Looking Back: The Grand Admiral Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

For my last review, I'm taking a look back to books from the older days of Star Wars, the Grand Admiral Thrawn trilogy. This series, written by Timothy Zahn, first came out in 1991 and is generally credited with relaunching the Star Wars Expanded Universe. If we're being entirely honest about the old EU it was definitely of mixed quality ranging from such debacles as the Jedi Prince series to such weird installments as Splinter of the Mind's Eye. But the Thrawn trilogy, consisting of Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command, was widely regarded as one of the best installments of the old EU.

The books are set about five years after the Battle of Endor. The New Republic has taken the galactic capital of Coruscant and is in the process of transitioning to a permanent government. The Empire, divided after the loss of the Emperor and Darth Vader, has been slowly losing ground in the war. But this soon changes when Grand Admiral Thrawn, the only non-human Grand Admiral in Imperial History, returns from beyond the edge of the known galaxy to take command of the Imperial remnants. From the bridge of the Star Destroyer Chimera with the assistance of Captain Gilad Pellaeon, Thrawn stops the New Republic's advance and puts the Republic in a fight for survival.

I originally read these books a long, long time ago when I was in seventh grade, but I remember these books as being fairly good. Coming back to them about fifteen years later and after all the events of the prequels and then the Disney take over and reboot I will say that it's a little weird to come back to the books after all this time. Especially with the cloning plot within this series and the insane Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth when we finally found out what the Clone Wars were, the series feels a little weird to come back to. It's almost like reading quaint older science fiction that used what was at the time cutting scientific theory which has since been discredited or reanalyzed.

The thing that I liked the least about these books was how the characters kept referencing things in the movies. I feel like the people who are likely to read the books are the sorts of people who have seen the movies and so we don't necessarily need reminders of what happened in the movies. Maybe it would be necessary for people who hadn't seen the movies, but if you haven't seen Star Wars then why the heck are you reading a Star Wars book?

But I think where this book really shines is where Zahn introduces new characters and ideas into the series. I will say that Thrawn and Pellaeon were a lot more ruthless than I remembered, which fit them as Imperial officers. But there are plenty of other characters such as Borsk Fey'lya, Garm Bel Iblis, Talon Karrde, and of course Mara Jade. The book does rely fairly heavily on the movie characters: Han, Leia, Luke, Chewbacca, Lando, as well as more minor characters such as Mon Mothma, Wedge Antilles, and Admiral Ackbar. But the introduction of new characters into the series means that we're not just seeing the adventures of Han, Luke, and Leia over and over again.

Overall as dated as these books feel now, and despite the imperfections, I actually think these books are pretty good and worth taking the time to check out. They may no longer be canon, but I think they're fun Star Wars adventures that build on the universe and take it into new directions.

- Kalpar