Books Thrawn - New canon Star Wars book by Timothy Zahn (Spring 2017)

Preordering NOW!!!

 

This is seriously the best comment on this, period!

 

LORD NO

Getting rid of the Vong and the NJO was the best part of Disneys reboot.

The Vong belong in Star Trek and crappy late 90s sci fi novels not Star Wars

 

Ooh. April? A Celebration launch?

 

OK, I'll ask the unpopular questions...

Since this book is aiming straight at an audience that knows that Thrawn is supposed to be this legendary character (after all, title and cover are about nothing but Thrawn) - will one book manage to be epic enough to establish Thrawn as a legendary character again? Best case, if this is some kind of alternate universe Thrawn campaign against the New Republic, it only aims at being one book for now, doesn't it? So it might not end up being so epic. OK, let's assume that some hinting in other books actually foreshadowed Thrawn; will there be enough pay-off in one book to turn him into the legend that he was in Legends canon, where, out of circumstances, he was the definitive villain to step up after Vader and the Emperor?

I mean, with the title, Thrawn coming in hard to resurrect the Empire would really be the best choice. Simply giving him a biography book about his Chiss life and tying into something else coming out soon would possibly be too little. Anyway, with this having the potential of an alternate universe Heir To The Empire, it should satisfy people who wanted the character to be portrayed by Cumberbatch, shouldn't it.

 

Lets see the Grand Moff who uses the art of a species to psychoanalyse a specific species tactical abilities?

Versus the Artist... yes I can see him being a fan of Sabine!

Probably a fan of Ahsoka if he has the chance!

 

I can't see either of those scenarios happening Grey.

What I expect is the book will work like AND did but for S3 of Rebels. S3 will establish him as their new enemy, an Imperial Grand Admiral, but the book will cover the rest.

I get the sense there's a fairly major Rebellion in flow in Rebels now, so I suspect Thrawn cuts that down to size but is taken out, so paving the way for later villains like Krennic and allowing Tarkin to continue to ascend the Imperial hierarchy.

Thrawn should make a good villain addition, but he won't be deemed the villain relative to everyone else.

I could be entirely wrong but this speculation seems to fit what the new stuff has been doing from the start.

 

This cannot be serious...

 

I'm all for getting the Yuuzhan Vong into canon. It's yet another reason I'm disappointed The Clone Wars never got to finish out it's intended storylines, like the Vong scouts arc.

 

Not to get too far off topic, but...

You should still consider giving the KOTOR era games and material a try. At least the games were partly informed by the prequels, and they really do compliment the films better than almost any other EU material out there thematically IMHO. KOTOR II in particular is absolutely brilliantly written and performed in almost every respect. Be sure to play the version with restored content, however. It helps things a lot. The tales of the Jedi era comics are also very good, but do feel stylistically less consistent with later material (despite having numerous references in the games).

On the other hand, the games are also self contained enough that if they ARE ever made canonically impossible to re-integrate, they're still their own thing.

I'm not being quite so generous with The Old Republic.

But back on topic, this is excellent news. I wonder what elements Zahn will try to retain in this story? Will we see references to his other characters? Potential references to Outbound Flight type events having still happened?

 

Yeah, I'm really interested in how many characters he brings back (Pellaeon? Karrde?), and how much of the Chiss culture he retains. (IE is his name still Mitth'raw'nuruodo)?

 

... This is another hoax, right? Like the Mon Mothma book on April 1st?

 

Wow. Great news. Thrawn was one of my favorite things about the OC. Now to have him reenter the new one is great. People have wondered how he could fit into the new post-ROTJ timeline. I don't see why he can't.

I can't wait to see Thrawn as part of the First Order.

edit: Oops. Fixed to First Order not New Order. Thrawn been there done that.

 

I keep seeing speculation that Thrawn will have to die in order for "Fleet Admiral" to not include him in his Shadow Council, or so the Rebellion can flourish, or whatever. But I'd like to propose an alternate idea: we know Palpatine had forces in the Unknown Regions in the NuEU exploring and, I would assume, conquering. So, just like in Legends, have Thrawn get "disgraced" and "banished" to the Unknown Regions, and then his forces are what the Imperial Military joins with after fleeing into the Unknown Regions after Jakku. The "Fleet Admiral" or Snoke (if they're not the same individual) become Supreme Leader, Hux Sr. and then Hux Jr. become Generals of the Army, and Thrawn can be Admiral of the Fleet.

Who knows, maybe we'll even get that in a novel by Zahn, if not now, someday.

 

Thrawn is Snoke!



I agree with you. I hope they fit him in. The FO will be even more interesting with him in it.

 

Well honestly, if they're going to get Thrawn and the Yuuzhan Vong back into canon, they might as well just recanonize the entire old EU up to 30 ABY.

Just release new special editions of all the books starting with the Thrawn trilogy so that the name "Jacen" is replaced by "Ben," and find another name for Ben Skywalker. Then we can have angry nerd arguments over that to go with our nerd-rage over Greedo shooting first, Ghost-Anakin's actor being replaced, Vader's "NOOOOOOO..."

 

Authors revise their works all the time. No reason Zahn couldn't release a new set of Thrawn trilogy revised "Canon" editions.

I'm being entirely serious. He could do it. And you would keep the originals as the "Legends" or in-universe mythology versions of the same story. That's what they should be doing with the entirety of the Legends stories anyway: make them in-universe stories told by different people and points of view for events. That would explain their contradictions with official canon.

 

Except it isn't his work, is it? Now if LFL wanted to do it and they hired him.....

 

Well yes I was assuming in my scenario he would be hired by Lucasfilm to do so. But they've already brought him back for a Thrawn novel, which is huge step beyond anything I thought they'd do anyway. My scenario isn't as far fetched as it once was.

 

To be honest Shane, I would much rather have annotated hardbacks of DFR and TLC a la the HTTE 20th Anniversary Edition. That volume was absolutely superb but needs the other two.

 

Well they really should incorporate Legends into the SW universe instead of just saying: "well it's just non-canon until it isn't." Heck, they could even reference some of these in-universe stories into the official canon through characters own beliefs in them.

 

Theres a lot of money to be made on thrawn, I'm not so sure they will kill him off in Rebels. I mean just look at what's happing to Ahsoka. Plus doesn't it say the Empire has a secret fleet in Life Debt? could be Thrawn's with it.

 

This will be the one-size-fits-all-Thrawn novel thread, moving forward.