Lit Thrawn Trilogy: Overrated?

DS9 is excruciatingly boring, especially the first two seasons. I wouldn't expect anyone to even make it to season three. Unsurprisingly, the writers from TNG got more involved starting with season three, because TNG was over by that time. Then again, TNG and Voyager both sucked until about season three as well.

 

Given your political interest, yes. One man's boring episode is character/world-building for another.

 

A failing of many authors, not so? Including in more recent times!

 

And Zahn at least acknowledges that Thrawn can make mistakes. His "art method" is said to have failed at least once before (he himself points it out) and he comes to completely the wrong conclusion about the Wookiee hairs on the Noghri ship.

 

It's not really Zahn's fault that people might, despite in-book evidence, believe that Thrawn never makes mistakes. People can overhype things.

 

I guess I'll answer the question in the OP.

I think the TTT is overrated, but only slightly. I think Mechalich asked "compared to what?", my answer would be the scores it seems to get, instead of other books. I'd probably grade it between 5% and 10% lower than the average.

I don't mind the coincidences at all, it's never even occurred to me. Despite my penchant for nitpicking, I'm actually pretty good at hand waving the basics for suspension of disbelief.

I can get past the gratuitous stroking of Thrawn, it's not quite as bad as it gets in later Zahn books, but it is an annoyance. Mara is just as big an obstacle, but for different reasons, as I simply find her entire character and experience implausible and her very existence disagreeable.

Still, despite it's flaws, it's still very amusing, it provides thrilling imagery reminiscent of the OT and it introduced one of my favorite Star Wars characters, C'baoth.

 

If there's one thing I want the ST to lift from the EU, it's the crazy Jedi clone.

Gimme Qui-Goon/Quui-Gon! Moar Neeson! Moar!

 

So long as he gives his Taken speech.

 

Overrated? Absolutely. Thrawn's art-schtick was silly; that the character was a mouthpiece of Zahn's disrespect of the Emperor and Vader was obnoxious. That aside, Thrawn-the-character is a resounding success: an Imperial whose emphasis is on necessary evil than plain ol' evil. Even better is Mara Jade, despite the fact that (contrary to Zahn's insinuations) she's not a quarter of the Force user Luke is, but is a likeable hard-ass.

Best of all? Gilad Pellaeon, who completely steals the show from Thrawn and continues to do so in the EU. Besides His Imperial Majesty and Turr Phennir, Pellaeon might be my very favorite Imperial precisely because he's so relatively unremarkable.

 

Worst season was 7, truly awful TV, and of course what they did to Gul Dukat. The most morally complex and interesting character since Darth Vader in the OT and the writers (seriously) thought he was to interesting and so turned him into a cartoon villan.

I agree about Pellaeon, he is a brilliant character, even more asthonishing when he is down Zahns list below not just Thrawn and Mara but Karrade as well.

For the me the disrespect was not so overt until after the Thrawn trilogy. Starting with those (ridiclous) Mara Jade comics and the short story where Thrawn becomes a bounty hunter and has a quick scene with Vader and hows him up to be a drooling moron.

Am curious, in terms of imagrey, would you say the same of Zahns sequels like the Hand of Thrawn books and Alliegence etc

 

Is it as good as Babylon 5? Because then I might just give it a shot. I watched the DS9 pilot but the plot was fairly weak and so I didn't continue (even though I liked the characters).

 

It's not nearly as cohesive as babylon 5, as they were written differently, but once you hit season 3, DS9 really picks up in quality. Some DS9 episodes are up there with the best of B5, and some are worse than Grey 17 is Missing.

Voyager is a terrible show, with only three redeeming aspects- Tom Paris, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine.
Enterprise is as bad, or worse.
Both shows are much improved however if you watch the reviews on SFdebris.

 

It's a source of great amusement for me that, in light of the prequels, Sidious vastly outstrips Thrawn as a strategist. Zahn got to enjoy Lucas spoon-feeding him some humble pie between 99 and 05.

Pellaeon is awesome because he's an unambitious character. I forget which NJO book it was, but it is mentioned (by Wedge Antilles, perhaps) that Pellaeon was a fine commander and administrator, he knew his limitations and did not willfully subscribe to the same egregious agenda of some Imperials (Tarkin, et al.). Ruthless? Sure. Deranged? No. And yet he was the firm, guiding hand of the Remnant for decades. Gotta love him.

 

And then Traviss killed him

 

'Twas a sad day for me. GrandAdmiralJello shared my displeasure, no doubt.

 

Probably only in the sense that there's no more opportunities to be hating on him for being "cowardly".

 

Personally I don't think it's silly, just poorly executed, as is basically everything about Thrawn, imo.

There is a basis for the link between art and strategy, there's a reason it's called the Art of War, there's a reason it's called martial arts. To understand art is to understand people and the Art of War is all about understanding human psychology and taking advantage of it. There's a reason samurai were encouraged to take up the arts.

Really? She's always come off as an angry, scowling, verbally abusive ***** to me.

I didn't know anything about Star Wars fans until I registered here and Mara Jade being a fan favorite was a big surprise.

Pellaeon stole the show? An interesting idea and perhaps true. I was always more interested in learning more about Pellaeon than Thrawn.

In the TTT, Pellaeon exists only to be in awe of Thrawn.

I've only read TTT, HoT, Outbound Flight and Survivor's Quest and a few of the short stories. I haven't read anything else by Zahn.​

After TTT, Zahn never quite recaptured the OT imagery, though I thought the imagery in Outbound Flight and Survivor's Quest had a somewhat similar spirit and were quite thrilling at times in their own right, especially Outbound Flight. HoT never came close to this standard.​

Random comment: I actually think Jorj Car'das was literally in love with Thrawn in Outbound Flight. Not kidding.

Random comment #2: Talon Karrde and Thrawn are literally the same character in-universe. Not kidding.

 

Eh, gotta disagree with you. On a purely semantic level, "art" can refer to a mere skill or ability (cf. Plato's Gorgias on that debate in reference to logic vs. rhetoric). In that sense, Sun Tzu and the others aren't necessarily trying to bridge a land invasion or roundhouse kick with finger painting and pointillism.

More over, "art" is not remotely equitable to formal psychology or sociology. Sure, artistic creations often have intrinsic sociopolitical commentary that could bequeath information about a culture, but not on the level Zahn's narrative implies.

The idea that critical tactical knowledge is imparted to Thrawn for the successful conquest of Earth by simply inspecting my 4-year-old niece's clumsy stick figure is... farfetched. Or, put it another way, my girlfriend is completing a degree in art education. I graduated recently with a sociology/political science double major. There are a lot of things she knows that I don't (we have surprisingly rigorous art history classes), but my studying of Machiavelli's The Prince will confer more useful knowledge about Renaissance political culture her admiring Michelangelo's David.