Lit The Thrawn Trilogy - My Brutally Honest Review

The Thrawn Trilogy is such a classic because back then, it defined what SW could be in an age after the movie trilogy and before. If it hadn't worked, it wouldn't have become a classic and SW literature may have been nothing more than a small bubble (but who knows, maybe anything SW had the potential to be more than a bubble back then). So generally, it wasn't bad. I even have fond memories of the heroes having adventures on new planets, having new concepts and creatures and characters around. It's kind of exciting that way, and the only way to get that at first was reading books.

These days, I've re-read the series two or three times, and a few years ago I must say that it fell flatter than it ever did before. There's an audio play in Germany that also started very promising but dragged and dragged as the series turned towards huge dialogues, huge explanations of stuff and of why characters are supposed to be interesting. I'm not sure how much of that is a change in how much patience I have with media; reading novels has become less and less interesting for me while short-term stuff like internet articles and TV shows happen on a daily basis and sometimes can't even be avoided. Well, even the change from longer movies to TV episode length has become noticeable; two or three episodes of something don't feel like as much of a commitment as a 2h+ movie. So maybe I'm simply not made for books like TTT anymore.

Another thing I noticed, however, was how the books went out of their way to reduce the characters back to a status where the audience will instantly recognize and like them, which is a bit too much rearview mirror for me. Luke is unsure how to be a Jedi, he's essentially still training; Han has left the military and is talking to smugglers when he's not the pilot and gunslinger on the main character party; most telling, Lando simply gets another outrageous mining operation. Leia and the rebel/Republic leadership actually working is a welcome addition to this. You can, however, see, how these books aim at "capturing the moment that people loved about SW", just like TFA did. Compare to this to JAT, which has worse prose, some strange ideas, but mostly a setup that would actually benefit a "young Big Three" Episode 7: Luke having a new, but not passive role, leading to the creation of new characters.

The concepts I remember the most about TTT, "the toys", are in HTTE; aside from the fleet. DFR and TLC then take their time to make a larger story out of the setup. It's nice to have some evolution to Thrawn's plan, but while the smugglers are given a vital role, it feels strange to have them as a proper third faction. The Han/Jabba plot was only ever a sidestory; Jabba didn't influence the actual Rebellion/Empire conflict. While it would be hypocritical for me to be against the introduction of something new to the dynamic, I think treating the fringe as something that can be united to this degree acts against its nature. Even more obviously than with pirates being treated as a nation. Well, the way Zahn presents it does work, but all the talks and all of Thrawn's setups really slow down what could be a fun romp. And then there's always Ferrier to demonstrate how great Thrawn's plans actually work.

Mara is a great addition; while it's a bit weird to have her between chairs of two roles, it all comes together implicitly. I'm not sure if I would be too cynical today to accept this way of writing a new character into the existing group of heroes, but even back in the Bantam/NJO days I thought having Corran and Karrde and everyone's family so close to the heroes was a bit too cozy while I never questioned the way Mara developed.

 

The introduction to Mara is kinda off to me. I really think having her linked to the Emperor really wasn't a necessary background to have. Having her being an assassin or a bounty hunter tracking down Luke would have made more sense. As for wanting to kill him....well, if those two occupations I previously stated would have been ideal for that reasoning. Paid to kill, but having an underlying "Force" power that could go either way....evil or good. I think Luke would be trying to get her to use it for good rather then for her own means would have been a challenge. And then....the reasoning is there to set her up to be the next Jedi in the making.

 

And why do you think we keep saying read the entire trilogy, because that is pretty much exactly what happens.

 

Yeah, the problem is you're drawing conclusions from incomplete data.

 

Mara's link to the Emperor is an essential part of her backstory in this series.

