The Expanse creators unveiled Han Solo as no one else ever wrote him

2014's Honor Among Thieves shows off the Corellian smuggler from a certain point of view

But between other projects, they made time for a single Star Wars novel, 2014’s Honor Among Thieves, the final release in the pre-Disney Star Wars Legends era of the franchise. That book neatly splits the difference between a Star Wars story and a Corey epic. A lot of it seems conceptually familiar from other Star Wars books: Familiar movie characters go on a side adventure that introduces new characters and seems important to the overall saga, but doesn’t affect the movie canon. But one thing makes Honor Among Thieves feel distinctive — It gives us an amusing vision of Han Solo from total strangers’ points of view.

Honor Among Thieves takes place shortly after A New Hope, and it’s mostly told from Han Solo’s perspective. The Corellian smuggler and his Wookiee partner Chewbacca are fresh off their uncharacteristic decision to join the Rebellion in its assault on the Death Star. Han is still vacillating about how much to support the Rebel Alliance. Among other things, he wonders whether the New Republic they want to build will really be all that different from the Empire. For a career criminal who lives on the fringe of galactic society and has an almost pathological obsession with freedom, any galactic government that wants to regulate and tax galactic trade is a lot like the next one, as far as Han is concerned.

Still, Jabba the Hutt has put a significant price on Han’s head, and Han needs to earn money to pay him off. The Rebels pay well and on time. And while Han would never admit it out loud, Leia Organa has quickly become important to him. So he agrees to take on a dangerous mission to pick up one of her spies in Empire-held space. That sprawls out into a much larger quest to save the galaxy from a dangerously powerful piece of lost technology that the Empire is close to recovering.

Plenty of Star Wars novels are told from the perspective of canon protagonists. (Which involves a lot of complicated navigation and negotiation between authors, Lucasfilm, and the established movie and TV timeline.) It’s much rarer to see scenes from the viewpoint of total nobodies within the canon. So one of the highlights of the book comes when Han and Chewie arrive on the planet Cioran to pick up the spy, Scarlet Hark. (I hope that’s intended as a nom de guerre, because it’s a truly silly name.) They discover the dead-drop where they’re supposed to pick up retrieval instructions has been compromised, and Han has to use social engineering and criminal wiles to figure out how to track down a spy who’s gone underground and doesn’t want to be found.

This means a series of scenes from the points of view of the people Han manipulates or scams. The Empire data technician he hits up for information thinks he’s an incompetent doofus who doesn’t know how to use his own data pad. A fast-food worker finds him offensively scruffy and brash (she refers to him as “a nerf’s behind”) until he smiles, at which point she realizes he’s “almost good-looking,” with such a warm smile and “merry” eyes that he makes her smile too. Other contacts of Hark’s find Han either terrifying or a bit laughable. After stealing an Imperial officer’s uniform, Han works his way through a chain of Hark’s associates, using charm, Imperial contacts, threats of violence, and actual violence to get information out of them, and each of them sees him in a radically different way.

One of the best perspectives comes from a flirty barfly, the former girlfriend of one of Hark’s contacts. For all his smug self-assurance, Han Solo in the movies fails a lot, suffers a lot, and frequently makes a fool out of himself. It’s satisfying to see his charisma actually working on someone in Honor Among Thieves. It’s also telling to see how readily he weaponizes his swagger and handsome face when he needs to deceive someone, in this case to get a datapad with a key address on it. After his victim spends some time with his “sly and warm” smile, which “made her feel like he was laughing at a joke that she was in on, even though she wasn’t,” she’s ready to take him home — and she isn’t at all suspicious when he puts his arm around her waist. Later, of course, she realizes that’s when he stole her datapad

Even better is an encounter with a Trandoshan dockworker who Han strong-arms into giving him that barfly’s name in the first place. When Han first shows up on Cyr Hassk’s door, the dockworker evaluates him as having “the uniform of an Imperial officer and the demeanor of a salesperson.” Hassk takes an instant dislike to Han, and quickly clocks him as an imposter Imperial: “The lopsided smile was rich with threat, but it was the kind of threat that got settled in the street outside a bar, not in an interrogation chamber.” Hassk assaults Han, who promptly kicks his ass, though the two combatants manage to get in some fairly playful banter in the process.

One fun part of all these quick perspectives, as Han Solo works his way through the underworld looking for Hark, is how ably and efficiently these scenes cover his varying approaches to underworld information-gathering. Some situations call for flirting, some for lying, some for punching, and some for actual honesty, and Han smoothly adapts to the changing needs of each moment. Honor Among Thieves briefly puts him in his chosen element, among thieves and rogues — a place he doesn’t spend much time in throughout the Star Wars movies.

Watching him code-switch depending on the situation is enjoyable, but seeing him through the eyes of the people he’s manipulating is a particular treat. Han Solo does have some of the demeanor of a salesperson when he wants something, and it’s entertaining to see his sleazier, oilier side called out by someone who’s immune to human charm. Abraham and Franck give him a chance to do some of the criminal footwork fans might expect from a scoundrel and a scruffy-looking nerf-herder. The authors also cover a wide range of how people might feel on meeting him for the first time, from intrigued to repulsed to indifferent. It’s hard to imagine Luke or Leia — both of them simpler, more straightforward heroes — provoking a similarly wide gamut of responses.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons Han Solo remains such a popular character: As a low-level crook who isn’t always sure he wants to throw in with the series’ heroes, he’s a bit more complicated than they are, and a bit more conflicted. As a lot of Star Wars novels have shown, it’s interesting to ride along in his head for a while, and see how he sees the galaxy. But Honor Among Thieves’ proves it’s a lot of fun to see him from the outside, too.