Dark Prince Xizor, leader of the "Black Sun" criminal empire and Vader's rival for the Emperor's favour, discovers Luke Skywalker's importance and plots to have him killed before Vader can turn him.

Leia hires a 2-dimensional Han Solo clone, Dash Rendar, to help protect Luke. Then she arranges to meet with the Black Sun to find out who is behind the attempts on Luke's life - not knowing that it is Xizor himself.

Luke makes himself a new lightsaber, and goes on a mission with Dash and a Bothan fighter-squadron to get information on a new Imperial super-weapon. Yes, Perry tried to explain the "many Bothans dies getting us these plans" line in ROTJ.

Leia meets Xizor at his castle, in the "Boussh" disguise she uses in ROTJ to fool Jabba, and the Dark Prince tries to seduce her.

Luke, Lando, Chewie and Dash must rescue her, before it is too late...

This book is substandard - not as bad as KJA's novels, but it makes this reviewer wish for Ann Crispin's somewhat flawed works. Sure, she used out-of character personae, tons of "fanwank" and the odd shoddy sentance, but she did it with STYLE!

Perry adapted the excellent "Aliens" graphic novels into written paperback format, though the plots were re-worked to account for the highly inferior "Aliens 3". Maybe if Perry had adapted the Marvel "Star Wars" comics set between ESB and ROTJ he would have come up with a halfway decent book.

However, at least the author included a bit of humour.

"I can't believe you let the droids fly the Falcon!" :)

Rating: 40%

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