Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu

I've always felt that Lando Calrissian's gotten a bad rap. I mean, he blew up the Death Star, helped to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, (throwing away a very lucrative career as a gas miner in the process)and managed to wear this ridiculous-looking cape and still make it look cool. Yet he gets little-to-no respect in the Star Wars universe.

Given this, I was intrigued to learn that there were a series of novels chronicling some of Lando's adventures prior to Empire Strikes Back, and the Lando here is pretty true to form - a smuggling scoundrel of a gambler who has this greeat, unique sense of style, winning starships and droids in card games and pulling fast ones on local law enforcement.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was that the stakes seemed a little too small for someone like Lando - there's all this Empire and Rebellion stuff that we know are going on in the galaxy, and instead of being involved with any of that he's working with this race no one's ever heard of before to rescue a musical instrument that we only find out is important through last-minute exposition in the epilogue.