I first read Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy when it was originally published in the early 1990s, and while I retained positive memories of the books I was content with leaving them as a positive reading experience in my memory. The release of Episode IX in the film series, however, led me to revisit what was once the “official” sequels to Lucas’ movies, to see how they measured up to my recollections of them.

 

Reading them after having viewed the trilogy that replaced them helped to deepen my appreciation for Zahn’s work. Faced with the stricture that he had to work with the survivors of the original film trilogy (something that unfortunately wasn’t imposed on J. J. Abrams as well) but benefiting from a lack of accumulated backstory to accommodate, Zahn creates an effective adventure filled with interesting characters and an enjoyable plot. At the heart of it is Grand Admiral Thrawn, the last great leader of the Empire, who five years after the battle of Endor is determined to rebuild the imperium. His most effective weapon in this effort is knowledge, particularly of the Empire’s secret resources and hidden information. Drawing upon that knowledge, he begins to challenge the New Republic in ways that threaten the existence of that fragile and overstretched organization, which has barely been able to start rebuilding after its years-long fight against Emperor Palpatine’s tyranny.

 

In Thrawn Zahn provides an effective main antagonist to his central characters. Yet it is the original trio of Luke, Leia, and Han that are at the heart of his novel. Here he benefits greatly from their development in Lucas’s films, which allows him to focus in his first novel on building up the post-Empire world and the characters central to his story. This includes not just Thrawn, but the insane Dark Jedi clone Joruus C’baoth, the calculating smuggler Talon Karrde, and the cunning and driven Mara Jade as well, all of whom went on to become fan favorites. Here they are introduced to readers in a way that hints at a clearly-defined past, rather than presented with undefined backstories that would be filled in randomly and in an incoherent manner. This is undoubtedly a reason why they became as popular as they did.

 

When combined with a coherent plot that could play out over the course of all three novels, Zahn provides Star Wars fans with one of the greatest stories of the entire franchise. In this he benefited from all of the advantages that I’ve described, yet it is a testament to his skills as an author that he took these elements and crafted them into a tale that balances politics, mystery, and adventure in ways that surpass most of the “canon” produced since. It’s unfortunate that so much of Zahn’s achievement in creating the post-Original Trilogy Star Wars universe has been undone by the later movies, especially considering how poorly they measure up to Zahn’s work. While turning Zahn’s novels into films was never possible, they certainly demonstrate how to do do Star Wars storytelling right.

My disappointment with the recent Star Wars movie led me to revist the Thrawn trilogy that was supposed to be the original stand-in for Episodes 7-9. While I understand why they couldn't be used as the material for the movies, rereading them just underscores for me how they embody everything that I find missing from the films, including character development and a compelling story that develops its mysteries naturally without resorting to silly plot devices. *Sigh*

So I got interviewed as a book reviewer as part of an ongoing feature over at BlondeWriteMore.  I think it went pretty well- I'm talking about me, after all- but I can't help but feel like I should've fleshed it out a bit more.  Ah, well. 

 

(reblogged from BlondeWriteMore)

 

 

Welcome to my weekly series – Book Reviewer Interviews. 

 

I believe that book reviewers hold valuable insight for us writers and their answers to my interview questions make intetesting blog posts.

 

Please welcome my new book reviewer friend John Green and author of the blog Illuminite Caliginosus

 

John, thanks so much for sitting in my interview chair. Please tell us about yourself.

 

First one’s always the hardest. Lessee now- born, raised and still living in Brooklyn, NY. Wanted to be either a baseball player or paleontologist when I was little. Ended up joining the Marines instead, traveled the globe and can’t really say a bad word about my tour. To paraphrase Malcolm X: the plan was theirs, any mistakes were mine.

Worked for Virgin USA for over thirteen years; had a blast and met a lot of good people and had some great experiences. It was like getting paid for hanging out with your friends! If there ever was such a thing as a good retail job, that was it.

 

The last few years I’ve been in the Sports & Entertainment field; blogging and reviewing was something I kinda fell into, and I really enjoy doing it. I’ve met a lot of good and… interesting… people during my online career.

 

I’m also a member of Amazon’s Vine program and a former Top 1000 Reviewer on the site.

 

Been an avid & voracious reader all my life; I was that nerdy kid who’d always get “volunteered” to enter trivia contests, spelling bees, etc, and I always had to take something into the bathroom with me to read (once upon a time that wasn’t always seen as a good thing. Neither was being nerdy). One of these days I’ll finally finish my own novel and then get to see how the other half lives.

 

Anyone who wishes to contact me for any reason can do so via: Email / Booklikes /
WordPress / Twitter / Pinterest

 

What made you start reviewing books?

 

During my time at Virgin USA I was the Magazines Buyer for the NY stores, getting my hands on more books and reading material than I’d thought possible (rubs hands gleefully).

