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berenikeasteria 's review for:
The Paradise Snare
by A.C. Crispin
It’s funny what you remember and what you forget about old reads. I built up a Star Wars Expanded Universe book collection during my adolescence that I read and re-read countless times, repeatedly going on marathon re-reads every time I acquired five new additions or so, to see how things would look in a deeper context. It’s fair to say I was highly involved with this fictional world, and pretty much during any spare time I breathed and consumed Star Wars. But at some point – right about the time I went off to university – I didn’t have that kind of free time any more. The old marathon re-reads fell by the wayside, and I even grew lax about adding new releases to my collection. Somehow, over a decade has passed since I last read any of my Expanded Universe books. And I never reviewed them because I joined GoodReads in my 20s, but I always intended to. Recently I decided now is the time. I’ve been going through what were, for me, some new reads, latter-day releases, but now I’m entering the classic Bantam era where these books are very old friends indeed, and returning to The Paradise Snare has been a fascinating experience.
I remembered the broad strokes – Ylesia, the scam operation, Muuurgh, and Bria – but I’m surprised at how much I’d forgotten. I had no memory of the side trips to Alderaan or Togoria, and for some reason I’d thought that Bria left because she caved to her addiction. Probably because I liked Han and Leia and way back when had a sort of grudging perspective on Bria. In some ways it was a delight to re-read after this long because of the parts I’d forgotten made it almost as if I was reading it again for the first time! I know many readers would love to experience beloved books again for the first time, so this was a bit of a treat.
Other things struck me about the book too, some of which I’m not sure I noticed when I was younger. Most notably, how young Han and Bria come off – he’s 19 here, and she’s 18, with the book set 10 years before A New Hope. I think I had no reason to notice this before, and it’s only now, with a few adult years behind me, that it sticks out when a character will say or do something that seems so preciously naïve to me. They seem vulnerable, somehow. And Crispin obviously pitched this perfectly to show these teenagers struggling with navigating their first time in a scary, adult world; but of course, when I was younger than Han is supposed to be when I reading it, I never appreciated it before.
I love the effort that Crispin put into describing alien worlds. Sometimes in Star Wars it can get a little lazy, with different planets just being the ‘ice planet’ or the ‘desert planet’. Crispin doesn’t do that. As well as her descriptions being pretty detailed, she draws from hard sci fi to really make them feel alien; the colour of the sky, differences in gravity, suns that are larger or smaller and different in class, the rotational period of the planet being different. These are all concerns as soon as we leave Earth, but as I said, sometimes in Star Wars you get the impression that, apart from having one exotic, planet-spanning biome (which is kind of crazy in and of itself), the planets are just assumed to have 1g and the same length of day. Crispin just taking a tiny bit of extra time to do this makes her worlds stand out as more memorable than other worlds that have appeared in Star Wars.
She carries this over to other aspects of the story as well. Space feels vast, and dangerous. We’re explicitly told that space travel takes several days – instead of the mere hours that, again, some other Expanded Universe novels imply. I loved the logic of the automated starship, and Han’s struggle with the increased g-forces and lack of air on board, turning even his first venture out into the galaxy, what should on paper be a simple A to B, into a tense fight to survive. Crispin has a way of turning seemingly straightforward situations into story twists with serious obstacles. She has a good handle on the author’s maxim here of throwing her characters out of the frying pan and into the fire, never letting Han get away with anything too easily, even though she has his manner of strolling in to a situation as if he can have it all his own way down pat. This especially rings true when things are going well and Han seems like he’s in some good circumstances. The story is in danger, at those points, of becoming dull and tedious because of the lack of challenge, but Crispin taps into Han’s nose for opportunity and habit of scoping things out to quickly inject twists and drama back in to these slow moments. As a whole, the story ends up being a thrilling adventure tale of the dark, criminal underside of the Imperial era, full of heists, cons, and sudden reversals.
If I had any complaints it’s that Bria comes across like a bit too much of a wet rag for Han to be so taken with her.
Now, when I started re-reading this book, it occurred to me that now would be the perfect time to finally watch the new film about Han’s younger years, and compare them both and tell you all just how good Crispin’s vision was and how it didn’t deserve to be written off by edict from on high. Then I realised how stupid that would be. Some of you would always suspect I went in from the beginning with an axe to grind by deliberately setting out to compare the two, and therefore dismiss my opinion as invalid. So I still haven’t seen the film – even though I have a suspicion that it wouldn’t be my thing – and I just want to recommend Crispin’s trilogy of books on its own merits. I’m not going to call it the most fantastic entry into the Expanded Universe, but she creates a honest-to-goodness rollicking fun adventure, is consistently competent at her craft, and never falters in throwing down the gauntlet of challenges and obstacles for our protagonists to create an exciting story that draws you in. I had a good time reading this.
Talk of the Clone Wars: Garris Shrike’s vessel is described as ‘ancient’ and a ‘relic’ of the Clone Wars, a Liberator-class ship, ‘slow by modern standards’. I know tech can change fast, but, an ‘ancient relic’ merely nine years after the end of the Clone Wars? The book is set 10 years before the Battle of Yavin – and, thus, according to George Lucas’ prequels, just 9 years after the Clone Wars ended. Han is 19 years old here, and his love interest, Bria Tharen, is 18. Bria describes herself as having ‘grown up in the aftermath of the Clone Wars’. She was 9 years old when the Clone Wars ended, which I suppose you could argue makes her statement still tally, but I really think ‘grown up in the aftermath’ implies something that happened when you were a baby or just a few years before you were born. Inspector Hal Horn of CorSec gets an easter egg mention too, and in other media his son Corran, who is the same age as Luke and Leia, states that his father was about 10 years old when the Clone Wars ended. That isn’t mentioned here, but if Hal were only 20 here it’d be most unusual for him to hold an Inspector position. The feeling I’m getting from these descriptors is that the Clone Wars envisioned by Crispin occurred about ten years earlier than Lucas actually set them – about the same time as Lucas slotted in The Phantom Menace instead. This tallies with the descriptions of Shrike’s outmoded vessel, Han and Bria growing up in the aftermath of the Clone Wars, and Hal Horn being a CorSec Inspector at this point.
