Jordan Anderson's Reviews > Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace

Didn’t love Tales from Jabba’s Palace, not did I hate it. I found myself enjoying some of the stories and absolutely despising some of the others. This is definitely better than Tales from the Empire as its far more complete, consistent, and has a theme interwoven between all of the stories, yet I still think the disparity between some stories leads to me taking a couple of stars off its final rating.

First, the good.

- Kevin J Anderson’s “A Boy and His Monster” was a great story both to start out the collection and a great story in general. In a weird way, Anderson makes you feel kinda sorry for the rancor that Luke kills in Return of the Jedi and also sorry for the poor guy who’s balling his eyes out when he sees what Skywalker did to his pet.

- “A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance” by Kathy Tyers is another story that gives background to a bit player from the films. We all know the poor Twiilek girl who gets fed to the rancor, but know, thanks to Tyers, we get to know her a bit and understand her motivations.

-“A Bad Feeling” which gives personality and a backstory to that droid that tortures other droids. Didn’t know it was worth telling, but I guess I was wrong.

- “And the Band Played On” by John Gregory Betancourt was easily the best story in the entire collection and hands down my favorite. Probably one of the best Star Wars short stories I’ve ever read. Though it’s been kind of retconned now by both being moved to the EU and with Lucas’s peddling and changing of the original cut of Return of the Jedi, it’s still a really well written and conceived tale of Max Rebo and the rest of his band.

- “Skin Deep” is the longest story in this entire collection but it bookends Tales From Jabba’s Palace perfectly. Crispin would go on to write the classic Han Solo Trilogy (for better or worse, depending on your belief system), so it’s no wonder this novella length story came out so well.

The bad

- “And Then There Were Some” night now be the worst in this anthology but it’s definitely top (or would that be bottom?) three. Gamorean guards are supposed to be big, dumb, and stupid. Why William F. Wu decided to give them personality and backstory, I’ll never know.

-“The Great God Quay” by George Alec Effinger is also one of the collected stories that ranks somewhere near the bottom for me. I don’t need a story about Weequays worshiping a magic 8 ball and furthermore, the attempts at humor fall flat, quickly.

- Probably the worst Tale’s From Jabba’s Palace, “Out of the Closet” is the one story that easily lead me to drop the rating for the entire book. Roberson tries to write a Star Wars story in some bizarre lit fiction style and it fails horribly. Rather than tell a good tale about Jabb’a pet vampire, it comes across as pretentious, hard to read, and just plain weird.

And there you have it: my two cents on this Star Wars anthology. Obviously there are a lot more shorts in here that I failed to mention, so you’ll have to pick up Tales From Jabba’s Palace to read them all and see for yourself.