Heir to the Empire Week Day 5: Closing Thoughts

Time to move to a close on this whole thing. This is going to sort of be in the vein of my regular entries.

Things introduced to the EU (that I didn't already mention):

Vornskr: Force hunting doggies. Named in German. Weird.

Ysalamir: Anti-force salamanders. 

Noghri: Thrawn's kind of hobgoblin-esque bodyguards. I think one of the reasons I like HttE better than the rest of the series is that they're fairly minimally involved. Zahn goes all in on the cliche primitive honorable warrior race schtick, and doesn't even execute it that well. (I will complain about the end of The Last Command when I get there.)

Action # transports: Would become the generic freighter of choice for much of the EU.

Winter!: Missed her in my character roundup. Probably holds some kind of record for most appearances by an EU original non-Jedi character, given how early she shows up, how often other authors use her, and how she manages not to die.

Plot Summary:

Grand Admiral Thrawn is (as his name implies) probably the best admiral the Imperial Navy ever had. He's off in the Unknown Regions during the Battle of Endor, so he doesn't die with most of the other senior Imperials. He's sort of around when the Empire is too busy civil warring to stop the Rebellion from forming the New Republic, he eventually comes back about six years after Return of the Jedi. He does a series of 5-D Chess/Just-As-Planned attacks to wrestle some systems from New Republic control, culminating in capturing the Mount Tantiss base/storehouse/treasure room on planet Wayland. There he finds three things he needs for his plans: 1. A usable cloaking device (from the period of Star Wars where these were pretty rare). 2. Cloning tech (the first pass at how the Clone Wars worked). 3. A Jedi Knight (clone) Joruus C'baoth (clones get an extra vowel in their names). He also goes to Myrkr, home of Talon Karrde's smugglers. He picks of some Ysalamir to use to protect himself from C'baoth (who is doing he clone madness thing) along with Luke and any other Jedi kicking around. And he steals some drilling/mining robots from Lando's mining operation.

At one point, he almost catches Luke. Luke makes an emergency jump that strands his X-Wing and gets picked up my Mara Jade, who hates him for reasons that will be more fully explained in the rest of the trilogy (short version, she's an "Emperor's Hand" a Force using Imperial super secret agent). He sneaks around, Thrawn tries to find him, he escapes, Mara shoots his ship down, they do the "enemies forced to rely on each other to survive" thing in the jungle.

Leia runs around on a B-plot trying to avoid being captured (C'Baoth wants Jacen and Jaina, still in her womb) and figure out the identity of a traitor in the New Republic. Bothan Borsk Fey'lya tries to frame Ackbar for it.

Eventually, Thrawn has everything he needs to try to raid the Sluis Van shipyards. He uses the cloaking device to sneak his attack force of mining robots in, drills into the shipyards there, and tries to take them over with clones being coordinated by C'baoth. Han, Lando, Luke, and Rogue Sqaudron manage to stop him from taking over the fleet (which still suffers substantial losses). Thrawn retreats as the New Republic tries to figure out what he's up to, and the heroes find out Admiral Ackbar has been arrested for treason.

Review: 6/5

I've gone on repeatedly this week about how big of a deal HttE is in the EU. Not only is it the book that kicked off the 90s golden age, but it does more work for establishing how the New Republic era Star Wars universe works than almost anything else. Likewise, I've also talked about how its a good book. Thrawn is a fun new villain, and Zahn quickly gives him a solid entourage in the form of Palleon, C'Baoth, and Rukh (his Nohgri bodyguard). Karrde and Mara are effective guest stars here (they get pushed in and out a bit later in the series) and all the plots actually more or less connect. Thrawn is actually effective here. Even when he loses, he manages to hurt the New Republic. And his plans actually make sense. No "pretending to blockage Coruscant with phantom asteroids" or other nonsense we'll see later. Zahn's writing is snappy and moves along well. All the pieces fit together well. This is an easy recommendation for just about anyone. It's light enough on the sci-fi that most people will be able to tolerate it, doesn't require in depth knowledge of Star Wars, and is well written all around.

IGABFAT: 3X! Leia to Han when the Nohgri try to abduct them, again when they go looking for a slicer (the Star Warsism for hacker), and Han to Lando when they're dealing with Karrde and Jade.

Time for a break before next Friday when I move on to Dark Force Rising (no relation to Dark Forces or The Black Fleet Crisis.)