Tatooine Ghost is a
Troy Denning Star Wars Legends book published in 2003 that works to bridge the original and prequel trilogy eras together. Leia, Han, and Chewbacca try to keep
Killik Twilight, a priceless piece of Alderaanian art, out of the Empire's hands, both for sentimental reasons and because the code for a Rebel Alliance/New Republic communications network is hidden in the painting. This quest takes them to Tatooine, where the painting ends up in the hands of Anakin Skywalker's childhood friend Kitster Banai. Their attempts to track him down also lead to Leia discovering new things about her father and his past.
Tatooine Ghost includes examples of the following tropes:
- Dramatic Irony:
- Kitster steals the painting from the auction to return it to Leia, his best friend's daughter, not realizing that Leia was also at the auction and he inadvertently kept her from getting the painting sooner.
- Wald doesn't believe that his best friend Anakin, who was very cheerful and optimistic became the cold and ruthless Darth Vader.
- Lampshaded by Han, in a speech that convinces Leia to consider forgiving her father after all.
Han: Think about it. If he’d have been a nice guy, do you think he’d have ever gotten that close to Palpatine? Maybe that was your father’s destiny all along, to save the galaxy just like his mother thought he would—well, maybe not just like she thought. But he did save it.
- Everyone Has Standards: Downplayed. Corrupt Politician Threkin Horm is selling the Killik Twilight painting rather than returning it to his people, but he admits that the idea of the Empire having it rubs him the wrong way. Of course, he's still willing to sell it to them until Leia blackmails him.
- Every Scar Has a Story: A few of the podracers from The Phantom Menace appear, still working at the old track, which is now used for swoop racing since podracing is banned. Teemto Pagalies is happy to reminisce about all of the races he received various injuries in.
- Eye Scream: A recording Leia finds reveals that Watto was temporarily blinded by a bright flash during a fight with Cliegg Lars over buying Shmi's freedom.
- Freudian Excuse:
- Internal Reveal: Leia finds out lots of information about her father's childhood that the readers are likely to know but that she's absolutely floored by. It is also revealed that Leia finally learned to forgive her father.
- Interquel: The novel is set during the year between The Courtship of Princess Leia and Heir to the Empire.
- The Missus and the Ex: Kitster's wife Tamora helps Han and Leia in their quest and is chagrined when she has to meet with Kitster's ex-wife Ulda in the process. Tamora met Kitster while working for Ulda as a waitress, and there's no lost love between them.
- Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: Not explicitly stated, but at the start it's mentioned that Leia doesn't want children herself out of fear of her own family history. Learning more about Anakin's own family history, particularly when she learns about the fate of her paternal grandmother, helps Leia overcome her own fears about becoming a parent.
- Pull the I.V.: Han rips out a saline IV drip by accident, leaping out of bed when he thinks the hotel room where he's recovering from dehydration has been infiltrated by stormtroopers—they're actually just in the lobby, which Leia has under surveillance. He doesn't even realize his arm is bleeding until Leia points it out to him.
- Slave Liberation:
- Han encounters a former Weequay slave named Grunts whom he won in a card game many years ago. Han freed Grunts and offered him a job as a cargo hauler, but Chewbacca and Grunts didn't get along, so they went their separate ways.
- A video recording of Cliegg Lars freeing his future wife Shmi from slavery is shown.
- Torture Is Ineffective:
- An incognito Grand Admiral Thrawn criticizes a stormtrooper commander for torturing civilians for information. When the stormie talks back, Thrawn clubs him to the ground with his rifle, then asks the squad leader if that made him like Thrawn any better. The Empire's new doctrine, according to Thrawn, isn't brutality, it's efficiency.
- As part of the sacrifice, the Tusken Raiders do this to Kitster by breaking his fingers for every time the moss painting needed to be watered. Luckily Leia and Han arrive in time before Kitster met the same fate as Shmi Skywalker.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Possibly the novel's main theme, specifically for Anakin.
- Thirsty Desert: Tatooine, of course. All of it. Han goes chasing after Kitster and the painting on an old podracer engine with a seat attached, but becomes mired in a sandstorm and nearly dies of dehydration.
- True Companions: Kitster not only understands why Anakin became Darth Vader, but he also believes that there was good in Anakin. Kitster also helps Leia to understand her father in many ways that she didn’t know how.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Han and Leia are both helped and hindered in the mission by three Squib traders and petty crooks, only one of whom is a girl.
- Villains Out Shopping: The Empire only gets involved in the plot because the largely offscreen Grand Admiral Thrawn is an art lover who is interested in buying Killik Twilight for his collection. Once it's removed from auction, though, his men try to take it by force.
- We Will Not Use Stage Make-Up in the Future: But we often do in Star Wars. Leia and Han disguise themselves as nonhumans, via skin colouring and prosthetics; since they pick Twi'lek and Devaronian disguises, they even get to hide some handy tools inside the lekku (head-tentacles) and horns of their respective guises.
- What Could Have Been: In-Universe, Leia wonders what might have been if Anakin had been given his mother's holojournal by the Larses as she intended.
