JasperKazai’s Reviews > The Paradise Snare > Status Update

The way Han keeps referring to Bria as 'honey' and 'baby' gives me the creeps. It's always rubbed me the wrong way. People who overuse pet names like that are usually compensating for something, which could fit this relationship, but that's definitely not the author's intention here. Also, it doesn't feel very Han-like. In the movies, Han only called Leia by a name like that when he was being sarcastic.

She keeps using 'vrelt,' a fake animal, for similes. Such as 'doesn't give a vrelt's ass,' 'pounced like a hunting vrelt,' 'cornered like a vrelt,' etc. I appreciate that she doesn't make up dozens and dozens of fake animal similes like Stover did, because that was annoying. But this method doesn't quite work, either. How is ONE animal suitable for such a wide variety of similes? It doesn't make any sense.

This Han-Bria relationship is so bad. There's no legitimate basis for it. In fact, that discussion they had where Bria said Han didn't need to believe in a higher power blah blah blah highlights how they have absolutely nothing in common. They have nothing but mutual attraction, which is incredibly surface level. But of course that wasn't the takeaway from that discussion.
If the rest of the book is about this... ugh

Han just blew up an entire factory with nothing more than 5 hand blasters. That's fucking stupid. Why would blasters even have an 'overload' function? What purpose does that serve?? Why would a blaster turning into a bomb be a standard feature?!
'He showed her where the trigger is' who the fuck doesn't know where the trigger on a gun is? Even if you've never shot a gun, you know what a gun is. Lmao

She makes Han say pal WAY too fucking much. Yeah, it is something Han would say, but every once in awhile. She makes Han say pal literally every 2-3 sentences when he's talking to Muuurgh. It's ridiculous. No one speaks like that!
I always thought glitterstim giving literal mind-reading capabilities was dumb. It's too fantastical. But this book is not the one that came up with that, so it's not her fault.

This romance plot is less than half-baked. Han had one interaction with Bria and then became obsessed with her for no good reason. It's dumb. Also, she just described Han Solo has being 'not classically handsome.' What the hell? Bitch, have you seen Harrison Ford? What kind of fucked up scale are you grading on?!

The formatting in this ebook copy I have is not great, and every so often a letter or two will be incorrect (probably due to bad scans or whatever). Han met with a Hutt, and the Hutt's laugh was described. Easy to picture, since Jabba's laugh is iconic. But the text said it sounded like 'hell hell hell' instead of heh and that made me laugh, picturing someone laughing by saying hell. Lol

They just offhandedly mentioned a species being named drell. Drell is also the name of Thane's species in Mass Effect 2/3. The t'landa Til remind me a little bit of the elcor from Mass Effect. Hmm... there is a nonzero chance that BioWare was actually influenced by this book.

I can't believe Han just lectured someone about the proper use of pronouns. I didn't know this book was going to be woke!
(This is a joke. I feel the need to specify this is a joke. It is depressingly funny how the passage of time can change the context of something so simple, though.)

It doesn't make much sense that they'd let Han walk around the spice factory like that. Yeah, he had a minder, but he has no reason to see any of that. It doesn't help his job any. So why would they let him? Other than to move the story forward, of course. That's a lazy excuse.