Tag: timothy-zahn • BookLikes

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review 2020-04-29 17:24

Book #888 - 357,175 Pages Read

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must admit this wasn't as good as I thought it would be....

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text 2020-04-20 14:33

Reading progress update: I've read 186 out of 470 pages.

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text 2020-04-17 14:11

Reading progress update: I've read 133 out of 470 pages.

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review 2020-01-01 21:40

The Empire's last gambit

markk

A decade after the death of the brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire is but a shadow of its former self. Concluding that defeat by the New Republic is inevitable, Thrawn's protégé and successor as the Empire's supreme military commander, deicides that the best option remaining is to seek peace with the New Republic. Yet a corrupt Grand Moff has other plans. Allying with a con man and a former royal guardsman, the trio foster the belief that Thrawn has returned and is fomenting civil war within the fragile New Republic by reopening old wounds that had been long neglected in the face of the Imperial threat. With politics riven by tensions and riots breaking out on dozens of worlds, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa Solo, and Han Solo work desperately to discover the perpetrators behind a decades-old crime. Soon a race is underway, one that will end in the truth — or the collapse of everything that they have worked for.

In this book, the first of Timothy Zahn's "Hand of Thrawn" duology, the author makes a welcome return to the Star Wars franchise. His book displays all of the strengths of his original Thrawn trilogy, with intricate plotting, exciting action, and memorable characters. The story zips along nicely, though it suffers somewhat from Zahn's decision to focus on setting up events for their resolution in the second book. Though it makes for a less satisfying reading experience than his previous series, it is nonetheless an entertaining work that will leave readers eager to pick up the concluding volume the moment they get to the last page.

science fiction star wars

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review 2019-12-31 16:34

The trilogy that resuscitated a franchise

markk

Timothy Zahn opens the final volume of his Thrawn trilogy a month after the events of his previous book, Dark Force Rising. Having successfully captured the vessels of the Dark Force fleet and staffed them with his new army of clones, Grand Admiral Thrawn begins a relentless campaign of conquest against the New Republic. As world after world falls to the Imperial forces, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo search in vain for the location of Thrawn's cloning facilities while Leia Organa Solo prepares to give birth to her twin children with Han. And with an Imperial target on his back Talon Karrde tries to organize his fellow smugglers into a force allied with the New Republic against the Empire. Yet the key to turning the tide rests with Mara Jade, the former agent of Emperor Palpatine who has just recovered from weeks of medical treatment. But can she convince the New Republic to trust her before Thrawn rebuilds the Empire once more?

Having introduced a range of characters and plot threads in the previous two entries in his series, Zahn faces the challenge in his concluding volume of bringing his story to a satisfying conclusion that maintains the quality of his earlier books. This he does, thanks in large measure to maintaining a narrative consistency that is often missing from later entries in the franchise. While diehard fans of the original trilogy may be dissatisfied with how Zahn marginalizes some of the main characters from the movies in favor of his original creations (particularly Han Solo, who spends much of the book in the background of events), it results in a much richer universe from which so much would grow. And this, in retrospect, is the book's greatest achievement, as in combination with its preceding volumes it revived what was until then a fading franchise, sparking the production of so much of the media that followed. It is difficult to imagine a greater acknowledgement of Zahn's success than that legacy.

science fiction star wars