its ilk. A product of its time to a fault, but a real gem among em.

I will... soon be talking about my feelings on the "Star Wars Has Problems With Women" elephant in the room (we'll get to that with Return of the Jedi, though I do actually think this book having Leia fighting with a lightsaber is kinda baller, especially for how early it was), but did want to briefly touch on another issue that Star Wars has that they generally (with some exceptions) inch right up to but never commit to– the empire is a massive colonial affair. The book touches on the Empire being awful to native inhabitants, doesn't really say anything about any rebels being specific to these causes, and doesn't really engage with what that does to a society. Is that what the book is about? Nope! It's a MacGuffin plot that has Luke and Leia inching around each other and hoodwinking the empire. But it is worth noting that this is an established fact of the universe (much like a prejudice against droids) that is Mentioned But Not Played With.

Should you read this? It's not exactly an enduring classic of the science fantasy world. The writing is just okay at best, the plot is a bit formulaic, the entire thing is just the right amount of hokey to make a low-budget movie (how convenient it's entirely located on one planet! Well done getting what you asked for there, George). But like... I kind of love that? I am the person that buys the $1 pulp sci fi novels at the used bookstore and this fits RIGHT IN. This is FIRMLY my niche and wheelhouse. And if that's yours too then I am very gleeful to introduce this book to you.

AND, AS EVER: We must take a moment to appreciate the Ralph McQuarrie cover. Oh Ralph McQuarrie take my entire soul. Thank you for your service. This is so good. This is everything to me. I love Ralph McQuarrie the most