Complaint first, thrawn suffers from the same problem as Sherlock homes in that their genius is a contrivance of the author. I.e. they know perfect things because they’re written to.
Other than that the books are well written & paced. Amongst the best Star Wars books there are.
Everyone is gushing over Thrawn, and I agree, but I want to give some attention to how Luke, Han, and Leia all acted and talked like they did in the movies.
The books captured Luke’s optimistic and patient attitude, Han being clever yet rash and coating it all in a veneer of half baked one liners, and Leia seeing right through Han’s BS and in being very practical.
Being very early EU material, the books have such a different tone than works made after the universe was fleshed out. The Jedi order was treated as something so long gone that even records of it were hard to come by, the clone wars were vague and the implications about them set a very different picture than what was later established, and even the sith as a coherent order weren’t thought of yet- instead there were Jedi and fallen Jedi.
The feel of the books rode such a perfect line, being easy to follow but compelling.
These are the sequels in my mind regardless of what Disney says. They will probably be pulled from further for future TV and film. Thrawn is arguably the second most interesting antagonist after Vader.
And they completely missed the mark in Ashoka.
Ahsoka is the Jedi. Ashoka is the Maurya emperor who became a Buddhist.
Thrown is easily the most dangerous villain in Star Wars, which will be critical in the success of the Mandoverse. It’s exciting that of all the characters to bring over from the EU, they chose Thrawn.
Although I could have stood for some more Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn.
Thrawn is one of the few fiction villains who is also written as an effective leader. It makes him scarier.
And his ending is perfect.
Even though most of his troops are very loyal, his downfall comes from one of the many people he abused during his rise to power.
That he is a very different threat than Vader and the Emperor helps preserve the accomplishments of the heroes in the movies. He doesn’t feel like he is undoing events and resetting the setting back to a status quo. Thrawn is a character that exists in the natural evolution of the setting.
I really love how his plans come from being in the underdog position. The first book especially is him making a clever play for resources while having almost none of his own.
It is a sort of pulp science fiction that was very typical of it’s time. It’s not literature, but it is a fun read. Timothy Zahn has a degree in physics so his work is always reasonably accurate, especially his more recent work. He’s one of my favorite science fiction authors.
I highly recommend the trilogy. It’s a worthy addition to your Star Wars novel collection.
