Smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca have lit out of Corporate Sector space to avoid some of the problems they have been happening and find themselves on some of the furthest outreaches of the galaxy in a region of space known as the Tion Hegemony.

Here, Solo and his wookie co-pilot bump into Han’s old mentor and friend who is running down rumors on a legendary treasure. With the promise of enough riches to not only upgrade and repair the Falcon, the duo sign on, and soon find themselves in a cross between a Star Wars adventure, and an Indiana Jones film.

In fact there’s a couple of moments that seem prime to be lifted for the fedora-wearing hero – an explanation of Han’s chin scar, and a sequence that sees the heroes use a rather large gong first as a shield, and then as a sled down the side of a mountain.

Of the trilogy, I honestly found this one the weakest, even as it begins to set up its final connections to A New Hope. Despite the concept of a treasure hunt, the story isn’t quite as engaging as the other two tales though there is a nice tie-in to the previous novel when a gun man named Gallandro comes back into the picture with his sights set on Han.

The climax feels rushed, and there isn’t the sense of adventure that seemed to permeate the other two novels. On the plus side, this time around Han and Chewie are together for the entire tale, and neither of them gets captured to motivate the story. There isn’t much in the way of having the Falcon in action as she’s grounded for almost the entire novel, serving as one of the story motivators.

To its credit, it’s great the way that Daley ties everything into what we know is to come (the second film in the saga, The Empire Strikes Back had only just come out a couple of months earlier).

Han, is recognizably the character we encounter in A New Hope, though some of the dialogue is a little clunky, and some of the names for things we know will be different… still the mention of war robots conjured the concept of an earlier, bulkier design of battle droids.

This trilogy was a lot of fun with Lost Legacy the weakest of the group, though the setup for the film is quite nice, and though they may not necessarily be canon anymore, you can see how it could conceivably still fit.

Reading this one brought back a lot of memories, from reading it as a kid, and that sense of joy and recall made this one totally worth the re-read.

May the Force be with…