The Tharen/Solo trilogy...opinions ?

Bria Tharen, a character who might have worked much better than she did if not for Rebel Dawn.

What is so bad about her in Rebel Dawn? Everything. She lies, manipulates and betrays, she allows vengeance to over-ride justice and in the end becomes a danger to the Rebels. Yet the book indulges her viewpoint and grants her a martyr's death.

Had the book shown Bria as obsessed with revenge upon Ylesia to the point of doing anything, to the concern of Han and even the Rebellion, it would have been much improved. We would have had the Rebel high command torn between Bria's effectiveness and the damage her executing of Imperial prisoners was doing to the cause. We might have seen the command deliberately give her cell the Toprawa suicide mission with the intent of removing a loose cannon, which she was. It would have been a neat follow-up on the Ylesia betrayal, for none of the other rebels reneged on the deal.

Thus the problem I have with Bria Tharen is her views are too indulged and there seems little sense of consequences to her wrong-doings, both political and personal.

JB

 

All talk of Crispin as a person in this thread ends... now. Talk about the books, talk about the writing, talk about the characters, etc. Do not talk about Crispin the person or Crispin the writer any longer. I've had it with stepping into these things. You've all been warned.

 

As I was saying...

Anywho, I probably like the Han Solo Adventures slightly better than the Han Solo trilogy, they have more of the retro-1970's old western gunslinger feel to them, with interesting characters, interesting planets, technology etc...and They tell alot in the few pages they have. They have more of a pulpy 1930's serial feel to them like the movies.

 

"They tell alot"

Which proves they were written in the era of 'you-make-this-story-damn-good-because-you-are-NOT-guaranteed-a-sequel'.

There's a lot to be said for compressed story-telling.

JB

 

Could you perhaps post a page # for the ROTJ quote? I'd like to see it for myself.

p188-189 of the "THX" hardcover, chapter eight, section three, paragraph three:

"Han and Leia turned to each other full of feeling. All they'd struggeld for, all they'd dreamed of--gone, now. Even so, they'd had each other for a short while at least. They'd come together from opposite ends of a wasteland of emotional isolation: Han had never known love, so enamored of himself was he; Leia had never nown love, so wrapped up in social upheaval was she, so intent on embracing all of humanity. And somewhere between his glassy infatuation for the one, and her glowing fervor for the all, they'd found a shady place where two could huddle, grow, even feel nourished."

 

Which proves they were written in the era of 'you-make-this-story-damn-good-because-you-are-NOT-guaranteed-a-sequel'.

There's a lot to be said for compressed story-telling.

There's a big difference between telling a complete story (Shadow Hunter) and compressing it down to near-unreadable (Cloak of Deception).

 

And I mentioned COD where? Confused.

My post was a comment on Val's preference for the Han Solo Adventures, namely that they are told in a style little used now.

JB

 

You didn't mention CoD; I was offering a more extreme example of the condensation you were espousing. (It appears to simply be how Daley and Luceno like to write....)

 

All talk of Crispin as a person in this thread ends... now. Talk about the books, talk about the writing, talk about the characters, etc. Do not talk about Crispin the person or Crispin the writer any longer. I've had it with stepping into these things. You've all been warned.

OK. Sorry, dp4m.

2) Could you perhaps post a page # for the ROTJ quote? I'd like to see it for myself. I believe you, but also do keep this in mind: perhaps Han merely thought he was in love with Bria, when in fact it was a fleeting feeling. I know I've THOUGHT I've been in love before, but in retrospect, have found that I was, in fact, not in love.

Thanks to ATimson for posting the passage, but I'll bold the pertinent parts:

"Han and Leia turned to each other full of feeling. All they'd struggeld for, all they'd dreamed of--gone, now. Even so, they'd had each other for a short while at least. They'd come together from opposite ends of a wasteland of emotional isolation: Han had never known love, so enamored of himself was he; Leia had never nown love, so wrapped up in social upheaval was she, so intent on embracing all of humanity. And somewhere between his glassy infatuation for the one, and her glowing fervor for the all, they'd found a shady place where two could huddle, grow, even feel nourished."

It doesn't seem to me that this quote is at all ambiguous, or that it says that Han thought he loved some other woman, or that he did but she didn't return his love so it doesn't count. It seems to me that it is stating, quite clearly, that Han had never known love, and it wasn't because of some girl who kept running away from him, it was because he was too in love with himself.


