Tales of the Bounty Hunters

"Tales of the Bounty Hunters" is a collection of five stories that each center on the Bounty Hunters employed by Darth Vader in "The Empire Strikes Back". The unique thing about these tales is that they each begin at different points in time, yet they all intersect at that imfamous meeting on the bridge of the Executor. It's contributors include: Kevin J. Anderson (who also edited this book), M. Shayne Bell, Daniel Keys Moran, Kathy Tyers, and Dave Wolverton.

In trying to figure out how to best review this book I figured I could do it the best justice if I rated each separate tale - and give a quick impression of my own about each tale. And overall rating will also be given at the end as a means of summing up my total opinion of the book.

"Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88"
by Kevin J. Anderson
This is a great work of fiction, and a pleasant surprise seeing as it came from the pen of Kevin J. Anderson, who often writes novels that tend to lose their focus and the interest of the reader. However, since Anderson was forced to get down all of his thoughts is a morelimited and compact scope, such as this Tales book, he was able to produce perhaps the single best tale in the entire book. It reads very quickly and is reminscient of cyber thriller sci-fi works by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; a whole lot of information is thrown at you, and before you know it the story is over. I also very much enjoyed the variation of Descarte's "I think, therefore I am", but with "We think, therefore we are". Which brings up yet another unique aspect to this story in that Anderson has envisioned IG-88 as not one but four assassin droids working as a collective. I truly feel that all will enjoy this story.

"Payback: The Tale of Dengar"
by Dave Wolverton
Wolverton seems to like to tread that fine line between Star Wars and that indescribeable something else, and in the case of "The Courtship of Princess Leia", it works - but this story really doesn't. It's not awful, but it's not very good either, in fact it's pretty absent of much of that needed element of Star Wars feeling that I so often look for when reading something about the Star Wars Universe (Silly me). Essentially the tale is about an assassin, mentally modified by the Empire to feel virtually nothing - to go about life as a killing machine. This tale is alright, but certainly nothing to write home about.

"The Prize Pelt: The Tale of Bossk"
by Kathy Tyers
You know, Kathy Tyers likes to claim that she is a character driven writer - and that she likes to explore characters in depth so as to enrich the overall quality of a story. What a lump of crap!! This was supposedly a tale about Bossk - which really turned out to be a tale about Chenlambec and Tinian... Who?! Yeah, well it doesn't really matter either, since neither of those characters really interest me when I want to learn a little more about the exploits of Bossk. Who?! Well that's pretty much how I felt Kathy Tyers was treating the Trandoshan - come to think of it, I think she would have just preferred to leave Bossk out of the story altogether. I really hated this tale, and I really don't think you'll find any opposition to the contrary out there.

"Of Possible Futures: The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM"
by M. Shayne Bell
4-lom, an innovative protocol droid and Zuckuss, a hunter from a race of ritualistic hunters. It's hard to really describe this story, but essentially the two have a symbiotic relationship - but at the moment they are looking for a big score to get the money to buy newly cloned lungs. Ok, so that isn't exactly what the story is about but it's one of the many subplots in this tale. Honestly, I can only really say that this tale was pretty good, but not spectacular. So it's certainly well worth your time to read.

"The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett"
by Daniel Keys Moran
I almost certainly guarantee that my opinion of this final tale is in strong contrast to much of what you might also find out there on the internet. Yes, Boba Fett is a cool character, and yes he might have a streak of lawfulness in him - but this tale simply takes everything to extremes. I'm not going to sit by and give some B.S. about how cool this tale was just to please everyone out there who happens to think that anything having to do with Boba Fett is infallible, because this almost certainly is full of failings. What's more, with the coming of Episode II, Boba Fett's tale will almost certainly be completely altered from the image given to him by D. K. Moran. I guess the idea of Boba Fett as the chaste lawman simply doesn't strike me as being consistent with the type of character that comes off to us in the movies. In short, I guess you can read this if you really want to, but I wouldn't waste any sleep over not reading it.

Sean's Overall Rating