 

**The store was located in the same building where Random House had their offices, and I was on good terms with the building guys so they always let me know when RH would dump out books. Discovered a lot of new authors that way- good, bad and ugly. I’ll always be proud to call myself a Dumpster Diver.**

 

**Our UPS driver, Joe, offered to grab a few books for me while he was delivering up there, and part of the stack he brought back included the first three books of GRRM’s Song of Ice & Fire- all hardcovers with original artwork.**

 

After Virgin USA closed I spent a lot of time on Amazon buying even more books. I got in the habit of sifting through the reviews for recommendations, etc, and picked up on a few individuals I felt I could rely upon not to steer me wrong, like EA Solinas, Chibineko and others. I’d always been the one my friends and family would go to for a critique because they knew I was hard but fair, and it finally occurred to me that I should write a few reviews myself- sort of give back a little and have my say. Next thing I know I’m making steady progress through the ranks and I wondered what I could do with this.

 

How many books do you review a month?

 

It varies. I’ve slowed down over the past couple years; used to aim for maybe 5-10 a month, right now maybe half that. One of my goals is to clear out some of my TBR pile; I know- we ALL say that, but my work schedule affords me a lot of free time, so I have a good shot at it. I’ve still got stuff going back to the 2010 BEA I haven’t checked out yet.

What is your selection process for reviewing a book?

 

Nothing set in stone. The easy answer is “whatever catches my attention”, but defining that is the trick. I’m a very eclectic reader; I’ve always been chiefly into Fantasy/Sci-fi but right now I’m really into Steam/Diesel/Atompunk- though I haven’t seen much of the latter two so far. There’s also Lovecraftian Horror, which I think’s been under-appreciated but seems to be enjoying a renaissance now. Guess we can thank the oversaturated PNR/UF genres for that.

 

Both the blurb and the cover are key, of course- you never get a second chance at that first impression. There’s been quite a few eye candy covers that made me stop to check them out, only to get let down by the synopsis. So many books nowadays, especially in the YA genre, immediately drop the ball from sounding like carbon copies of each other that it’s hard to find anything worth investing time in. I swear you can choose ten, TEN, YA novels at random and the blurbs will all sound the same! How many Chosen Ones with Destined/Fated/Soulmates stories does the human race need? When’s the next Alice in Wonderland/Brothers Grimm ripoff due out? Will this end up being Gregory Maguire’s enduring legacy?

 

For me, it’s gotta be something at least a little different; whatever the genre it has to be something that makes it appear like the author actually had something to say- a story they wanted to tell and not just aping the latest trend to try and make a quick buck. And that gets harder to find every day.

 

A good one was Pagan by Andrew Chapman. It’s a PNR/UF/Horror series about vampires having existed for centuries but only certain agencies like the Catholic Church knew of them. All the books, movies, etc, served as misdirection and softening up for when they finally emerged and basically sucker-punched the entire human race. Some countries tried to make nice and assimilate them True Blood-style while others said F-that! Even the werewolves sided with humanity against the vamps. Made for a refreshing change of pace from sparkle-pires and woobie-wolves.

 

Read the rest of the interview here.

This book kept surprising me. Loved it, and just found that I have the second volume!! Onwards to Dark Force Rising!

Buddy read with my fellow Star Wars fanatics over at Fantasy Buddy Reads.

You guys have no idea how excited I was to read about my favorite Star Wars characters. I hyped myself up for two weeks in preparation for reading this book.

So......it's absolutely crazy that I'm only able to give this three stars. I'm going to try my best to explain this unfortunate three star rating.


What I Liked
Obviously the characters. The new characters that I really enjoyed were Thrawn and Mara. I actually liked Mara's parts in the book over most of the others. She was very mysterious and I love mystery. Artoo and Threepio had their predictable cute banter that made me laugh a few times. Did anyone else find it weird that Threepio and Artoo weren't spelled as C3PO and R2D2?



Those guys are so cute. I think I could read an entire book just about those two.


What I Disliked
I felt like everything was a bit flat. I wasn't immersed in the story like I would have liked. I've never read fan fiction before (I'm assuming that's what this is called) and this may be a normal thing. I wanted to get inside of the characters minds more. Characters always fall flat for me when there's not much character building going on. Even though I know these characters very well, I still need more to stay interested. This may be a thing with fan fiction and for that reason it may not be for me. I really needed a bit more action as well.

Another thing I noticed is that some of the characters seemed a bit off. The best example of this is Luke. Luke didn't even seem like the same person to me. He gave off major wuss vibes. He seemed a bit whiny and made some very dumb decisions.





I think I'll give a different Star Wars author a try. I'm going to start one of the series that has all new characters so that I don't have any expectations. There's a ton of books out there, so surely there's something that I'm bound to love.