A Long Time Ago: ROTJ Part 1: Jabba’s Palace

“If I told you half the things I’ve heard about this Jabba the Hutt-” wait, they used that quote for the book’s tagline. I might short circuit.

Imperial Ship Spectra now berthing. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, but I’m back from my break refreshed and strong in the Force. So strong, in fact, that I’m ready to undertake a two part look at one of the defining moments in our galaxy: the day the hated Jedi Order returned.

For the first part, we look at Luke Skywalker’s extraction of Han Solo, along with Leia Organa, Lando Calrissian, Chewacca and Artoo Detoo. And See Threepio, whatever role he played. You know the story: Calrissian and the droids waited undercover as Organa brought Chewbacca in, Organa freed Solo from carbonite and Skywalker arrived to unite the group for their “execution” on Jabba’s sail barge for their escape.

But what happened behind the scenes? It was up to Kevin J Anderson to find the truth there…

Prolific Star Wars author and comic writer acted as Editor for three anthologies of Star Wars novellas, each centered around a different film. KJA collected authors from Bantam Spectra, West End Games, and the Science Fiction spectrum to give new life to short scenes in the Star Wars universe, to varying results. Tales From Jabba’s Palace was actually published almost a year before Tales of the Bounty Hunters, despite representing the final film, and after reading it I’m inclined to believe the difference lay in some sort of technical hang-ups rather than the order the books were put together in.

Tales From Jabba’s Palace certainly seems the more capable work. Despite the fact that not all of the authors in Jabba’s Palace are returning, they seem to work together much better than anything in Bounty Hunters, with complementing styles that rarely diverge except to add some variety to the writing and keep it from getting boring. This is the most consistent book, with no one story that I would consider the weak point of a book like the other two had.

I’m not sure if there’s anything I would consider the strongest story, either, as each had its own charm and I didn’t get the impression of saving the best stories for the end like I did before. I did notice that, once again, the earliest concluding story was first, followed by the most formulaic, followed by the most exotic and wrapping up with first Boba Fett, then the one that referenced the most other stories. Other than noticing the formula, though, I didn’t feel it brought the book down. Whether that was because it works really well or because I was expecting it, though, I’m not entirely sure.

One strength of this collection is that rather than centering around a five or fifteen minute scene, it’s centered around a locale where the first third of Return of the Jedi takes place. Yes, the sail barge is considered part of Jabba’s Palace, to an extent. That means that while we get a lot of stories about Luke and the Rancor, we also get stories that completely ignore that part of the story.

Though while we’re referencing the movie (which shares the stage as an equal with these stories, almost as if it were another entry in the anthology), I have to nit-pick. This book was published just over a year before Return of the Jedi: Special Edition was released theatrically. Would it really have been so hard for George Lucas or Rick McCallum or somebody to have given KJA or John Betancourt a call? “Hey, John, we’re introducing a new character in Jabba’s Palace. If you write anything about the band, just bring up a singer, but don’t give all the details out just yet, okay?” Would have saved the book from being completely dated by the time it was out for a year, don’t you think? I understand that the movies utterly detest everything to do with the Expanded Universe, but these books are about scenes in the movie!

This anthology starts off with A Boy and His Monster, about one of the most memorable characters from the Palace and the first supporting character we see cry in the Star Wars trilogy. His appearance in the movie, distraught and emotional, definitely stood out in the den of thieves and backstabbers in which he lived. I enjoyed KJA’s take on Malakili, though I’m conflicted on the fact that it led Malakili to attempt backstabbery himself. On one hand, it makes sense, and really shines some light onto the climate of the Palace. On the other hand, he showed real sorrow in the film, and it seems almost diluted in light of this story.

