I read it a few Sundays back as an afternoon diversion, and I can completely understand your frustration. All the drama in the book comes from Leia finding out about her past, the scenes of her with Shmi's diary are the real heart of the book, but no one wants to write a book about someone reading a book, so they build this whole action-adventure on top of it that sort of just gets in the way.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't skim past a lot of Han and Leia's journey to get through that book.
Still, I thought the prequel-OT were tied together about as good as they could be here, though it does point out a lot of bigger issues (ie does the whole Galaxy know Anakin became Vader? Do they all know Vader was Luke's daddy?)