The Courtship of Princess Leia

Today I finished listening to the audio book of The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton. I was prompted to listen to this book when in my podcast listening I reached Hugo Girl! Episode 18: The Courtship of Princess Leia — Toyota Corellia. I recommend listening to this podcast episode by these hilarious and smart women; they have a lot of fun with this book.

The plot is fairly trivial: Princess Leia is courted by Prince Isolder of the Hapes Consortium and by Han Solo. Han kidnaps Leia and takes her to Dathomir so he can woo her without interference from Isolder. Of course, things quickly get complicated. Luke Skywalker gets involved in tracking down Han and Leia. There are many villains and several battles with some unnecessarily gory details. Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 make appearances.

The book contains some surprising (and creative) scenes. Han wins the planet of Dathomir in the Star Wars equivalent of a poker game. Han is believed to be royalty descended from a king of Corellia and is referred to occasionally as King Solo. Some non-Jedi beings (Force witches) have more powers than Luke Skywalker. The monkish Luke Skywalker is attracted to a woman. Princess Leia seems genuinely attracted to Isolder, partly out of political necessity and partly because he’s a very handsome man who is genuinely caring and considerate of her feelings. Han’s wooing of Leia is somewhat indifferent.

The production of the audio book was good, with many voices, special effects sounds from the movies, and music by John Williams.

My rating is 3/5 stars (good).