– Spoiler Review –
Last Shot, written by Daniel José Older, is a Han and Lando novel which covers distinct, but connected eras of their lives, with very loose ties to Solo: A Star Wars Story mixed in for good measure. Older’s prose is exhilarating, funny, and earnest, capturing Han, Lando, and the various supporting characters in organic, interesting ways, and he manages to keep the focus on the characters while raising the stakes of their adventures, all of which make Last Shot my favorite novel of the new canon since Bloodline.
The bulk of the action in Last Shot takes place roughly 2-3 years after Return of the Jedi, but by jumping between younger parts of Han and Lando’s lives with the ‘present,’ the character portraits Daniel José Older paints for them are both grand, but intimate. In fact, as enjoyable a novel would be if set solely in one of the eras this book covers, what really makes this book so intriguing and exciting to read is how Older dissects and contrasts their younger and older selves, showing us how far they’ve come but yet how little they’ve changed. The progression of Han and Lando learning to become comfortable with settling down into new roles would have had a good impact if we never focused much on their gallivanting younger selves, but letting us see the differences accentuates the change in their ‘present’ selves, elevating the moment and helping us see how much better their eventual change is for them. None of that would’ve worked however if Older couldn’t emulate and inhabit these characters all over the timeline, but he not only captures their personas with excellence, he does it at a level most authors haven’t reached before. One of the main reasons Bloodline was my favorite novels for so long was how author Claudia Gray brought Leia to life (and she did it again with Leia: Princess of Alderaan), and Older is the first author since Gray to so thoroughly bring a main movie character to life on page, but he’s able to do it for both Han and Lando and in different moments of their lives. It’s a stunning feat and one that kept me interested page after page in Last Shot.
While we got glimpses of Han feeling uncomfortable with domestication in the Aftermath Trilogy‘s final two books, Last Shot makes that the main focus of Han’s ‘present’ dilemma, as it’s not just sitting still to be with Leia as she plays politics, but a little baby boy named Ben, thus fatherhood, that becomes his biggest struggle yet. Contrast that with the cocky, just becoming cynical Han Solo of the past, since his earlier sections of the book take place shortly after Solo: A Star Wars Story, always ready to lose himself in the next adventure so he’s not standing still long enough to focus on the feelings he keeps running away from (feelings which hint at potential threads in the upcoming film). How Older pushes the struggle within Han post-RotJ through the plot, and shows Leia’s vital role for both Han’s past and ‘present’ due to what she represents and how she fills up the empty parts inside him, makes Han coming to terms with his new lifestyle an inevitable, but intriguing choice for him. We know it’s coming, but Older’s grasp on Han keeps us, and Han, guessing how he’ll ever manage to rationalize it to himself. But it’s not just the cute, heart-hugging interactions between Han, Leia, and baby Ben that produce this change, it comes from his relationships with friends like Chewie and Lando. Chewie gets pulled back into the action post-RotJ due to Han and Lando’s enemy in the ‘present’ being the same as the Wookiee’s, and his bond with Han in both the past and the present is a thing of hilarious beauty, as Chewie will always be the grownup who enjoys/loves Han’s company but is sick of his crap. But Older also shines some light, in the past, on Chewie’s desire to get home and free his people from Imperial rule, and how Han is both encouraging and realistic about the chances of that at the time, something we don’t get to see very often and was really welcomed. And with Lando, Han and the smooth scoundrel sure have had their ups and downs over the years, and Older deftly conveys their tumultuous but strong friendship, even touching lightly on the events on Cloud City. And then there’s Han and Leia’s attempts in the present at pushing walls down for Lando and an old flame of his, Kaasha, which shows how understanding of each other and strong Han and Leia’s love is for one another. There’s even a wonderful character from the comics, Sana Starros, who is a force of nature unto herself, but helps highlight why someone like her is the exact opposite of the person Han really needs in his life, i.e. Leia. Heck, even some new characters (whom I’ll cover in a moment) provide insight into Han, for both the reader or for Han himself, and it’s this complicated web of character interactions which Older uses to build better pictures of each individual within, and main characters like Han and Lando.
