21 Star Wars Books You Should Read

Cover to Rebel Dawn, book 3 in the Han Solo trilogy, by A.C. Crispin. Image via publisher Bantam Spectra

14. The Han Solo Trilogy

A.C. Crispin gets an entry on this list with these three books covering the early life of everyone’s favorite scruffy-looking nerf herder, Han Solo. Though the timeline does get a bit wonky in places, the novels did first appear before the prequel trilogy did.

Besides, they’re Legends canon these days, so that confusion can be forgiven, no?

We start off with Han Solo in his teen years in The Paradise Snare, including some flashbacks to his childhood as a Corellian street urchin. The Hutt Gambit sees him become partners with Chewbacca and meet Lando Calrissian…and, well, start working for Jabba the Hutt. Finally, Rebel Dawn covers the three years directly preceding that fateful meeting in the Mos Eisley cantina.

Goodreads praises it for pretty much nailing Han’s character and filling in his backstory quite well, while showing his development from a young man all the way to the smuggler who shot first. Do not confuse these with Brian Daley’s Han Solo Adventures — all three books are by Crispin.

These three can very easily stand alone and don’t necessarily need to be paired with any other novels on the list, though you may want to follow it with Scoundrels to keep with the Han Solo theme.