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AC Crispin does herself no favours in my estimation in Han Solo: Rebel Dawn. Her books were just fine up until Interlude One, where she suddenly offers up a shitty encapsulation of Brian Daley's Han Solo at Star's End.

I am not sure why she couldn't simply have finished her story before the Star's End adventure happened (but I haven't finished her book either. I paused my reading so that I could read Daley's book, so I will return to her book tonight), but since I had the Daley books handy, she nudged me into reading the source of the interlude, and it would have been better for Crispin's Han Solo if I hadn't been diverted.

See my Han Solo love runs deep. It burst out fully formed in 1977 when I watched him blow away Greedo, then nonchalnatly toss a credit to the barkeep, saying, "Sorry about the mess." My Han Solo was a genuine criminal. A drug running, pragmatic, mercenary S.O.B., whose only redeeming qualities were charm, skill and loyalty. And it was the latter which would lead him into becoming the only Star Wars character with a genuine arc. Come Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo found himself sucked into the Rebellion with a burgeoning love for Leia and a feeling of responsibility for Luke. Once there his other natural gifts flourished, and he began to change in a logical, believable way. He slowly became a "good man."

Unfortunately, much of that was undermined in Return of the Jedi when Solo began to make decisions that made no sense at all -- like giving Lando, his betrayer, the Falcon, behaving like an idiot schoolboy in his relationship with Leia, and behaving like a knob everywhen else (and it didn't help at all that Lucas had Solo dispatch Boba Fett through sheer luck rather than ruthlessness or skill).

The message of Return of the Jedi (particularly when coupled with Lucas's later decision to have Greedo shoot first) was that Han Solo was weak, and he'd always been a good man. He just hadn't been surrounded by the right people. And that's the Han that AC Crispin loves and embraces. Don't get me wrong. That Han's okay, and I was enjoying reading about him. And Crispin genuinely loves that Han. But that Han is not my Solo, and I miss the character I fell in love with as a kid.

Crispin led me back to him, though.

He is fully present in Daley's Han Solo at Star's End. A little more hard SciFi than contemporary Star Wars books, along with clunkier dialogue and a heavy reliance on space tech, the first in Daley's trilogy was published in 1979 -- one year before Empire Strikes Back appeared on screens -- and it breathes freely without the density of the now massive Star Wars canon. So Daley's Han Solo is the original Han Solo. His Han Solo is still the Han Solo who would publicly execute a bounty hunter without remorse, and go charging after a pack of stormtroopers at the heart of the Empire's ulimate weapon.

And what does this original Han Solo do in Daley's book? Well, he cares first and foremost about his ship, which is right and proper; he cares next about Chewbacca; and these loyalties, the Falcon and Chewie, embroil him in the Star's End adventure -- not some bullshit, post-Empire apologetic idealism. And while he's busy improving the Falcon and saving Chewie from some nasty torture, he vents a traitor into space with brutal pragmatism. He kills anyone who gets in the way of his goals, and aids anyone who can help him achieve the same. He slaughters hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners with a split second decision that is good only for him and his closest friends, then saves a droid to which he's suddenly become loyal over the course of his adventure. He does what is good for Solo, and everything else can suck his vapour trail.

This isn't just Daley's Han Solo. This is my Han Solo, and it was nice to have him back, even if it was only for one hundred and eighty pages. But now I am faced with the prospect of returning to George Lucas' butchered Han Solo in the hands of AC Crispin. A Han Solo who is heroic on an epic scale, a Han Solo who takes in stray street kids, loathes slavery, and is already busy working for the Rebellion without even knowing it, and I am pretty sure it isn't going to be anywhere near as fun as it was before I was sent off to read Han Solo at Star's End.

Nice job, Crispin. Whatever star rating you receive for Rebel Dawn will be all your fault.