Tales of the Bounty Hunters

Not too far into Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, shortly after the battle of Hoth, a famous scene featured Darth Vader in a Star Destroyer bridge confronting a line of 6 mysterious figures. Bounty hunters. The movie failed to feature the “adventures” that Boba Fett, along with the 5 unfamiliar at the time bounty hunters, had gone through in the attempt of capturing Han Solo. The tales were for long a mystery and simply uncreated until Bantam Spectra along with 5 authors were given the opportunity to write up these tales, filling gaps in the canon history of star wars. Tales of the Bounty Hunters edited by Kevin J. Anderson is the third book of Star Wars anthologies, featuring established Star Wars authors such as Kevin J. Anderson, show more Kathy Tyers, Dave Wolverton, and more. The creativeness is brilliant where IG-88 adopted René Descartes’s cogito ergo su as his way of thinking. It explores customs of the ferocious Trandoshan Wookiee hunters, and more. The tale of Boba Fett, although now mostly non canon, demonstrates a great example of the early concept of Jaster Mereel, before Attack of the Clones came. It is a great book in which further expands the story of Empire Strikes Back. show less

Another batch of short stories wrapped around a particular rogues'-gallery scene, this one the group of bounty hunters assembled in the Executor in The Empire Strikes Back. Most of the stories are nothing special; Kevin Anderson's made me actively wince, as he was playing with epic-scale tropes without being able to provide epic prose to match. The one exception is the final story in the volume, by Daniel Keys Moran, covering the life of Boba Fett; that one is good enough to be worth owning the book.

Tales of the Bounty Hunters takes 6 characters that we see on screen extremely briefly - and all save Boba Fett have no lines - and expands their stories. In the 5 short stories, we are given more detail about who they are and how they came to be on the Executor, taking up the bounty on Han Solo. In the case of the tale of Boba Fett we find out what happens to him later on, after the fall of the Empire.
The stories themselves are brilliant. I enjoyed the tales of IG-88 and of Dengar the most of the 5, mainly because I felt like they were the better executed of them all.
As a general rule, you're given just enough back story to understand their motivations and enough forward plot to understand where they fit in with the Star Wars show more universe. I've always been a fan of the Bounty Hunters, so this book was a bit of a treat for me. However, I was a little let down when it came to Boba's story.
He made casual appearances in the other 4 tales, each one telling a little of the part he played in the hunt for Solo and, by the time his tale came, there really wasn't much left to tell. So his tale was more of a continuing story, looking at what he does when the Empire is no more.
On the whole, I enjoyed the story, but I was a little disappointed in it's ending. Boba Fett has sworn that he will kill Han Solo and claim his bounty, if it's the last thing he does. However, the story ends with Fett and Solo holding each other at gunpoint, discussing how neither of them wants to die, neither of them wants to trust each other. Neither of them can see a way out of the situation that doesn't include shooting each other, or trusting each other not to shoot the other as they walk away.
I almost threw the book across the room in dismay... I really did. show less

A pretty dismal anthology, easily the worst of the Tales from/of books. The strongest story leads- one about IG-88 that's pretty decent for what it is, despite taking far too many liberties with events in the movies. The last story, on the other hand, is so bad as to be actually offensive- Daniel Keys Moran does to Boba Fett in this what George Lucas did to the entire Star Wars universe in his new trilogy; it's destruction on a much more modest scale but still pretty impressive for a hack writer. All the other stories are - literally and figuratively - somewhere in between.

Was disappointed with several of the stories. Only the first and third in the volume seemed really good. Also, the Boba Fett story did not seem to match up with the rest of the Star Wars Universe.

Boy, the stuff I read when there's nothing else around. I found myself in every avid reader's nightmare; finished reading my current book and nothing at hand to read. "Tales of the bounty hunters" was at hand so I sighed and plunged in.

"Mostly forgettable" would be the two word review I'd give but as I have more space, I'll say that by the time I'd read "Tales of the Bounty Hunters", I had seen "Return of the Jedi" so I knew that Boba Fett's adventures were not canon but he looms over proceedings, finding himself the nemesis of IG88.

And for some reason I felt bad for Bossk; it may be because I had his action figure when I was a boy.

Unfortunately, these sets of stories are no longer canon, thanks to episodes 1-3 and the stupid Clone Wars tv series.

However, on their own, these stories were just as good, if not a touch better than the previous Tales book [[book:Star Wars: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina|353479]].

The first story, about IG-88, was the best in my opinion. Robots are always cool and killer robots are wicked cool.