7 out of 10
I remembered the broad strokes – Ylesia, the scam operation, Muuurgh, and Bria – but I’m surprised at how much I’d forgotten. I had no memory of the side trips to Alderaan or Togoria, and for some reason I’d thought that Bria left because she caved to her addiction. Probably because I liked Han and Leia and way back when had a sort of grudging perspective on Bria. In some ways it was a delight to re-read after this long because of the parts I’d forgotten made it almost as if I was reading it again for the first time! I know many readers would love to experience beloved books again for the first time, so this was a bit of a treat.
Other things struck me about the book too, some of which I’m not sure I noticed when I was younger. Most notably, how young Han and Bria come off – he’s 19 here, and she’s 18, with the book set 10 years before A New Hope. I think I had no reason to notice this before, and it’s only now, with a few adult years behind me, that it sticks out when a character will say or do something that seems so preciously naïve to me. They seem vulnerable, somehow. And Crispin obviously pitched this perfectly to show these teenagers struggling with navigating their first time in a scary, adult world; but of course, when I was younger than Han is supposed to be when I reading it, I never appreciated it before.
I love the effort that Crispin put into describing alien worlds. Sometimes in Star Wars it can get a little lazy, with different planets just being the ‘ice planet’ or the ‘desert planet’. Crispin doesn’t do that. As well as her descriptions being pretty detailed, she draws from hard sci fi to really make them feel alien; the colour of the sky, differences in gravity, suns that are larger or smaller and different in class, the rotational period of the planet being different. These are all concerns as soon as we leave Earth, but as I said, sometimes in Star Wars you get the impression that, apart from having one exotic, planet-spanning biome (which is kind of crazy in and of itself), the planets are just assumed to have 1g and the same length of day. Crispin just taking a tiny bit of extra time to do this makes her worlds stand out as more memorable than other worlds that have appeared in Star Wars.
She carries this over to other aspects of the story as well. Space feels vast, and dangerous. We’re explicitly told that space travel takes several days – instead of the mere hours that, again, some other Expanded Universe novels imply. I loved the logic of the automated starship, and Han’s struggle with the increased g-forces and lack of air on board, turning even his first venture out into the galaxy, what should on paper be a simple A to B, into a tense fight to survive. Crispin has a way of turning seemingly straightforward situations into story twists with serious obstacles. She has a good handle on the author’s maxim here of throwing her characters out of the frying pan and into the fire, never letting Han get away with anything too easily, even though she has his manner of strolling in to a situation as if he can have it all his own way down pat. This especially rings true when things are going well and Han seems like he’s in some good circumstances. The story is in danger, at those points, of becoming dull and tedious because of the lack of challenge, but Crispin taps into Han’s nose for opportunity and habit of scoping things out to quickly inject twists and drama back in to these slow moments. As a whole, the story ends up being a thrilling adventure tale of the dark, criminal underside of the Imperial era, full of heists, cons, and sudden reversals.
If I had any complaints it’s that Bria comes across like a bit too much of a wet rag for Han to be so taken with her.
Now, when I started re-reading this book, it occurred to me that now would be the perfect time to finally watch the new film about Han’s younger years, and compare them both and tell you all just how good Crispin’s vision was and how it didn’t deserve to be written off by edict from on high. Then I realised how stupid that would be. Some of you would always suspect I went in from the beginning with an axe to grind by deliberately setting out to compare the two, and therefore dismiss my opinion as invalid. So I still haven’t seen the film – even though I have a suspicion that it wouldn’t be my thing – and I just want to recommend Crispin’s trilogy of books on its own merits. I’m not going to call it the most fantastic entry into the Expanded Universe, but she creates a honest-to-goodness rollicking fun adventure, is consistently competent at her craft, and never falters in throwing down the gauntlet of challenges and obstacles for our protagonists to create an exciting story that draws you in. I had a good time reading this.
Talk of the Clone Wars: Garris Shrike’s vessel is described as ‘ancient’ and a ‘relic’ of the Clone Wars, a Liberator-class ship, ‘slow by modern standards’. I know tech can change fast, but, an ‘ancient relic’ merely nine years after the end of the Clone Wars? The book is set 10 years before the Battle of Yavin – and, thus, according to George Lucas’ prequels, just 9 years after the Clone Wars ended. Han is 19 years old here, and his love interest, Bria Tharen, is 18. Bria describes herself as having ‘grown up in the aftermath of the Clone Wars’. She was 9 years old when the Clone Wars ended, which I suppose you could argue makes her statement still tally, but I really think ‘grown up in the aftermath’ implies something that happened when you were a baby or just a few years before you were born. Inspector Hal Horn of CorSec gets an easter egg mention too, and in other media his son Corran, who is the same age as Luke and Leia, states that his father was about 10 years old when the Clone Wars ended. That isn’t mentioned here, but if Hal were only 20 here it’d be most unusual for him to hold an Inspector position. The feeling I’m getting from these descriptors is that the Clone Wars envisioned by Crispin occurred about ten years earlier than Lucas actually set them – about the same time as Lucas slotted in The Phantom Menace instead. This tallies with the descriptions of Shrike’s outmoded vessel, Han and Bria growing up in the aftermath of the Clone Wars, and Hal Horn being a CorSec Inspector at this point.
7 out of 10