While Han might seem like the bigger star of Last Shot before reading, I found the focus on Lando and his character growth to be more intriguing, especially due to how much less we know of Lando comparatively (as he’s not been connected to any sequel trilogy events yet). Lando has always been a smooth-talking, charismatic, sexual being, and Older is allowed to really dig into that persona like we’ve never really seen before, offering the clearest, deepest insight to his lifestyle. This is highlighted far more in the sections set in Lando’s past, from talking about how perfectly Lando’s pants present his bulge or the thighs he sees in the object of his advances, and as surprising as it seemed at first, this was a welcomed, no-holds-bared version of his life, which really sells the persona he wears as excellently as his wardrobe. But it is Lando’s connections to other characters, and how Older uses those to tells us more about the scoundrel, which provide the true delight. For starters, this is the first time we’ve gotten to see Lando and L3-37, his piloting droid to be featured in Solo, together and interacting, and it’s one of the more unique droid/human relationships we’ve ever gotten (besides maybe villain’s Fryzen Gor’s relationship with droids, but we’ll get to that in a moment). I watched L3 actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag recently and it was easy to hear the actress come through in the novel, as L3 is autonomous more than any droid we’ve ever met, and it’s her ability to push Lando beyond his frivolous delights that makes her such a good character and droid for Lando. In fact, she might be my favorite droid in all of Star Wars, especially after her appearances here, and I can only imagine that feeling will strengthen after seeing Solo. As I mentioned before, Lando finds himself around an old flame, a Twi’lek woman named Kaasha, in the present set sections, and it’s his struggle with his feelings for her and his drive to still be the free-wheeling man of mystery and adventure that herald the most intriguing parts of his character development. Kaasha is an equally intriguing character, due to how she confronts Lando’s womanizing ways and her background as a warrior in the Free Ryloth Movement (headed by Hera Syndulla’s father, Cham), while the walls around her own feelings for Lando are due to actions by both parties, and their struggles to articulate their changed feelings is another of many strengths in Older’s prose.
Beyond Han and Lando, and their co-pilots featured in the past set stories, there’s a wealth of exciting new characters introduced in present set stories. It’s quite the eclectic team Han and Lando put together to bring the machinations of mad scientist Fryzen Gor to an end, something neither have much luck with, nor really are trying to stop, back in the past. The new characters include the aforementioned Kaasha Bateen, Florx Biggles, Peekpa, and Taka Jamoreesa (all of whom you can meet in these Twitter cards released in the lead up to Last Shot‘s release. They were created by SW Twitterer, Heath D. Williams!). Kaasha has the biggest role out of them all, and not just because of her relationship with Lando, while Peekpa and Taka were the MVPs of the novel for me. Taka is a non-binary character, but instead of this being a focus or difficult for other characters to understand, it’s simply accepted and brushed away immediately. Instead, Taka’s character is far more interesting due to them being a foil for a younger Han (almost literally in Taka’s funny introduction scene), which gets far more interesting once the intriguing surprise about them gets out. And Peekpa, oh glorious little fuzzy Peekpa. I couldn’t quite believe it when the synopsis for Last Shot revealed an Ewok slicer, as a bit of my speciesism was showing alongside my excitement over such a bizarre, but fun choice, and it is how Peekpa undermines everything you think you know about Ewoks is what makes her such a glorious addition to the cast. There’s a similar moment with a much maligned species from the prequels getting a fun expectation check and I love how Older includes these both for laughs and show how a lot of the human characters (and the readers) suffer from speciesism a bit. Florx, an Ugnaught with a penchant for naps and droids, in that order, also has some fun little moments, as waking him up from naps can result in explosive problems for the culprit, though he gets the least of the focus of the new characters. Sana Starros’ inclusion here was a welcomed and cool crossover from the comics, as it continues the mainline Star Wars series’ broadening of the character from more than just the shock reveal of her being Han’s “wife,” which Leia even jokes about in the novel. Sana’s role here is much closer to the depiction she finally gained in the series’ 34th issue, which showed her Nar Shaddaa roots and altruistic background hiding behind her swindling and tough facade. She’s not been featured in the comics for a couple months though, but it looks like she’ll be back soon in her ex’s series, Doctor Aphra, very soon.
