Back in 1979, with Star Wars still hot in theaters, Brian Daley embarked on a project to expand Han Solo's backstory--but with editorial edicts that he couldn't use the Empire and stormtroopers or Darth Vader or make reference to the Force or the Jedi. With these conscriptions around what he could and could not write, it's no real surprise that Daley dug into the tropes of science fiction, fantasy, and western pulp fiction to fill out his stories.

As a result, the novel delivers some pretty hilarious incongruities with the established films in later years, and the novel feels tonally goofy even as it hits all of the beats appropriate to a genre novel. The tropes Daley uses are so familiar that it can often feel like we've seen everything before--because we have, and that's the point. His Han Solo may not speak in the literal words of the Han Solo we all know and love, but he speaks in the same voice, a spirit that resonates with the character.

Han Solo at Stars' End is not great Star Wars, but it is great pulp fiction in the serial adventure sense--the kind of literature written by a working writer whose craft is less important than the paycheck at the end. While it may not be overly complicated, it's still a lot of fun and an interesting insight to the early development of the Star Wars expanded universe.