Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Well, I managed to wait to finish Solo Command until last night so I didn't have to review it over the weekend. So that's what we're going to be doing today. Let's get into it.
Published on February 2nd, 1999, Solo Command is the first Star Wars novel to be published in 1999, AND it's the second last one to be published before the novelization of The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks was published by Del Rey. It was also the first of the last four novels and one short story compilation to be published by Bantam Spectra before the Star Wars novel license completely shifted back to Del Rey after sixteen years, six being in limbo since no Star Wars anything was being made, and ten with Bantam having the license. You know what? I think I'd like to go down that rabbit hole for a little bit before I actually talk about this book.
I haven't found anything about this, but when Lucasfilm negotiated the book license for a novelization of the then still upcoming movie, I'm assuming they also made a deal for spin-off/tie-in material as well. Besides the novelizations of the film trilogy, Del Rey published seven tie-in novels between 1978 and 1983. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which was meant to serve as the basis for a low budget movie sequel should Star Wars be a moderate success, and two trilogies. One focusing on Han Solo and Chewbacca presumably prior to the events of the movie, and one focusing on Lando Calrissian, before he lost the Millennium Falcon to Han. Once Return of the Jedi came out and the Lando novels came out in late 1983, the novel publishing license for the trilogy ended and laid dormant as the rest of the merchandise licenses did.
In 1989 or 1990 the license for Star Wars shifted to Bantam Spectra and a year or two later Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn was published. Everything that we know as the Star Wars Expanded Universe truly started here as the earlier Del Rey novels were pretty much ignored in the early days. By the time The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin began publication in 1997, the earlier Han Solo and Lando Calrissian books started being acknowledged, though I don't think Splinter of the Mind's Eye was ever acknowledged within the novels and comics that came out between 1991 and 2014. I could be wrong on that, but I don't think anyone within the books and comics ever reference Splinter.
In 1999 the novel license shifted back to Del Rey most likely because the novelization for The Phantom Menace was being published by them. Besides the novelization of the then upcoming new movie, Del Rey published Vector Prime by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. Vector Prime was the first book in a planned 19 book series called The New Jedi Order which shook up the Original Trilogy era of the novels, basically because the Bantam novels had stagnated since George was working on the Prequel Trilogy, so no novels could be published in that era, and there's only so many times you can have Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, and the Solo kids get kidnapped without any real lasting consequences. So this series not only shook up the status quo, but it launched a whole new era of Star Wars publishing that opened up all eras of the in universe timeline now that the prequel movies were coming out and there wouldn't be a Sequel Trilogy of movies as this was long before the Disney buyout happened.
However, while the license for new Star Wars novels went to Bantam for the '90s, Del Rey had retained the license to reprint and republish the novels they'd put out in the late '70s and early '80s. In addition to three book compilation editions for the movie novelizations and the Han and Lando novels, now known as The Han Solo Adventures and The Lando Calrissian Adventures, Del Rey published individual editions of the movie novelizations and The Han Solo Adventures, and a new edition of Splinter of the Mind's Eye under the "Classic Star Wars" banner as you can see on the cover of Splinter above.
What does all that have to do with Solo Command? Almost nearly nothing, but I wanted to highlight the history of Star Wars book publishing, and illustrate where this book fits in, since it was one of the last Star Wars books published by Bantam before Del Rey regained the license in 1999.
I loved Solo Command when I was a kid. I still do, but rereading it now, it feels like Allston was trying to do too much in the book, focusing too much on gap filling because within the franchise's in universe chronology the very next book after this is The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton, which was first published back in 1994. Because of this the focus is no longer on Wraith Squadron but instead on guiding the story to where it can match up with Courtship. It matches up well, but it takes any emotional connection to the squadron away from them. It also lessens the impact the mental breakdown that Myn Donos has when he discovers the woman he loves, Lara Notsil, is actually Gara Petothel, the person who caused the destruction of his unit, Talon Squadron, by giving information on the New Republic to Admiral Trigit in Wraith Squadron, has on us as the readers. Especially those of us who have read The Courtship of Princess Leia before and know where Han and Zsinj's antagonistic relationship goes next, therefore guessing where it has to go here in order to get to that point.
It's kind of like how for those of us who followed the movies our whole lives, and saw the Original Trilogy before the Prequel Trilogy started coming out, knew where Revenge of the Sith had to end, and the basics of how it would achieve that ending. We knew Anakin was going to become Darth Vader, we knew the Jedi Order would get wiped out, we knew Palpatine was going to declare himself Emperor and turn the Old Republic into the Galactic Empire, we knew Luke and Leia were going to be born, and that Padme would get killed off or get written out of the story in some way. We may not have known the specific details like Order 66, that the Fall of the Republic would coincide with the end of the Clone Wars, and that Palpatine would manipulate Vader by revealing that he (Vader) supposedly caused Padme's death, but we knew the Republic had to fall, the Jedi had to go extinct, that Padme had to be written out somehow, and that Anakin had to become Darth Vader. We knew that.
The Wraith Squadron books are like that too. We knew that Zsinj couldn't die and that the Iron Fist couldn't actually be destroyed because they both showed up in The Courtship of Princess Leia, which takes place right after Solo Command. We also knew that Wraith Squadron had to be decomissioned or otherwise written out of the book because they don't exist in any of the Bantam era novels that take place after this book does, nor do they exist prior to their formation in Wraith Squadron. Though they do get mentioned in the next two X-Wing novels. Despite them being mentioned in those books, we don't see the Wraiths again until the 11th book in the The New Jedi Order series, Rebel Dream, which was published in 2002. And then outside of a few more New Jedi Order books, the Wraiths don't show up again until the final X-Wing novel, which was written by Allston and published in 2012. So even though they work for New Republic Intelligence, later Galactic Alliance Intelligence, they're just gone after this book.
