JasperKazai’s Reviews > Star Wars: Scoundrels > Status Update

I realized as I got near the end that this was yet another ebook with 30% at the end taken up by excerpts, which is why I started looking at the timeline again to prepare. Turns out I might not be reading a Zahn book immediately next - TBD.
Anyways, pretty good book. Not amazing, but entertaining. Did not see the twist coming at all, which I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Wasn't something you could glean.

I guess one aspect I also did not consider until just now was the fact that we know Han does not get any money from this, seeing as he's still in debt to Jabba in both TESB and RotJ.
Didn't realize that I'm in for a bit of a Timmy Zahn block. Hadn't looked at the timeline for a few books, went to consult it now. The next two novels are also Zahn's. No one else was writing (non-junior) 0 ABY novels, lol.

'Carry the football?' C'mon, Zahn, that's the second reference to some real-world thing that sticks out like a sore thumb in Star Wars. At the very least, an editor should've caught these things.
That aside, this is a good read.

I left out Chewie in my previous update, lmao. In my defense, I was bumping up against the character limit for an update, and I was lumping him in with Han anyways. But Chewie, too! That makes 5 people who are guaranteed to be safe.

This has been ok, but feels a little slow. There's been far too much 'I have to run it by my boss' waffling. It's not believable that the villains would tolerate it this much. Also, tension is lowered when 4 characters are guaranteed to be safe. Han and Lando are the most obvious, and then Winter and Kell also appear in novels much later in the timeline. So none of them are in any true danger. That lowers the stakes

Cognac (the brandy) is named after the specific place in France where it's made. Why the hell would it still be called cognac in Star Wars?? Come on now, lol.

Referencing Revan and Malak is a fun little treat for EU fans, but does it really make sense in-universe? KotOR took place 4,000 years before this. Would you really be mentioning things that happened 4,000 years ago? Even on Earth, that's not super common, and we're only one planet. Star Wars has an entire galaxy of history.

Han pretended to take pictures with a false camera all so he could stumble into a sand exhibit, gather sand up inside the false camera, then go pour the sand into a droid's joints so it got stuck on Kell, so Kell could get to see inside the droid depot. Not plant something, not steal something, just to see the inside. Was all of that really necessary? Seems like a TON of effort. Too convoluted for its own good

Including Kell Tainer from Wraith Squadron is fun and very unexpected. Although it does introduce a slight plothole, considering how when Han worked with the Wraiths he did not acknowledge that he knew Kell at all, and vice versa. In fact, I believe there was a passage in one of those books from Kell's PoV where he remarked about Han's fame, no mention of any previous interactions. The prequel problem strikes again.