 

Part of the problem one can have in retrospect with TTT is that this thing set up the Post-Endor universe and gave us the first Imperial warlord bent on revenge. That set the tone in a rather unpleasant/repetitive way. Thrawn is better than, say, Daala or Brakiss (not to mention Hethrir or Kueller) but the evil guys from Thrawn onwards had lost before they even began. They were trying to avenge or rebuild a failed fascist state one way or another, using mad plans and weirdo super weapons in the process.

Something truly new only began with the NJO.

 

Pretty much. You got Pestage, Isard, Zisjing, Thrawn, Palpatine, Jax, Dallaa, then Pellaeon and a few Rogue Moff's here and there.

 

That's a pretty strange thing to call a problem with TTT itself - rather than the stories that imitated it. (Also, Thrawn relied on gimmicks like the cloaking device and ysalamiri, but he didn't actually use a superweapon - which is rather refreshing in retrospect).

 

It's very ESB, and in that way it might even be a calculated effort to aim for the "grounded dark most beloved movie". Then again, a clone army out of nowhere and a (dated) fleet out of nowhere combined with the cloaking device and its implied ability to devastate a planet, rounded off with Thrawn being the master of the educated lucky guess, are kind of like a superweapon. Especially since nobody in the SW galaxy cloned back then. Destroying the cloning facility is even the main objective for our heroes (with the siege plotline given to other characters), making it the Death Star destruction of this series.

 

Didn't have the time to explore more in detail earlier on. Thrawn never had a super weapon on a large scale (TFA's take on the Galaxy Gun is hundred times more ridiculous what Veitch gave us, by the way - especially 25 years after Dark Empire) but he still had important gimmicks like the Spaarti cloning facility and cloned soldiers, a mad Jedi Master clone, weirdo anti-force bio tech (the Ysalamiri), and those cloaking devices he used.

But the actual point I was trying to make was that Zahn's trilogy set the tone for the Post-Endor EU. It was about the New Republic on the rise and the Empire in decline. In retrospect that's not very - let's say - exhilarating. And if I think about it I must say that this wasn't only in retrospect but also back then in the 1990s when we read the stuff. The mental focus was always on the awesomeness of the Old Republic, the Jedi knights, the Clone Wars, and the Empire under Palpatine. What the new novels were about was just housecleaning after the party.

If Thrawn had won insofar as he had created a thriving Empire Reborn (like we got it it with the Empire under the Fel Emperors later on) at this early point then there would have been an interesting background for additional novels thereafter.

A completely different and interesting focus would have been to concentrate on politics and rebuilding things. But nobody ever made good novels in that field (although I think it played an interesting part in the Yevetha trilogy thing) nor was that chance used in the wake of the NJO. Business as usual and petty conflicts sound very unlikely in the wake of a galaxy-wide invasion that killed trillions of sentients (that is not saying that there shouldn't have been conflict - but perhaps not petty economic struggles or yet another invasion of some weirdo species from unknown space).

Tom Veitch points an important fact out in his interview that has been linked in another thread: Zahn didn't really write big enough to capture the scale of the OT. And neither did many of the other authors that came after him.

 

Well, none of it really went for a myth arc until NJO came along, which, coincidentally, would be the myth arc of the next in-universe generation. EU never really aimed for the epicness, even with something thinking as big as TTT did. Especially since it's only really one story set in not even a year of in-universe time. There's no huge jumps, no huge shifts in the dynamic; only Thrawn's forces getting stronger and stronger and then being stopped.

While Luke is going through the "do I trust myself" motions a bit, the real story arc in TTT is Mara's, which might be why she can be established as a main character here. Same goes for Kyp and Corran in their respective stories, only that Corran was eventually championed by Zahn and subsequently adopted into the SkySoloJade clan while Kyp didn't have a lot to do until NJO remembered his name for a not too favourable recurring, but sadly not main character role (even though such a character with his outlook on the war could very well have been a huge focus going forward, instead of a kind-of-antagonist-turned-support-character).

