Heir to the Empire

I remember going to a friend’s house as a kid and seeing some Star Wars books on his family’s bookshelves.  I remember being confused by that since I knew there were only three movies, and the titles on the spines of these books had nothing to do with the movies except the “Star Wars” part.  I did not understand at all that there was an entire fictional world that nerds had created beyond the original three movies.  It really didn’t interest me, so I didn’t think much of it until more recently, when some people in my family got into Star Wars and re-opened the question of what is now referred to as something like the “expanded universe” (Star Wars nerds somewhere will happily tell me I’ve used incorrect terminology, I’m sure).  As I became acquainted with Star Wars Rebels, I was introduced to a villain named Thrawn, who was a great bad guy in the animated series, and I didn’t know that he had actually existed for a long time in some of those books I saw at that friend’s house.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (ISBN: 978-0-593-35876-4) is the first in a trilogy (seems writers and publishers have long found trilogies to be very marketable) featuring a blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid alien as the brains behind what is left of the Empire after Luke Skywalker and the Rebellion had conquered the Empire in the movies.  Thrawn is written as an incredibly smart military and political genius who not only knows the art of war and diplomacy, but is also a student of culture, particularly the arts.  He uses this knowledge to help him understand his enemies and stay one step ahead of them.  The book also includes movie favorites like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Lando Calrissian, and others.  They have their own adventures fighting off remnants of the Empire (commanded by Thrawn), dealing with pirates (the underworld always being a Star Wars staple), and fighting with new enemies like the ape-like Rukh or the human Mara Jade.  Rukh and his species are ruthless killers, but not quite up to the task of defeating Wookies, and Leia ends up making an uneasy truce with one of the aliens since they are all loyal to Darth Vader and Leia is his daughter.  Luke Skywalker, Han, Lando, and the famous droids R2-D2 and C-3PO are captures by Mara Jade and other pirates, spend time negotiating with them, and eventually get away by banding together with the pirates to fight off Imperial forces aided by an imposter Jedi.  The last big event in the book is Thrawn’s forces attempting to attack a freight depot and make off with hundreds of ships for his depleted Imperial navy.  With Luke Skywalker’s aid, that attack is more or less thwarted, but since the books is the first in a series, it feels very much left open and unresolved.

I thought the book was OK.  Other Star Wars books I’ve read, like the Ahsoka book, were better.  I found that this one simply didn’t hold my attention.  To me, that’s saying something because I came in already thinking Thrawn was a pretty cool character.  Maybe it’s because there were other storylines?  I was also seriously underwhelmed with the writing.  I thought it was to repetitive and cliché.  One does not need to hear about the same facial expression every time a character thinks or does the same thing.  The reader gets it after the first couple times.  I thought that maybe a different way of saying things or some different words could’ve been used.  I know it’s painfully obvious when a writer has been using a thesaurus, but a little variety couldn’t hurt.  I think I wasn’t too impressed with the sections about the old Star Wars characters.  This story would’ve been better had it been all new, not the writer’s take on characters that every person has their own ideas about.  Fans who are all in will likely like the book, but for us who just kind of hover on the edges of Star Wars fandom, it was forgettable.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.