Because of that Lara's relationship with Donos doesn't feel earned to me. Mostly because she had two scenes with him in the previous book, and he's a bit too forceful when he asks her out in this book. I get not every couple in this universe can be Mirax and Corran or Asyr and Gavin but the reason I like those relationships is because they evolved organically over the course of those first four X-Wing novels and we got to watch them grow and develop in the story. The problem with all of the romantic relationships in the Wraith Squadron books is that we see the beginnings of them in each of the three books, but then we don't get to spend any time with the couple in question one on one and so we don't become as invested in them as we did with the ones in the Rogue Squadron books.
One of my favourite scenes is where Wedge, Chewie and Squeaky, the protocol droid who's Wraith Squadron's quartermaster, are on the Millennium Falsehood, the ship the Wraiths got to act as a fake Millennium Falcon, and Squeaky complains that he won't get any combat pay on this mission, and Chewie replies that he could rip Squeaky's arms off and beat him with them, ensuring that he would get combat pay. And when Squeaky translates this to Wedge, Wedge says, "You should've said, 'thank you, maybe later'." with Squeaky saying, "Sir, I don't think you understand this Wookiee's violence laden sense of humor." Proving that Wedge is being influenced by the Wraiths more than he's willing to admit. And then, like a page and half later, they've shut down the ship's systems and Squeaky asks Wedge and Chewie what they should do while they wait and suggests a few nmemonic memory games they could play. Chewie then suggests they play a game called Droid Crushers, Squeaky tells him he's never heard of that game, and Chewie replies that he'd be happy to demonstrate. This scene gets me every time I read this book just because it's so funny. Especially because Chewie and Squeaky have a similar relationship to the one Chewie has with Threepio, though Chewie doesn't threaten Threepio with dismemberment quite as often as he seems to with Squeaky.
Zsinj and Melvar aren't as bombastic or as funny in this book as they are in Iron Fist. Most likely because they aren't funny at all in Courtship, so Allston has to start reconciling his portrayal of them in this book and in Iron Fist, with how Wolverton portrayed them in Courtship. Zsinj and Melvar are great villains, two of the best villains in the Bantam era. Having said that though, because Timothy Zahn hit it out of the park with Grand Admiral Thrawn, Captain Pellaeon, and Joruus C'Baoth in the Thrawn Trilogy, none of the bad guys that came after them, or before them in the case of the books that are set before Heir to the Empire, could really hold a candle to that trio. The only ones who come close are Ysanne Isard and Warlord Zsinj. But everyone else, including Admiral Daala from The Jedi Academy Trilogy, Darksaber, and Planet of Twilight, aren't anywhere near as good as villains as Zsinj, Isard, and Thrawn. Which is fine, but at the same time it does stagnate the story because you don't have Palpatine or Vader to act as good foils for the heroes.
Like with the rest of the X-Wing series, Solo Command got a Legends banner edition sometime between 2014 and 2017. And like the other books I've talked about in the series so far, I don't know when exactly this Legends banner edition was published, because neither Wookieepedia nor the publisher's website indicate what year the reprint came out in. I also don't own the Legends banner editions for any of the X-Wing books, so I can't even check the copyright information inside the book itself to see what year is shown. Goodreads is a good resource for some of the Star Wars novels that got Legends banner editions, but not all of the books have that information included. I think it just depends on how popular or well known a Legends novel is. So like Heir to the Empire might have that information, but one like Solo Command might not.
Solo Command was the first X-Wing novel I read that Garrett didn't lend me. In fact, it's the first one I bought for myself that I hadn't read before. I actually didn't find out about it until sometime in mid to late 1999 or early to mid 2000 when I saw somebody reading it in the waiting room of the Respirology clinic at CHEO. Before that, I had no idea that more X-Wing books had been published after the first six because Garrett didn't have the three that came out in 1999 until we were both in middle school, me in grade 8 and him in grade 7. The thing is some of these later Bantam era novels didn't include that novels description/excerpt timeline in the back of them the way all of the earlier ones did. I don't know about The Bounty Hunter Wars, but Solo Command and Isard's Revenge, which is not only the next book to come out in the X-Wing series but also the very next Star Wars novel to come out overall, don't have it, so the very next time I've experienced this timeline is in the final X-Wing novel to be published by Bantam, Starfighters of Adumar, and it only goes up to Isard's Revenge for the X-Wing books, and book 2 of The Bounty Hunter Wars, Slave Ship, with a "Coming Soon" underneath it for book three in that trilogy, Hard Merchandise. So until that day, I had no idea that more X-Wing novels had been published after Iron Fist. It was probably about 2003 or 2004 by the time I actually got my hands on those last three books in the series, as that was when I had really started building up my Bantam era Star Wars book collection.
Overall I still love Solo Command. While it has some problems, they're problems the book has always had, I've just never really thought about them before this reread. And I think that's the real power of these books. They continue to make you think about them every time you read them. Even 24 to 32 years after they've been published. The stories might suck and the characters might be stagnate, but if you're still thinking about them after you've finished reading the book and put it back on your shelf, or returned the eBook version to the digital library if you read eBooks, then I think that book has done its job. Which is pretty cool.
Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon though with more blog posts. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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