The second volume of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy picks up the story immediately after the events at the end of the first book in the series, Heir to the Empire, with the New Republic reeling from the blows inflicted on it by the Empire’s last remaining Grand Admiral. With the ships of the Sluis Van shipyards heavily damaged from the Empire’s attempt to steal them and Admiral Ackbar stripped of his command in the face of accusations of corruption, Luke, Leia, and Han react to the growing threat facing them. As Han and Luke try to unravel the effort to frame Ackbar, Leia and Chewbacca travel to Endor to meet with one of her attempted kidnappers in the hope of shifting their allegiance. Meanwhile the smuggler Talon Karrde hopes to leverage his way out of the bounty Thrawn has placed on him by offering a valuable secret: the location of the legendary “Dark Force,” a fleet of derelict warships that could tip the balance in the war between the Empire and the New Republic.

In following up his first volume Zahn takes his story of the post-Original Trilogy movies in two key directions. The first is the introduction of the Dark Force fleet, a MacGuffin that serves as a logical goal for the novel’s main characters given some of the goals and motivations the author introduces in the first book. Yet the race for the Dark Force fleet is just one part of a novel that explores further the elements Zahn introduced in Heir to the Empire. Story lines such as Joruus C’baoth’s ongoing efforts to corrupt Luke and Mara Jade’s quest to kill the Jedi Knight play out over the course of the book, providing development without resolution. It makes for an effective middle entry in the trilogy, with enough developments and resolutions to satisfy the reader while propelling them towards the final volume of the series.

Day 18: Name 5 books that are on your mind right now. Seriously, just do it. (Freestyle)

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I've been having crazy mad re-reading urges all year for lots of different books, so that's what I'm thinking about right now. It's super hard to resist reading all the books I want to reread. I'm not even going to bother listing them out here. There are too many, but this is one of the series/authors I've been craving.

I discovered one of Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy books in my library shortly after I discovered Star Wars (at the age of sixteen, mind you). This led me to the Barnes & Noble shelf full of NOTHING BUT STAR WARS and my brain FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. I spent the next three years buying two or three Star Wars expanded universe books every weekend.

The Timothy Zahn Thrawn Trilogy were the second EU books I read, because a BN bookseller was kind enough to tell me they were "awesome." Unfortunately, they also set me up for disappointment where pretty much all the other EU books were concerned (although I really loved I, Jedi, the X-Wing books, and the A.C. Crispin Han Solo trilogy). I didn't get to read Specter of the Past or Vision of the Future until my freshman year of college, but I remember absolutely devouring both of them. I especially thought it was interesting how they switched my interest from Han Solo to Luke Skywalker, and I love love LOVE Mara Jade.

I've done a lot of growing as a reader and a writer since I first discovered these books, so I'd be interested to see how well they hold up. Maybe next year?