I buckled down and finished this book this evening. For some reason, my attention span hasn’t been good for the reading this week. But after a five hour nap I decided I’d rather stay in bed and read this than get up and do something productive.
Here’s the plot in a nutshell. Pre-Empire, Lando Calrissian is the owner of the Millenium Falcon. Gambling his way across the galaxy, he runs to the Sharu system to avoid some trouble. There he is roped in to retrieving the Mindharp of Sharu, the key to controlling vast monoliths of a past culture. His controllers? The governor of the system and a wizard. Seems Lando matches the legends of who will be the Messiah of Sharu. Or something like that. Anyhow, Lando supposedly will get a cargo of life crystals in return for his efforts, though he doesn’t really believe he’ll get any better than thrown into prison afterward.
While the synopsis above is somewhat logical, once the details have been added everything becomes pretty nonsensical. I won’t detail it here, to avoid spoiling you. Not the book. You, and your sense of logic. But I can put the nonsense aside because it’s a bubblegum media tie-in novel. Comes with the territory.
What bothered me greatly was playing Lando for a happy go-lucky and hapless gambler. Personality wise it just doesn’t match with what I remember from Empire and Return of the Jedi. Not just that he can’t get a break. As if he’s completely dumb. He’s a comedy act. Think Jar Jar Binks. And how much did people like Jar Jar? Very little.
Bah.
Title: Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu
Author: L. Neil Smith
Cover creator: William Schmidt
Series: Lando Calrissian Adventures; 1
Imprint / publisher: Del Rey / Ballantine
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 182 p.
Publication date: July 1983
ISBN-10: 0-345-31158-2
