Do You like book The Adventures Of Lando Calrissian (1994)?
Of the various Star Wars books that I read in my youth, this is one of the ones that's held up best. L. Neil Smith had a pretty free hand with these, and it shows; the stories are made of fun, scoundrel-centric adventure wrapped around chewy science fiction Big Ideas. Lando here is the great adventure protagonist he hardly ever gets to be.There are some problems; characters start as cliches and get built up beyond that, but some of them never get the chance to get built up. Imperialism, colonialism, and various types of prejudice all get poked at, but it all feels like it needs more attention than it gets; there's one example of colonialism in particular that really feels like it needs a book built around it. And the end of the last book involves (view spoiler)[an enormous Deus ex Machina that feels like it should upend the entire setting (hide spoiler)]
—Andrew Perron
This comes before Lando and Han Solo every met.Mindharp of Sharu is 1.5 stars. The writing is pretty piss poor. He makes Lando as this big joker really. All he is just making jokes left and right and when he is not all he says is "Don't call me Master." If you read the book you will understand. But he is playing, you guessed it, sabacc and he wins money and a robot on a different planet. He gets the robot and is blackmailed into getting this object or face prison for the rest of his life. And so the adventure starts... just the writing and description at the end was making me bored and sick at the same time...Flamewind of Oseon is actually a little better at 2.5 stars. The jokes continue to be annoying as Lando talks to his robot. The basis is that the bad guy, Gepta, survived and wants venagence. He tricks Lando to come to a planet to play, you guessed it, sabacc...Aside from the sabacc playing, lame jokes and more of "Don't call me Master," it isn't bad. I didn't like it, but didn't hate it...Starcave of Thonboka is a 2 star if that. I honestly wanted it to end... The bad guy is back along with another dude from the second book, who Lando didn't kill, even though he dude said I will kill you if you let me go...awesome... Anyways they get help from this creature that is really described poorly and of course Lando has to show him and the rest of these new creatures sabacc...of course he does... It is quite lame, but not truly a horrible book.Sum it up and I guess a 2 star...
—Joseph
This book is a collection of three novellas. All three stories deal with Lando before we meet him in Empire Strikes Back. This is one of the earliest EU books written.I did not care for this collection as these stories did not capture the essence of Lando or this universe. These three stories read as if the author wrote three science fiction stories and then decided to insert a Star Wars character into them and make it part of the EU. Any nondescript character could have been the main character. As of the essence of this universe, it was never achieved as the force, the Empire or the Jedi wasn't components of the story. That is not a deal breaker for me as this collection was similar to the collection of stories concerning Han Solo. I enjoyed that collection as it captured Han's character. This never felt like it belonged in this universe.I strongly recommend skipping this novel as it did nothing for the character. These would have been better off as science fiction stories of a new universe instead of part of this one. Even then I don't think I would have enjoyed them too much as the stories never captured my interest and had some aspects that were foolish.
—Jim C