They were "pure Han," or at least a younger, wetter behind the ears version of him. I found it all completely believable.

I didn't. I don't find her books to be that great, or to have captured Han that well. That is my right, just as much as it is your right to think they were great and captured Han perfectly.

 

Solo is a rogue. Look at his current scofflaw life style pre-Yavin. Why shouldn't he have girlfriends before Leia? If the ROTJ book said otherwise, it was an innocent mistake. Short sighted, perhaps, but authors aren't omniscient.

Further more, it isn't a holy bible. It's a shared universe, and all do their best to make old and new info fit in.

Why should Solo have to express his grief, having just learned about Tharen's demise not long before Chalum's Cantina. In his line of business, he wears the Sabacc Face: keep your sentiments to yourself when you're desperate to have someone hire you. He did need the money and clients at that time.

There's a lot of assumptions being made here . . .

 

I had no problem with the whole Tharen/Solo relationship. I always saw it as puppy lust or some HS crush that never really has any potential to go any where. From what I remember when reading this trilogy it was Tharen that never really got over the this little fling Han and her had. Han moved on and had some other lovers after her. Then Han mets Leia and experinces true love with her. That's how I see it.

 

Solo is a rogue. Look at his current scofflaw life style pre-Yavin. Why shouldn't he have girlfriends before Leia?

I will repeat myself:

I don't have a problem with Han having girlfriends and being with women before Leia, nor did I ever doubt he had. I have seen the guy, after all. A guy that good-looking, charming, funny, and galaxy-wise would have been with many women. What I DO have a problem with is him being in love before Leia. Love and sex are not the same thing.

If the ROTJ book said otherwise, it was an innocent mistake. Short sighted, perhaps, but authors aren't omniscient.

Harrison Ford (Han's portrayer) said that Han had been with other women but he'd never been in love before Leia. Lucas (Han's creator) said that Han had been with other women but Leia is the first woman he has strong feelings for. If anything, the ROTJ book was following what Lucas, and possibly Ford as well, established for the Han/Leia relationship.

Why should Solo have to express his grief, having just learned about Tharen's demise not long before Chalum's Cantina. In his line of business, he wears the Sabacc Face: keep your sentiments to yourself when you're desperate to have someone hire you. He did need the money and clients at that time.

Yeah, he's really pushing down his grief when he cannoodles with a "wench" (is she maybe his grief-management therapist?) in both the script and the novelization for ANH. You can see his suppressed grief all through his words, actions, expressions, etc., like when he's smiling easily, laughing, cracking jokes, putting his hands all over Leia's rump in the garbage compactor, winking at Leia during the medal ceremony.

 

Suppressing his grief doesn't have to be seen---that's what it is. There are many events offscreen to A New Hope. Solo wears his cocky sabacc face, for reassurance to his new client (the kind, the old man, the droids). He's not going to let them know up front his Hutt debts, or recent sorrow.

 

The sense I got from one of Han's last lines in the books (something to the affect of: Goodbye, Bria - I don't have the book with me) was that he had finally let her go and even if she had lived there couldn't have been any hope for a further relationship between them. Whether he was in love with her or just had a crush is hard to say. You could argue the definition of love til you're blue in the face but the simple fact of the matter is that you never know.

I've been in the place, too, where I thought I was in love with someone and it turned out not to be in hindsight. Why couldn't it happen with Han and Bria?

 

Suppressing his grief doesn't have to be seen---that's what it is. There are many events offscreen to A New Hope.

So after he launches the Falcon to hyperspace, he excuses himself to sob over his lost love in the 'fresher?

Or maybe he ducks into a Death Star hallway to grieve over his lost love?

Solo wears his cocky sabacc face, for reassurance to his new client (the kind, the old man, the droids). He's not going to let them know up front his Hutt debts, or recent sorrow.

Even though he's cannoodling with the "wench" before he even meets them? Did he precognitively sense them coming in and decide, "Whoa, I gotta go smooch a wench to make sure they don't notice I'm grieving over my lost love"?

You can especially see him forcing down his grief when he keeps his hand glued to Leia's rump in the garbage compactor and winks at her during the medal ceremony.

The sense I got from one of Han's last lines in the books (something to the affect of: Goodbye, Bria - I don't have the book with me) was that he had finally let her go and even if she had lived there couldn't have been any hope for a further relationship between them.

Then when he hears of her death he is grief-stricken, right before he goes into the cantina where he meets Luke and Obi Wan.

