“The Search for Grubba the Hutt” (Star Wars Missions #6) by Dave Wolverton

This is number 6 in the “Star Wars Missions” series of books, which are a combination “Choose Your Own Adventure” and very simple role playing game. They don’t explain how to play in this book, but from what I can tell you create a character with certain attributes and roll a 6-sided die against those attributes from time to time in the book. Depending on the choices you make and the results of your rolls, the story will follow different paths.

This is a Scholastic book, and it’s under 80 pages long, so it’s pretty obvious that it’s intended for kids. There’s a pretty good summary of the plot here, but in short, Jabba’s nephew Grubba has been kidnapped, and Han Solo has to rescue him or face the consequences. I’ve read conflicting information about whether Hutts reproduce asexually, or are just hermaphroditic (possessing qualities of both sexes), so I’m not sure if it actually makes sense for Jabba to have a “nephew.” Maybe these are just the closest human terms to describe relationships that don’t really exist in our experience. Or maybe Lucasfilm just doesn’t care that much about consistency…

In any case, the thing I find most interesting about this book is the similarity it has to the Clone Wars movie. In both cases, a young Hutt relative of Jabba’s is kidnapped and must be returned to him. Of course Rotta is a baby while Grubba in this book is more of an adolescent, but considering that this book is from 1998, it’s interesting to see these kinds of parallels.