This opens me up to a tangent that addresses much of my feelings toward the entire book. Everything- and I mean literally everything is about backstabbing, treachery, stealing, lying, murdering, and the like. I pride myself in keeping track of what’s going on in a story, even if I have to pause and reread a chapter in order to do so. With Tales From Jabba’s Palace, I gave up. There was just too much of it. Certain details would be repeated, dead characters were found over and over (often without any sort of clues), minions that some were convinced were loyal were revealed later to be on somebody else’s payroll. It was about halfway through the anthology that I realized it was just safer to assume that absolutely nothing was as it seemed and everybody is out to kill Jabba (and probably somebody else.) In the shortest story of the book, you realize this is even true with Jabba’s pet frog. Dog. I almost took Tongue-Tied as a parody, and I still don’t shy away from the possibility.

The most out of place story in the entire anthology is, not surprisingly, Sleight of Hand: The Tale of Mara Jade. It just doesn’t fit, and not because a cut of the film featuring Mara never existed. The entire tone just seems off. Yes, she’s doomed to failure just like almost every other character in this anthology, but there doesn’t seem to be any consequences. Oh well, she failed. There’s no death or torture or imprisonment waiting for her. Just the Emperor’s disappointment, but that’s okay because he’s like a father figure who’s going to die before Mara gets home.

The next story worth mentioning (I’m not reviewing every story individually, mainly because the only thing left to do other than repeat the general comments that I’ve made is spoil each one) is A Bad Feeling: The Tale of EV-9D9. This is an excellent example of how an anthology can be made to go above and beyond the scene it was based off of. A Bad Feeling, by the Reeves-Stevens, the author pair responsible for the mental explosion that was One Last Night in the Mos Eisley Cantina, have taken a minor character whose biggest other contribution to Star Wars was probably the action figure, and turned the droid into a cross between IG-88, 4-LOM and the Emperor himself. This story could have been a thriller movie in and of itself and I’d be doing this story an injustice to even tell you what the twist at the end is.

Author Jennifer Roberson and Anzat Dannik Jerriko return for more soup in Out of the Closet, a story that doesn’t do much other than provide another artistic interlude, as well as providing plenty of mayhem for the rest of the stories to react to. The next story, Shaara and the Sarlaac, also has a unique style, and it makes an interesting promise that would have been far superior if it had properly delivered on it. The fact that it doesn’t really makes it an average story and nothing more.

A Barve Like That, the mandatory Boba Fett entry, is notable because J.D. Montgomery is really Daniel Keys Moran, author of Last One Standing in Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Some sort of dispute, possibly with Anderson or other editors, caused heavy changes to be made to this story that Moran was apparently not a fan of. Nevertheless, this fills in some of the gaps in Boba Fett’s story, such as what happens when you’re swallowed by a Sarlaac and how exactly he got out. It’s written in much the same style as Last One Standing, which is painfully obvious and jarring only once, because of a choice of a word. Otherwise, Moran’s unique take on the bounty hunter is a bit more subtle than it was in Last One Standing, due to the nature of the story.

The final story is Skin Deep, which stands neck and neck with Out of the Closet in terms of how many stories it impacts. This is about the Askajian dancer who seems to act as a mother to Jabba’s other dancing girls and is likely the only one that Jabba finds attractive without the thought of the envy and lust evoked in his underlings. Throughout the anthology we hear of this dancer’s plans for freedom, assuming that she dies on the sail barge- yet she survives to this story. A.C. Crispin is criticized at times for the relatively heavy romance in her novels–the Han Solo trilogy–and that does indeed play a part here. However, as the end of an anthology, that works- not sure how well it would have as a middle story, however. This is certainly the least exotic ending of any of KJA’s anthologies, and that fact is likely to be part of the reason why.

How much do I recommend Tales From Jabba’s Palace? A lot. It’s hard to go wrong with this novel. There’s less combat action here than there was in the other two anthologies I’ve reviewed, and that might deter a few fans, but there’s much more going on, the writing is much more consistent, and it’s altogether a more well-rounded read that doesn’t hesitate to subtly reference the other books in ways that new readers won’t be alienated by. If you enjoyed the first act of Return of the Jedi, this book is undoubtedly worth your time to read.

Stay tuned for Part 2.