Anyway, all in all: EU was about the happily ever after of the Big Three. And once NJO remembered, thanks only partly to the prequels but probably more so to Babylon 5-like television and who knows what kinds of fantasy literature, how myths would look like in the SW galaxy, it turned into an unhappily ever after. Due to the fact that you simply couldn't let the characters go and still enough money with the novel license. This is the advantage of a cinematic series; they can simply convince the audience of concentrating on the next likeable generation while demonstrating that the old ones really aren't the new 40 when they're 60.

 

What else was supposed to happen after Endor? It is far more exhilarating than a second GCW between a nuEmpire and nuRebellion we are getting now.

Big enough to capture the scale of the OT, when was the OT ever big in the first place. ANH dealt with two backwater planets, Tatooine and Yavin, a major Core World, Alderaan, and a mention of Dantooine. TESB dealt with more backwater planets, Hoth, Dagobah, and Bespin, and a mention of Ord Mantell. RotJ yet again dealt with backwater planets, the return to Tatooine, Endor, and brief glimpses at Coruscant, Naboo, and other planets later seen during the PT with the SE ending.

 

I more or less agree there except for the point that the authors could have changed the status quo established by Zahn by earlier changing the landscape. Not to mention that Zahn could have been a little more creative. The fact that this wasn't the plan back then doesn't change that. Besides, they sort of opened a new chapter of the book with TTT anyway. There was no a priori reason why they should stick to this new status quo for as long as they did.

The problem with the Big Three getting old was also more than in part caused by them jumping more and more years ahead in time for no good reason. Five years after the NJO, another five years after the DNT, and so on. This way your characters age rather fast.

Weren't the guys trying to kill Luke in the NJO but vetoed by Lucas(film)?

 

They were stuck with the status quo that Zahn came up with due to:

• The series being an unexpected smash hit
• The decision taken to build a continuity across the stories

Had HTTE failed then that status quo could have been scrapped, but had it been there probably wouldn't have been a replacement.

 

And more generally, most of the stuff Lucas was basing his work on wasn't the cultural influence in the late seventies and early eighties that Lucas' films are today.

The most obvious influence for Star Wars and Indiana Jones (from the Western audience's POV) were old serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Zorro and the Lone Ranger. That stuff was 1930s, 1950s at the latest. It hadn't been an important part of pop culture in two decades at least. And this was an age before home video and before the Internet; that kind of entertainment from previous generations wasn't nearly as accessible then as it is today.

Therefore, when "Star Wars" and then "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out, it really must've felt like the equivalent of finding a chest in the attic full of your parents/grandparents' toys and comics that no one's seen or even thought about in decades.

Indy and especially Star Wars never had the time to be forgotten and rediscovered that way. They've cast a massive shadow over the entire pop culture landscape ever since they came out. So bringing it "back" today was never going to be the same.

 

The timejumps didn't benefit the Big Three, but they were fully intended to benefit the next generation. Which was a very good reason. If anything, the Solo kids were held back by being portrayed as children; either they couldn't do anything, or they needed to be wunderkind-like heroes in their own right, which is something that doesn't go down well with many adult fans of such a serious franchise (see Anakin Skywalker). Based on the myth arc, the Solo kids (and Ben Skywalker after them) would only become interesting once they got out of their teens, growing up to be plausible military leaders or Jedi Knights; and even with all the timeline jumping, the first big moments for all the kids were all a bit too early when compared with the OT model (and the Solos then had to age out of that timeframe quickly to introduce Ben, who never really got to an appropriate age for what they wanted to do with him - the loss of his mother would have been timed well, but being Jacen's second in command was based on some "we just made up that Mandos are adults once their voices break" reasoning and a lot of "but we want him to do this now!"). The problem DR faced then was that they couldn't let go of the Big Three; they weren't allowed to kill them off for growth of the next generation, and they weren't happy with writing them out, complimenting them into supporting roles.

Well, Glove of Darth Vader certainly did its own thing.

 

That series does not exist.

 

That's pretty unique, isn't it? Oh wait, Sword of the Jedi.