Not only does Older deconstruct both characters’ and readers’ specieism through Peekpa (and later Aro), our understanding of droids and their autonomy and rights gets deconstructed and rebuilt as well. Part of this is seen through a toxic lens of Fryzen Gor, a Pau’an doctor whose life is upended by the gangs of his home planet, and his survival of subsequent gang squabbles twists his mind. He ends up with a belief in the sanctity of droids and how all organics are an inferior race, but by being an organic trying to remake all droids in this idealized image, he’s leaving out the thoughts and cares of the very ones he believes are so superior. Lots of characters try to explain this to him and his disciples, but the righteousness of their causes blinds them to the irony, which helps makes the bizarre and creepy organic/droid pairing shenanigans an easier, and intriguing, pill to swallow. But droid rights is also seen through several characters who respect them to some extent, but also, most importantly, through Elthree (L3); Her role in everything is one of my favorite aspects of the book. This surprise focus on droid rights, and actually making me care for it, is how Elthree becomes such a great, and now favorite, character in my mind.
While I’ve made it clear how important the different eras are to this novel, and how great Older is at capturing Han and Lando distinctively in them, I did feel like in the latter half of part 3 the book jumped too often. At times I felt like a ping-pong ball and the different eras were the paddles, but both paddles were controlled by the lightning fast reflexes/skills of Forest Gump. In all honesty, I might have been reading a little too fast, my excitement propelling me through the narrative and it felt more chaotic as a result, but it does jump fairly often regardless. I don’t know if I’d ever try to read Last Shot in chronological order, but I’ll be interested to see if I still feel that way about the jumps on subsequent rereads, because trust me, there will be A LOT of those. And if that’s the only real thing I choose to ding this novel for, then that should tell you how minor an issue it is.
Because this book is so character focused, it’s one of the first, since besides maybe A New Dawn, which doesn’t feel like it was written to fill in vital backstory for a character or some event, but rather it’s built to provide new insight on old (and new) favorites. The stakes reach galactic proportions, but it’s not the crux of the story and it was quite refreshing to have a novel that stands so wonderfully on its own but connected in little, pleasant ways to so many other aspects of the saga. And with the characters front and center, Older’s humor and the humorous interactions between characters shine bright, as Last Shot had me laughing quite often, once nearly bringing me to tears. And the jokes hit hard and fast, too, sometimes leaving readers with barely enough time to catch their breath before the next one arrives.
Here are a few other things:
- Yes, because Sana was in the novel, I scoured the book for off-handed Aphra references, and the only connection to Aphra I could suss out was Sana working for the Droid Gotra, a group who Aphra works for from time to time. Mayhaps that is how they met?
- As I mentioned, there are the just the tiniest of Solo tie-ins here, in the form of very small hints, and I’m happy this is the case because it allows Last Shot to stand on its own.
- It didn’t bother me, as I knew the young Lando sections were supposed to be pre-Solo and young Han sections post-Solo/pre-ANH, but if you take the age of Chewie in the latest trailer to indicate when Solo takes place, the actual math used to place the younger sections don’t quite add up with the film. This could be due to a few, minor things like editoral oversight or reshoots/director change-up with the film and how the timeframe for writing this and those changes might have worked out. If it bothers you, which it shouldn’t, just ignore whatever number years the chapters mention and swap it out for when it is supposed to take place.
- I took the diminutive gangster’s speech pattern, who Sana captures at one point, as a reference to Marlon Brando’s performance in The Godfather. It’s a little hard to read, but it’s enjoyable if you imagine this little alien basically sounding like Brando.
- Get into the mind of Daniel José Older with a spoiler-free interview at the official site’s blog, a spoiler heavy one at Entertainment Weekly, and a guest piece on his favorite Star Wars scene at TOS again.
- In a heart-felt piece over at Tosche-Station, Amanda discusses why Han’s woes about being a parent hit her in the feels.
- If you’re looking for all the connections to other areas of canon, as well as some Legends mentions, look no further than this expansive video from Star Wars Explained! A lot of my notes have mentions of all the little connections he uncovers, so glad to see I didn’t miss too much!
Humor, character focus, and delectable insight into said characters, easily hoisted Last Shot right up to the top of the novels for me. So do yourself a favor, pick it up, sit back, relax, and enjoy the character driven ride. And because it’s so exciting and enjoyable:
+ Daniel José Older’s grasp of Han and Lando
+ The connections and relationships that drive the character drama and plot
+ Deconstruction of our perceived notions of species/droids
+ Big story, small focus
– Jumps time a little too often in some parts
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.
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