Lit Thrawn Trilogy: Overrated?

Thrawn's not exactly the villain of those later books, though.

Zahn wanting to elevate Thrawn's motives a bit, I can understand. But his skill doesn't really significantly increase in later portrayals.

 

Not a coincidence when we all know R2-D2 is the true hero of Star Wars.

Mobile sock of s65horsey

 

Star Wars military isn't exactly feudal- "fealty" is not exactly the right word.

If it takes place after the incident where Thrawn first refused an order from the Emperor- who put someone else in command of a force instead- who lost it (referred to in TTT in conversation with C'baoth)- that might be why Vader "makes agreements" with Thrawn rather than simply issuing orders.

 

True, but is it more of a coincidence then maybe Luke finding out the evil Sith Lord trying to kill him is his father, or that the beautiful princess he saved was his sister, or the audience finding out that Vader had once built C3PO or Chewie once helped save Yoda? The movies are full of coincidences and plot holes, why should the books be held to a higher standard?

I do think Thrawn was not shown in the books to be the outstanding tactician that he is said to be. I thought that was told to me more than shown to me. But that is my opinion. I know the Thrawn lovers will disagree.

 

I'm probably the only reader here who will say this, but I was most bothered by Leia in The Last Command when she takes off on her very new newborn twins to try and help. Can anyone say engorgement? Is she pumping on Wayland?

 

Most of what we see on screen is Cunning Plans, rather than tactics.

The raid on Sluis Van, the Siege of Coruscant, the trapping of the Rebels at Bilbringi, and so on.

The very first scene we see is of him using very simple tactics- against an alien commander whom he knows is "psychologically incapable of handling" them- specifically, the Marg Sabl maneuver.

 

I didn't find that odd. Not all women have that problem. The women in my family are more apt to suffer from failed lactogenesis.

 

Brutality works. Vader is not more brutal than some real world dictators were. Civilized people will always underestimate the brute.

 

Thrawn used tricks like Ysalamiri and spaarti, or cloaking devices and the Force, or cloaking devices and asteroids, which lead the characters in HoT to believe he can ready bake these sorts of unique plans on demand.

 

Now there'd be a sentence to instill fear in criminals!

You will be Forcibly-castrated by Lord Vader. But do not fear too much, he won't lay a hand on you!

 

He kinda got all those toys out of nowhere too.

 

To those who find the Thrawn trilogy overrated, my simple question is: in comparison to what? What portion of the EU is consistently better written, better plotted, or uses the principle movie characters in a more effective fashion?

The NJO? Even in the most generous reading it's filled with obvious flaws and drastic inconsistency in writing quality. The X-wing books? Pretty much anything you find a problem with in TTT can be found there as well, seeing as Stackpole and Zahn are very similar authors, and the Battletech-y ness of those books can be somewhat ridiculous at times. I suppose you can go cross-media, picking say the Jedi Knight games, KOTOR, or maybe one of the more beloved comics series, but once you do that it's apples and oranges.

Sure the Thrawn trilogy is imperfect, and it was limited but the context in which it was written, but at the end of the day we are talking about one of the flagship pieces of literature that moved shared-universe fiction beyond solely the realm of RPG franchises. The evidence pretty much speaks for itself.

 

Vader's request was to "deliver the Rebel leadership". Thrawn didn't manage to do that- but he did manage to find a clue as to where the Rebels might be planning to put their Base- on an ice planet. Vader wasn't exactly happy that this was all he'd got for his trouble- but he put up with it.

 

Compared to real life bastards, Vader's positively benign!

 

According to Darksaber, Vader "had the blood of billions on his hands- and a long career ahead of him" when he first came to the Death Star to motivate Lemelisk's workers.

 

It's a galaxy that's had faster-than-light travel for 25,000 years- one would think they could overcome some biological inconveniences.

 

You know, a lot of critics tend to fixate on Thrawn's art studying and ridicule that, but I think to even focus too much on the purely tactical considerations of Thrawn's plans misses the point of the story a little, because when you think about it, the space battles aren't as important as all that. Actually, when you take a look at the three climactic space battles that close out each book, Thrawn didn't even try to win the first one through force, wasn't present at the second, and was already doing poorly before getting killed in the third. What made the man genuinely a threat was less his military genius than the fact that the good guys didn't find out about his cloning operation until after he had acquired a bunch of additional ships for the clones to fight with, after which mounting any sort of counterattack was much more difficult, even if they knew where the clones were being made.

Art was never Thrawn's gimmick; information was, and his control of the information that mattered is what gave him the advantages that he needed to keep the good guys on the back foot. As soon as some knowledge started slipping away from his control, whether that be through Mara, Kaarde, Leia, or accidentally through Ferrier, Thrawn's control of the overall war began to erode accordingly. And of course, to cap all the irony off, Thrawn was done in at the end because of a piece of information that the good guys and the reader all had going in: that Leia was Vader's daughter.

 

And in HoT- it's said "information was the only superweapon that Thrawn ever needed"- when Mara recognizes the fortress as The Hand Of Thrawn.

 

Hmm, did we ever find out what actually damaged that fortress?

 

On the flip side, it's definitely alluded to that she's nursing the twins, so bonus points for that.

 

Nope. It's stated that "The Death Star could have done it, but not much else in either the New Republic or Imperial armories".

I suppose it could have been a Vong superweapon, now Outbound Flight's said that the "Far Outsiders" were a big preoccupation of the young Thrawn's.

Or just an Imperial warlord with a superlaser-equipped warship. The Assertors were apparently conceived as having one small superlaser, by Ansel Hsiao, and Zsinj might have had a Sovereign at one point.