 

Oh, I certainly would want the guys after TTT to build on the foundation. But they could have gotten away from 'the Empire is declining' or 'Imperial terrorists are terrorizing the NR' plot lines.

You can say what you want about Anderson but he really incorporated the things that happened before in his books, using characters the other authors had created.

Ah, well, Jacen and Jaina were old enough to write them as adults immediately after the NJO. In LotF they are already in their thirties and still behaving as if they were in their teens or early twenties (the whole Zekk-Jag jealousy thing as well as the hidden love of Jacen and Tenel Ka). Making them closing in on forty just to give us another adolescent Skywalker brat in Ben wasn't exactly a wise decision. For that there should have been more children of the new generation. Instead they killed off both Anakin and Jacen, with us being stuck with childless Jaina, Ben, and little Allana. If they wanted to do something with the new generation not killing them would have been a good start.

Not to mention that tons of novels and other material were squeezed into the earlier EU years. Why not do something like that with the later years, too?

But we are quickly going into the direction of LotF. And nobody wants to go there...

By the way: I really like the German audio play of TTT. It really captures the Star Wars spirit but you are right insofar as Zahn's story and writing style makes a faithful adaptation rather difficult. However, I like good exposition in a story if it is leading somewhere. And those dialogues between Thrawn and Pellaeon really work well, I think.

 

As a story I think the Thrawn Trilogy still holds up today and both Thrawn and Mara are the 2 most famous EU characters.

One thing I think the Thrawn Trilogy did benefit from though was being the first out there. A lot of what came after was pretty much the same thing. Evil Warlord comes back and takes control of the Empire etc. It was almost comic book in no one dying and no real consequences for our characters. I mean Zahn really had to fight to get Luke and Mara together in the Hand of Thrawn books.

 

I'm almost done the the last book....so incomplete it may be...I'm still of the same mind of it all. I don't find Mara to be a character I care for in the trilogy at all. She's pretty much the "Girl Luke" doing things he wouldn't do or using the Force that Luke would never attempt. And I find the ysalamiri to be a "What the F-k is that even in there for?" type of scenario. Force blocking creatures too me seems to be a cop out and a terrible being to suddenly throw into the mix. They serve no purpose....if the force is responsible for life, all life that is, they why and how the heck would they have created the ysalamiri?

Makes no sense to me. I would have rather had Thrawn as a being that could not be influnced by the Force or that his mysterious origin makes him immune to any Force sensitive being. Now that would have been something. And it would have made his character a tad bit more scarier and interesting. The fact that Thrawn is some unknown being and working for the Imperial "humans only club" just makes him the perfect person to give that sort of nullifying power too. Sounds better then a bunch of lizard hanging tree slugs that do nothing other then block the force.

Again, my opinion is based on reading the book in the here and now. This book was well before the Prequels and new movie....so it makes it dated and set in a time when the fans where clammering to see .what happened next and what the Clone Wars where all about. Zahn was given the task of creating something out of nothing....so good for him, of course, for showing that kind of creative endeavour. I'm not bashing him for writing this trilogy in the first place, just telling my opinion of the story. Which I'm nearly completing by the way.

As to what I meant about the main characters (Luke, Leia, Han....) being weaker or not as well done...

Luke should have been more confidant as a Jedi (and certainly more powerful by now)...understandably he's unsure of his road ahead....but the way Zahn wrote made Luke seem so whishy washy and self dbouting counstantly. That's the impression I got, ok?

Leia also wasn't as strong in confidence as she should have been. Her diplomatic nature shone through in here, that's for sure and Zahn did a fine job on that aspect. But her personality was less then "tough Leia" we'd come to expect. At times she was far too democratic for my liking and not enough on taking the lead. Again, my view of it.

