Lit Thrawn Trilogy: Overrated?

Would you say the same about Endor too ?

"Has the moon, any inhabitants"
"Primitives only" said the Emperor contemptuously
"One final recommendation, don't dismiss the natives you mentioned. Even Primitives can sometimes be used to deadly effect"
"They will not be problem" said the Emperor dismissing the natives with a small wave of his hand

Or coaching Vader when it comes to Hoth:

Then with another huff he turned back to Thrawn. "Well?"
Thrawn lowered the data pad, Here's what they took in order of loading ..etc etc
He paused expectantly.
For a long moment Vader just stood there facing Thrawn his stance giving no clue as to what was going on inside that black armour.
"A Cold world" His voice not angry merely thoughtful

In both cases the language is like a hammer on the head by Zahn, surely you can see it. Palpy is obviously arrogant and dismisses Thrawn's warnings, which we know to his peril, while Vader, with use of words like him having a huff is basically a sulky Darth Homer, who needs to be talked through things. Both in the book are compared to Thrawn and Thrawn is far superior to both, as he would not make their mistakes, Zahn makes that plain. There is even a scene earlier where he talks about the role Thrawn has for Vader to play ie he manipualtes him.

 

I'm supposed to be awed and impressed by that F4? No.

A cold world? There's how many planets in the billions of stars in the galaxy again? Yeah, that narrows it down... Oh, about 1% if that!

As to the Ewoks, I find that quite ironic that Thrawn decides not to under-rate but does just that on the Noghri. Nor does that comment say anything about the level of force Thrawn would have allocated to the moon if he had been in charge, the Emperor committed a legion so Thrawn would have sent what? 2 legions? To fight short-arse teddy bears?

In both cases, the point is the same - you're falling for a misdirection trick but Zahn isn't as good at it as say Derren Brown.

 

Someone Photoshop Thrawn in front of a waving American flag as I imagine him to be when he recruits the Hand of Judgment.

 

This is becoming more and more common these days.

The only thing I'd disagree with from fett4's take is that we are talking about the Thrawn Trilogy, not the subsequent books that those quotes came from.

 

image source: The Essential Guide to Characters (2016), screen capture Les Misérables (2012)

 

The attribution makes it.

Edit:

"The Empire that Senior Captain Thrawn is carving into the evil that pervades our worlds is not the Empire you chose to leave. His is an Empire of justice and dignity for all beings. His Empire is one we gladly serve. One we are willing to die for."

 

I think this was brought up earlier in this thread, but Thrawn is a bit like Sherlock Holmes in this regard…able to make leaps in judgment that make him appear omniscient. I, for one, enjoyed the thought logic…sure, it might be a bit of a stretch, but so was Holmes.

 

Didn't Sherlock always break down his reasoning for others to understand though? I think it was made pretty clear that he was super-observant and had a keen understanding of human nature which is why he was able to reach these conclusions.

Thrawn? It's all about the art and that doesn't really make sense.

 

^^^Here's the thing….is not understanding art a way of understanding human (or alien) nature? Look at a lot of paintings from the late 1910's and early '20's…there are a lot of dark, depressing works. Even if you know nothing of history, you could surmise that something awful had happened and that many cultures were trying to cope. Art IS human (or alien, in this case) nature. The art from Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia DOES say a lot about their culture…as does the art from medieval Europe.

 

I agree with you about art. It is a raw emotional thing that can reveal someone's mental state. However, I feel that art is supposed to appeal to our emotional side and is designed by artists to appeal to our emotional side. I don't think that Thrawn could surmise an entire species' battle strategy just by looking at a hologram that some artist had created.

 

Much good intuition is simply drawing from lengthy experience and proven habit. Indeed, Holmes summed this up when he stated: "From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps"

 

it is not all about the art. Much of it is like Sherlock homes, and educated guesses. The art does reveal much about a culture though, as well as an individual

 

That pic of Patton and Thrawn is kind of ironic, since Patton was known for blowing up his own reputation than actually happened and the argument for this thread has been about Zahn doing that for Mara and Thrawn.

 

Patton never ordered his Noghri bodyguard to execute a subordinate.

 

But he did have a Noghri bodyguard.

 

To a degree yeah, but if someone deduces accurately 99 times out of 100 and then guesses right on 100th time, those around this person will conclude there must have been some indicator when there quite simply might not be, but the smart person keeps quiet and lets other inflate their mystique!

 

True, but Thrawn never walked around with silver-plated blasters, either.

 

Patton slapped his subordinates himself he didn't get his bodyguard to do it.

 

In TPM, Anakin's fighter didn't land pointing at the reactor. When the fighter cools down and restarts, Anakins rotates the fighter as it rises firing lasers inside the hanger. Though he does fire the missiles just as the ship rotates torwards the reactor.

 

Not just his subordinates: His subordinates suffering from a PTSD-induced mental breakdown in a hospital. George Patton was everything wrong with the way combat stress was viewed and treated by the military.

 

Personally, I absolutely agree that TTT is extremely over rated. It is convenient beyond belief, its very basic and bland in style, Thawn's rationale is hardly if ever explained. He's simply proven right nearly all the time. I didn't really like him till Outbound Flight, that's what fleshed him out and made him relatable. I likewise agree that the cannon characters really showed no growth and it was rather dull with all the movie throw backs. I did however enjoy the introduction of my favourite Imperial ever Gilad.

 

This! I couldn't believe the hype around TTT when I read it.

 

Its sad that so many people don't appreciate truly great work.

 

I think it's rather wonderful that opinions vary.

 

I must admit, I gave up a good way through the first book. After some promising early scenes with Luke, it just didn't read like 'Star Wars' and Zahn isn't a very convincing writer. For a start, It's tiresome how all the characters in these books display the same emotional traits. For instance, every character says things "sardonically", even in situations where that particular mode of expression wouldn't be appropriate. The whole 'art' thing with Thrawn felt like an contrived and unlikely gimmick just to make the character different from the likes of Vader, and Joruus C'baoth was a reasonable idea made as dull as dishwater (probably because Zahn doesn't write interesting characters). The only character I liked was Talon Kardde but that was more on a kind of faith based on his early description and 'cool' sounding name, rather than what was actually subsequently presented on page.

Nothing much happened either, in the pages I read, that would convince anyone who wasn't invested in the Star Wars universe from the outset; it had no energy that made you think that this was a story worth continuing with. It was as if Zahn thought that the Star Wars brand was all you needed and was taking the lazy route. In other words, there was no 'pep' that you would get if the writer was introducing a world or story for the first time and therefore fresh to the reader. I think the latter point was a bit of mind hijack that Zahn let himself get suckered into. After all, the target audience almost invariably knew who Han Solo was, what a Star Destroyer is and the same for an X-wing. No sense of awe was needed, or so the author may have thought. For the most part, these were characters who had already been through stuff and little effort was made to present anything as fresh. This is a bit of an error of logic on the authors part, true in-universe but a bit of a fallacy as a piece of fiction.

There will invariably be those who say that I gave up and didn't finish so I'm not fit to judge but a book that is basically an adventure story has to do better than that and I highly doubt that there would have been any earth shattering denouements later that would make up for underwhelming bulk that I did manage to get through.

The best thing I could say about the book was that it treated the setting with a reasonable degree of dignity and I suppose that's all we can reasonably expect from these kinds of things but this is hardly what you'd think would have fans proclaim that the only episode 7, 8 and 9 they'd want to contemplate is the 'mythical' “Thrawn Trilogy”.