Whether he was in love with her or just had a crush is hard to say. You could argue the definition of love til you're blue in the face but the simple fact of the matter is that you never know.

I've been in the place, too, where I thought I was in love with someone and it turned out not to be in hindsight. Why couldn't it happen with Han and Bria?

"Bria had been [Han's] first love, a willowy red-haired beauty who was one of the founders of the Rebellion--and who had died a martyr after double-crossing him to secure the plans to the first Death Star."

That's from "Tatooine Ghost," hardcover, page 46. (Bria didn't found the Rebellion or steal the Death Star plans, huh?)

In "Hero's Trial" (I don't have the page number), Han hears a woman singing and thinks back to "Bria. His first love."

Bria's EU databank entry:

Han Solo's first love, Bria Tharen...

Oh, and:

Bria was instrumental in helping forge early Rebel cells. On Cloud City, she met with Alderaanian resistance leaders to urge them to form a Rebel Alliance.

Bria Tharen and her Red Hand Squadron were the ones who received the Death Star schematics when they were transmitted to Toprawa, and then beamed those plans to Princess Leia Organa aboard the Tantive IV.

(Bria didn't found the Rebellion or steal the Death Star plans, huh?)

Crispin interview

ES: Besides Leia, which of Han's girlfriends did he love the most?

AC: Bria Tharen, of course. No contest.




And now back to the passage in the ROTJ novelization:

"Han and Leia turned to each other full of feeling. All they'd struggled for, all they'd dreamed of--gone, now. Even so, they'd had each other for a short while at least. They'd come together from opposite ends of a wasteland of emotional isolation: Han had never known love, so enamored of himself was he; Leia had never known love, so wrapped up in social upheaval was she, so intent on embracing all of humanity. And somewhere between his glassy infatuation for the one, and her glowing fervor for the all, they'd found a shady place where two could huddle, grow, even feel nourished."

Harrison Ford quote:

"They [Luke and Leia] change my character. He's basically this incredibly selfish guy who's obsessed with money at the beginning of the saga. Luke goes through a character journey in the movies, but so does Han Solo. Luke trusts him, and believes there's more to him than meets the eye. [Han's] not used to that, and it touches him. Then there's the princess, of course. My character doesn't like her initially, even as he st

 

(deleted since you covered the points I made, and just didn't bother to connect the dots--so my posting them wouldn't help any)

 

You can especially see him forcing down his grief when he keeps his hand glued to Leia's rump in the garbage compactor and winks at her during the medal ceremony.

That is a good point. During "A New Hope" Han does not appear forlorn.

 

dp4m: I hope you'll excuse the FYI...

Shelley: I will repeat myself: the RASSM message boards are now defunct and cannot be referenced.

Indeed...?



Ah, sorry... I hate to have to say this, but... no...

I assume this misinformation is second-hand - but out of interest, where did you get it?

RASSM (rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc) is not a message board, nor is it defunct. It's a usunet newsgroup, and it's still, somehow, stumbling on....

Feel free to drop by, people. We don't bite....

Well, we do, but only because you newbies taste nice...

And if you really want, you can use the Google Groups search function to find what people have been saying there since forever, too....

I can't find Ann Crispin (who was one of a few authors/creators to post there back in the good old days when SW was still fun) saying much more than this about TPM.

Just that, and some wry, honest one-liners to the same effect. All of which is just typical RASSM banter, reflecting an opinion shared by quite a lot of odlbies there...

And, just for fun, here's her informed, cheerfully cynical opinion on what the novels mean to LFL...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

So some find TPM better than ROTJ, for others it's vise versa. I'll take the newer movies anyday.

I haven't watched those movies in years, and don't feel inclinded to. There were too many unexplained things . . . Like how the Falcon got inside the space slug's mouth. Does it have more than one mouth, 'cause they entered and exited in different directions. All three classic movies had laudable swordplay too. They were just wacking the lightblades against each other. I saw no soul in that.

Not that AOTC was any better. It was a cheap joke. And I stand by comments I made last year: Anakin just stands still for a long moment, and Dooku slices his hand off. The duel between Kenobi and Maul, now, that was pwer and play . . .

Or how the Snowspeeders were such sitting ducks. Really. Why are they approaching from the front of the walkers, which is where their weaponery is? Their heads can angle sideways, sure, but you never saw brave Rogue Squad shoot the walkers in the bum, and pull up before they went into their target lines. If I was a tactician, I'd have shot the ground near the legs, overbalancing the fragile legs.

