Tales of the Bounty Hunters

"Bounty hunters. We don't need their scum."

- Admiral Piett, The Empire Strikes Back

Remember that line-up of mercenaries gathered by Darth Vader to hunt down the Millenium Falcon halfway through Episode V? If so, then this is the book for you. An anthology of stories written by several science fiction authors, this book is part of a series which includes Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales From Jabbas Palace that aims to provide background stories for minor characters appearing in each of the three original films.

Edited by Kevin J. Anderson, this book is a massive case of Your Mileage May Vary for fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The stories are often considered to range from great (Payback) to not so great (Therefore I Am) to some of the best EU material ever (seriously, read The Last One Standing), with some mediocre ones in between. It's worth noting that the stories of Dengar and Bossk provide important background material for the subsequent Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, and likewise for being the first effort to flesh out the backstory of Boba Fett.

This work provides examples of:

 * A Day in The Limelight: For the Episode V bounty hunters.
 * Anti Villain: Dengar hunts Han Solo ruthlessly and is keen to see him dead, but he has a reason and is portrayed as a deeply disturbed and lonely person who becomes less brutal as he realises he can live for something other than his revenge.
 * Badass Normal: Dengar and Boba Fett, who are both normal humans (by the standards of the Star Wars universe, anyway) but are regarded as two of the best bounty hunters in the Empire.
 * Canon Sue: IG-88 manages to outwit the fucking Emperor.
 * Complete Monster: Bossk qualifies, being a cannibalistic slaver. Averted for the other bounty hunters; the worst of them, IG-88, is just following his programming as the perfect killing machine, so he isn't really sadistic by choice.
 * Continuity Snarl: 4-LOM the Jedi droid subverts this because he only fantasizes about being a Jedi.
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Quite literally in the case of Dengar, but he eventually gets better.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Dengar.
 * External Retcon: This was one of the first EU novels to give Boba Fett a backstory. As we now know, his status as a former Journeyman Protector named Jaster Mereel was actually just one of his aliases.
 * Gambit Pileup: Endor
 * Naive Newcomer: Zuckuss.
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Dengar feels this way about Han Solo, whom he holds responsible for the racing accident that left him brain damaged and ended his career as a swoop racer.
 * The Power of Love:
 * Psycho for Hire: Bossk really fits the bill.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Bossk, a Trandoshan slaver who keeps Wookiee pelts and ate all of his siblings moments after they hatched.
 * Spiritual Successor: The Bounty Hunter Wars continues some of the sub-plots included in this book, including
 * The Stoic: Dengar, who can't actually feel any emotions beyond anger and hatred as a result of Imperial experimentation.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Dengar kills a corrupt Imperial official by shoving an active thermal detonator into his mouth, pushing him off a cliff and shooting him on the way down.
 * Third Person Person: Mentioned in Zuckuss' story. His species, the Gand, refer to themselves exclusively by their family name and have to work their way up to the point where they allowed to use personal pronouns. Zuckuss doesn't feel constrained by this tradition and uses his given name despite having not "earned" it.
 * The Woobie: It's kind of hard not to feel sorry for Dengar by the time you finish his story.