And then there's Han Solo....Zahn needs to think less of him of the ESB years and more from the ROTJ one. Constantly making him say "yeah" or "trust me" does not a Solo make. There is also a lack of energy from the character....he seems so laid back about everything it just makes me want to hand him a coffee and perk up. There's only brief moments in the story where he seems to come to life....but then goes straight back into his "yeah" mode. And the dynamic between him and Leia got so diminished. I honestly think Zahn doesn't know how to handle their relationship when they're together....sure they have fighting moments, but the rest seems bland.

The Last Command does seem to have more going for it, more action at least, and I'm almost done reading this trilogy as I said. I don't think there's anything wrong with me talking about the books before their done....having read two out of the three completely does allow me to talk about what I've thought so far. I guess you want me to get to the end of this one to see the "suprise" finale and then comment? FIne....once I've finished the novel I'll give it my rating as a trilogy on the whole.

 

You say you don't get the ysalamiri, but also say you've nearly read the last book so haven't noticed the vornskrs hunt with the Force?

Also, Mara's basically cursed.

 

The problem here was that (next to not establishing a lot of new characters and not really going all in with the next generation idea) the minute NJO was over, they were preparing for Ben to be old enough to do something interesting. Around the time of Legacy and LOTF, it even became clear that someone somewhere believed that Skywalker was the recognizable name (thanks to the PT and the beginning of TCW, possibly) and that Solo wasn't all that important.

I don't even think that the timejumps were wrong, it's just that they seemingly robbed the Solo kids of having a life as full as their parents, who had something going on every year. It would have made sense to show everything they did if they meant to go back to the old EU model of "stuff happens", but for some reason only concentrating on huge galaxy-changing events was more interesting (feasible?). And in that regard I think it is very good to have a lot of time pass between the books. They only never got around to fill the holes with an expanded universe of simple stuff happening.

That's exactly what I mean; you'd end up doing a series of continuing adventures, and someone believed that you would get more readers - and more satisfying "anything could happen, anyone could die" events - by creating what's essentially a weak stab at a film trilogy every time around. In Bantam, I believe after TTT and JAT, the next "big thing" that audiences really sucked up as such was Zahn's return with HOT. Based on the fact that Zahn was such an important figure, and helped by the fact (especially after the fact) that this was closing the Bantam era. After JAT, books and trilogies might have attempted to have epic-sounding names, but none of them really delivered on the immediacy of the good old galaxy-defining toybox trilogies.

Yeah, those two are great. Thrawn is perfect, essentially the essential Thrawn for me, definitely better than the Rebels one (which isn't a bad Thrawn, just not as perfect). There's good casting all around, I enjoy Mara and Karrde as well. And we got "German Will Smith" as Janson!

 

I wouldn't mind seeing a re-done DNT/LOTF/FOTJ but focus (in the meantime before going there) on Valin, Jysella, Myri, Syal and other Shelter kids for a YJK series, Ben, Seha, Allana, etc YJK series, Twin Suns Squadron, Jacen's voyage, the Yuuzhan Vong on Zonama Sekot, maybe dealing with some hold outs, Tahiri on ZS and then traveling the galaxy, maybe adventures with Corran, Syal and Myri in the Star-fighter Academy, then with Rogue and Wraith Squadrons, starting Jedi Academies in Hapes, the Empire, Chiss, Corellia, etc. The other Force groups, do a Firefly type thing set after the NJO series. Citizens with destroyed planets bonding with other people, The Chiss and the Unknown Regions, Smuggler, Bounty Hunters, etc.
Heck, look at previous books, comics, games, etc. and bring back characters. Or tell us what happened to them.

So much potential to expand the cast to replace the fallen.

The shift to mainly Jedi characters only mattering was so dumb.

Give time for all of the cast to breath. Don't waste away character's lives who could hold a story to get another character's story started.

 

I read these books about 20 years ago, and I loved it mainly because it was all the Star Wars I thought I was ever going to get. Some aspects don't hold up, especially in terms of the now-established backstory, but Timothy Zahn has done his best to rectify this in his later novels.