These were the first Star Wars novels and, to a reader familiar with the more recent written adventures, they lack the wealth of background detail that has developed over the past 20 years. The plots are simpler, each one based around a few big action sequences, and the many alien species have yet to come fully into focus. But the adventure is there, the clarity of the struggle between good and evil, and the simultaneous messiness that makes these galaxy-spanning adventures seem so authentic: technology that doesn't always work, and real people struggling to live their lives amongst often hostile circumstances.