Oceania Anybody else think Grand Admiral Thrawn is so damn awesome?

There will always be detractors but come on. Unbelievable strategies, political parrying, blue skin.
What do you think?

Karrde....I mean Hart out

 

Thrawn is probably the most interesting and original EU character, I reckon. But then Zahn is probably one of the better EU writers too.

 

BAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yeah! Great thread dude!

 

But he's just so darn blue, isn't he?

Ams

 

not as blue as the cookie monster

 

Syndic_Hart you do realise that he is a fictional character yeah?

 

He's definitely one of the best EU characters, which really isn't saying so much...

 

No, SoE, only YOU are smart enough to realise that; I'm sure S_H thinks he's real.



Yeah, Thrawn is a cool character. I pretty much loathe all the Star Wars books after reading a good number, and with the exception of the Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, I think Star Wars would have been better off limiting the amount of EU material available.

So, in effect, we'd have quality (Zahn) over quantity (NJO).

S_M, you're just saying that because most EU characters lack depth, aren't you?

E_S

 

Well, I found Troy Denning a good writer. I won?t speak for other NJO authors, though .

Ams

 

Zahn is good and I like Allston as well.
The Wraiths were so-so but his NJO duology were good - if you ask me anyway.

Syndic "Perfectly comfortable with my identity" Hart

 

Well E_S, the argument could be made that the movie characters weren't that deep to begin with, but I actually agree with you wholeheartedly.

Zahn wrote the best EU, he actually injected a lot of originality into his series, and made it interesting reading. Parts of it almost read like a top-notch spy novel.

Of course, my favourite part of his writing was the duology he released years later, set 10 years after his original books, and effectively trashing all the crap treatment his characters had recieved from other authors in that time.

 

I'd have to say my favourite author would be Stackpole, then Allston and then Zahn. If Troy Denning is the author who wrote 'Star by Star', then I think he's pretty good as well.
I also like 'Shatterpoint', so Matthew Woodring Stover would also have to be one of my favourites. I did not like 'Traitor' (I think that's what it was called), however.
Steve Perry and Steve Barnes make a very good team, because they use the characters and EU cocepts/aliens etc. extremely well.

So...I like the EU. But aspects of the NJO were pushing it too far. And many EU books just should not have been conceptualised in the first place. But each to their own...

 

" did not like 'Traitor'....."

Even the demise of The Ganner couldn't salvage it for you?

I really liked Traitor, it was quite cerebral in comparison to most others in the series. I think Stover is probably the best NJO author and I'm looking forward to his RotS novelisation too.

 

Well, from memory the novel was split into two parts...or something...the first part I really did not like, but the part with Ganner (who as a character I quite liked) was well written. So that part I liked...but it didn't really rise to my expectations. I stopped reading the series after Reunion, which i thought was just terrible.
I have been, however, very much impressed with MedStar I: Battle Surgeons, as both Barnes and Perry keep a very close eye on the detail of their work.

 

I think i've read about 1 1/2 of the Zahn EU trillogy, yes i think Thrawn was very strategic and well composed as a character!!!

The cloned Jedi, i forget his name, in the books should be slipped into ep3 as a nice connection, but i highly doubt it to happen!

 

Well, Zahn's version of cloning and the one GL has finally settled on are two very different things...

 

Well, that's not entirely true...

Thank god for retrospective rationalisation. If you re-read the Zahn books, which I just did, the only real issues that contradict continuity are related to timeframes; Zahn supposes that the Empire was much older than it was. Some of the Jedi stuff isn't really accurate, touched upon when explaining C'Baoth, but the cloning stuff..?

The Offical Site's Entry for Wayland says:

Mount Tantiss was located in Wayland's northern hemisphere, near the edge of its main continent. Rediscovered by Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Mount Tantiss storehouse contained the tools he needed to retake the Core Worlds from the New Republic. In addition to a working prototype of a modern cloaking shield, Mount Tantiss hid thousands of Spaarti cloning cylinders. The Spaarti cylinders -- refinements of Kaminoan technology developed on Cartao during the Clone Wars -- became a nearly inexhaustible source of new stormtroopers for Thrawn to use.

Ahhhhhhhh... deus ex machina...


E_S

 

I wonder how much the writers get payed to fill in the gaps

 

Well, it's admittedly been many years since I read them, but I don't remember them being called Kaminoan, and there was something to do with the force in growing them...

 

Yeah, that I remember. Something to do with the Force and ysalamiri (I think they're called...). I think it made the rate of production quicker or something...

 

Thrawn used ysalamiri to block the force which made their growth faster and less "insanity-prone".

They were called Spaarti cylinders, S_M, and the offical site is saying they were refinments of Kaminoan technology. It's pure luck that the AotC cloning stuff doesn't contradict Zahn, not prescience on his behalf.

I just picked up on your recommendation the "Hand of Thrawn" duology, which is OK thus far. I can see what you meant about the character "reconstruction."

E_S

 

Yeah, I don't think the Thrawn trilogy mentioned anything about Kamino at all, that's just a bit of continuity fixing on LFL's part. Then again, if they can fix the Death Star problem, they can fix just about anything.

 

They fixed the Death Star problem? There was a Death Star problem?

I just ignore the EU, works for me

And yeah, I got a good laugh out of the first Thrawn Duolgy book, it was like Zahn just telling other authors to back off from his property and don't mess with it again, it was very well done.

I also seem to remember comments by Zahn on wishing he knew more about what the prequels would have had in store, he said something about the idea of a race of cloners being more intersting than just finding some cylinders and having the Empire start using them.

 

Yea, he's pretty hot. Except for the red eyes.. And I did enjoy those books he was in. I haven't read much else I don't think, just a couple here and there, and I certainly don't have patience enough to read such a large series as NJO, I'm not interested enough!

 

Thrawn is rather impressive, arguably the best creation to have come out of the entirety of the EU--made entirely so by Zahn, who for me just stands head and shoulders over any other EU author in creating books within the Star Wars universe.

As for the contunity errors, what annoys me is that after LFL insisted on certain storylines being avoided (presumably for continuity reasons) George just went like a bulldozer in a china shop through the EU anyway. And I use the term bulldozer advisedly: he didn't completely demolish the EU universe. He just cut a swathe through it so the inconsistencies were there glaring out at one another.

Oh, and one last point on the Spaarti cylinders: as originally designed, the Spaarti cylinders didn't have ysalamiri attached to them. The trilogy clearly makes reference to the fact that it was due to clone madness that the Spaarti cylinder system was abandoned. Thrawn was the first one to understand that the arrhythmic resonance in the Force caused by a clone's creation was the cause of the madness, and as such he installed ysalamiri on each cylinder to push back the Force, allowing the clone to mature without madness at a much faster rate.