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A review by twilliamson
The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton
4.0
I've long considered 1994 to be a pretty bad year for Star Wars novels. It began with the pretty bland Truce at Bakura, was primarily occupied by Kevin J. Anderson's pretty bad Jedi Academy trilogy, and closed out the year with The Crystal Star, widely regarded as the worst of all Star Wars fiction. Nevertheless, nestled snugly in the middle of that year was the criminally overlooked The Courtship of Princess Leia, in which Dave Wolverton undertook the unenviable job of trying to explain how Han Solo and Princess Leia got married.
Much of the "fan" criticism of Wolverton's book calls it "bad fanfiction," as if the book is some kind of insult to Star Wars, or especially some kind of insult to classical romance (and I'm not convinced some of the low reviews on this website come from people expecting a '90s Star Wars book to be some kind of smutty romance). In truth, Wolverton probably does the most to play with Star Wars' major themes more than virtually any other writer up to this point in the franchise's publishing efforts.
Indeed, while I found Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy to be truly excellent, he doesn't establish nearly so much a guiding philosophy for the universe's lore. Wolverton centers his novel's conflict on questions of power and the problems inherent in wielding such power, with most every character trying to understand their position of privilege and their position of power and how those positions enable them to change the galaxy for good or for evil. While Wolverton uses the Force as the book's central metaphor for its thoughts about good and bad, the whole of the novel is structured by a need to understand the powerful human relationships that structure society, and his characters routinely face obstacles to their desires to be good or bad in the position of power they inhabit.
It's a book that punches so far above its weight class as to almost not feel like a Star Wars book at all, and it's an absolute gem of a novel as a result. It has some of the most pulse-pounding action in any of the series, with a lot of heart and humor to boot, while simultaneously widening the galaxy with an exploration of the Hapan cluster and Dathomir--which, in this novel, is my absolute favorite thing in Star Wars (aside from Boba Fett, sadly missing from this volume).
None of this is to say that the book is without its criticisms; Wolverton's grasp on the characters and their voices slips pretty often throughout the book, and his weird gaslighting of Leia in her trip with Han feels profoundly ill-advised, but the good in this novel definitely makes up for its mistakes--and I think reading the book with that kind of a nuance is important in what should otherwise be very disposable fiction.
I can't necessarily know what the future of my Star Wars collection will end up looking like, as I wonder what to keep for future enjoyment and what to purge; nevertheless, I can surely say that The Courtship of Princess Leia is a golden beacon in a void of bad fiction, and it gives me a lot of hope that Star Wars might not all just be corporate dogshit.
Much of the "fan" criticism of Wolverton's book calls it "bad fanfiction," as if the book is some kind of insult to Star Wars, or especially some kind of insult to classical romance (and I'm not convinced some of the low reviews on this website come from people expecting a '90s Star Wars book to be some kind of smutty romance). In truth, Wolverton probably does the most to play with Star Wars' major themes more than virtually any other writer up to this point in the franchise's publishing efforts.
Indeed, while I found Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy to be truly excellent, he doesn't establish nearly so much a guiding philosophy for the universe's lore. Wolverton centers his novel's conflict on questions of power and the problems inherent in wielding such power, with most every character trying to understand their position of privilege and their position of power and how those positions enable them to change the galaxy for good or for evil. While Wolverton uses the Force as the book's central metaphor for its thoughts about good and bad, the whole of the novel is structured by a need to understand the powerful human relationships that structure society, and his characters routinely face obstacles to their desires to be good or bad in the position of power they inhabit.
It's a book that punches so far above its weight class as to almost not feel like a Star Wars book at all, and it's an absolute gem of a novel as a result. It has some of the most pulse-pounding action in any of the series, with a lot of heart and humor to boot, while simultaneously widening the galaxy with an exploration of the Hapan cluster and Dathomir--which, in this novel, is my absolute favorite thing in Star Wars (aside from Boba Fett, sadly missing from this volume).
None of this is to say that the book is without its criticisms; Wolverton's grasp on the characters and their voices slips pretty often throughout the book, and his weird gaslighting of Leia in her trip with Han feels profoundly ill-advised, but the good in this novel definitely makes up for its mistakes--and I think reading the book with that kind of a nuance is important in what should otherwise be very disposable fiction.
I can't necessarily know what the future of my Star Wars collection will end up looking like, as I wonder what to keep for future enjoyment and what to purge; nevertheless, I can surely say that The Courtship of Princess Leia is a golden beacon in a void of bad fiction, and it gives me a lot of hope that Star Wars might not all just be corporate dogshit.