But that would have negate the heroic sacrifice of the defenders, wouldn't it? Sometimes, quixotic things must happen to underscore a plot.

 

Excellence:
So some find TPM better than ROTJ, for others it's vise versa. I'll take the newer movies anyday.

I haven't watched those movies in years, and don't feel inclinded to. There were too many unexplained things . . . Like how the Falcon got inside the space slug's mouth. Does it have more than one mouth, 'cause they entered and exited in different directions.

Huh? How do you figure?

All three classic movies had laudable swordplay too. They were just wacking the lightblades against each other. I saw no soul in that.

I'll assume you meant "laughable" because "laudable" is actually a good thing. And for that matter, the swordplay in the OT is, while not as specatular, often more realistic than that in TPM and certainly more so than in AOTC. What you call "wacking the lightblades against each other" is often the cinematic equivalent of beating, binding, or fighting for center, all of which you'd find in a real duel.

Or how the Snowspeeders were such sitting ducks. Really. Why are they approaching from the front of the walkers, which is where their weaponery is? Their heads can angle sideways, sure, but you never saw brave Rogue Squad shoot the walkers in the bum, and pull up before they went into their target lines. If I was a tactician, I'd have shot the ground near the legs, overbalancing the fragile legs.

But that would have negate the heroic sacrifice of the defenders, wouldn't it? Sometimes, quixotic things must happen to underscore a plot.

So basically you're saying you prefer the PT over the OT based on something as specific and unrelated to plot, characterization, and meaning as the snowspeeder tactics being faulty?

KW

 

What I was saying, there's a difference between showing cinema audiences a heroic plot and battle, and what could look like simple incompetence.

The Hoth walkers can't shoot from behind, and even if the snowspeeders can't penetrate their armour, they were largely safer firing from BEHIND, not in front, where the walkers CAN shoot.

It was meant to show valiant heroics, but at what startegic credulity to the viewer; that's all I'm saying.

Same as the undead army that swept through the Mordor hordes like hot knife through butter in ROTK. I was shocked when I saw that. It took all reality from the valiant struggle. An army that can kill but can't be killed, even touched . . . come on.

 

I hate to start off on a sour note, but might as well get it out of the way. The Han Solo Trilogy suffers (and possibly terminally) as a series for me mainly on the foundations of the first novel, The Paradise Snare. It was just... "strange" to me. It of course started off on a sour note, when there's absoluetely no mention of one of the most important people in Han's early life - Bey. Bey was Han Solo's half-nagai/half-Corellian "father figure," mentor and idol on the streets of Corellia. Absolutely no mention of this important figure in Han's life, and the novel dealt with that period of time to some degree. After that, the whole deal with the t'landa til high priest cultists just made me go "huh?"

But, thankfully, after the Paradise Snare, the series got much better. It is in the Hutt Gambit and Rebel Dawn that Crispin's chonological mastery shows off. She indeed did do much research, and the latter two novels showcase exactly what EU novels should be about.

The way she seamlessly weaves things in and out of the storyline, in one dramatic epic tale surrounding Han's "origins."

I also find the cries of "Mary Sue" with respect to Bria to be mistaken. Trying to get Bria to pass the Mary Sue litmus test is like trying to teach a pig to sing. Yes, there is one rather strong thing going for the argument - the author's self-insertion into the character. But, lacking pretty much all other qualities of a typical Mary Sue, Bria comes out against the accusation pretty well.

She is a highly-flawed, addiction-prone, single-minded weak-willed, habitual lying and backstabbing psycho. I can accept the qualities that Han saw in her. But, she had her "issues" to say the least. She's weak. About as weak as they come. Her addictions are her crutch for life. And those jump around from physical substances to personal crusades like the Rebellion. In the end, it's good that her addiction's ended up getting her killed. At least there's some moral fulfillment for the series - "Be a highly-flawed, addiction-prone, single-minded, weak-willed, habitual lying and backstabbing psycho at your peril."

That said, I find her character to be an amazing, three-dimensional full character. Her flaws as a person make her all the better a literary figure.

 

Your criticisms are sound, Ghengis, but remember that The Paradise Snare opens when Han is 19, and off the streets, so his interaction with Bey would have occured quite a bit earlier in the timeline.

 

It did have Rik Duel another of Han's friends from the early days according to Marvel.