Books Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good (book 2) by Timothy Zahn

2 of those points are lies. I don't dislike Thrawn the character and I don't dislike Zahn and I ask you to withdraw them.
Seeing as you have read them what is the the point then?

 

You have expressed disliked for both the character and the author numerous times. Hell, in that initial post you outright said Zahn was coasting, which I think is insulting to someone who spent years of his life writing these books.

And what’s the point of these books? To be read by the fans of them. People enjoy them. Why do you feel the need to question that?

 

Again a lie. You need to stop now.
Saying I think the author was coasting is not the same as saying I dislike him.

That's great people like them but I was asking what the point of them is in story terms

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I mostly enjoyed this, although it's a slow burn of a book. I liked the aspect that

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Lakphro wasn't taken in, while much more senior Chiss were easily manipulated by the Grysk.

The last few pages don't bode well for Thrawn in the next novel, such as

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the cover-up and Thurfian's unexpected promotion.

I wonder if we might see Che'ri using her Third Sight ability to see the future again in the next novel.

I'm also wondering if Zahn partly intends the Grysk to be a comment on real-world events, where discord and division can be sown by third parties for their own ends.

 

I’m finally making a real dent on the first book of this trilogy, so I’m hoping to keep up the momentum and move on to this one. I’m really enjoying all the world building, and what is essentially an “alternate universe” Star Wars, or the SW we know but as seen from a wholly different perspective.

A question to other readers: Do we have any idea what Chiss ships look like generally? I know there was a visual depiction of Admiral Ar’alani’s ship in the Thrawn comic. It reminded me a bit of Zentraedi ships, not sure if that was the inspiration.

And more on the topic of this second book:

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As I read more spoilers about the Grysk, they are starting to remind me a lot of both Nom Anor from the Crimson Empire comics and the hints about the True Sith from Kotor 2. Both those ideas eventually went in very different directions, but the original concept was of a hidden group manipulating events and other species to take their enemies down from the shadows. I’m very curious to see where this goes.

Do we know how/why the Grysk are able to so fully control their client species?

 

I'm about halfway through the book and am enjoying it. I have a yes/no question - is the identity of Jixtus revealed in this book? If not I guess we have to wait til book 3.

 

Actually answered my own question as finished this earlier. I liked it - thought it was pretty good. I'll be awaiting the third installment.

 

Someday you kind of want to see a battle that's just -

"Captain Thrawn, we've come out of hyperspace just in front of the Warlord's ship."
"Excellent. All batteries, all weapons, open fire and maintain it until the Warlord's ship has been destroyed."
"... Sir?"
"You have an objection, Ensign?"
"Ah... no, sir?"
"I think you do. It's quite obvious."
"It's not an objection, sir. I was just expecting something with a little more... uhhh..."
"Subtlety? The Warlord is a third-rate bandit, Ensign. No doubt he came he came here anticipating an opportunity to match wits with me, but the plain fact is that his ship is poorly armed, poorly shielded, and in all other ways badly outmatched, and he has no reinforcements forthcoming. We also have no reason to want him alive. Instantly blasting his ship to atoms is quite simply the most rational course of action."
"Yes, sir."
"Report to me when this is done. In the meantime, have all the artwork we stole from our next opponent's warehouse sent to my chambers. I have another overly complex eleven-dimensional chess campaign to plan."
"Yes, sir!"

 

I'm curious about this as well. I've largely been picturing them as Romulan Birds of Prey and Romulan Warbirds, in keeping with the way I generally picture the Chiss as Vulcans/Romulans.

 

Interesting. I’m not well versed in Star Trek, but those are definitely different from what I imagined. Then again, it’s hard for me to not think of Thrawn, and by extension the Chiss, in a more traditional Imperial Fleet environment. I subconsciously imagine most ship scenes as occurring in the Imperial settings I’m used to from the movies. And for that same reason the ships seem vaguely Imperial-like in my head.

I may be wrong, but aren’t Grysk ships saucer- or ovoid-shaped? I’ll definitely pick up Thrawn Alliances again since you mentioned it had decent Grysk material in it. I put it down long ago and never picked it up again; but I find the Grysk so intriguing. I wish the Ascendancy books could simply already deal with them directly, but alas the timeline forbids it.

 

The ship in the Thrawn comic is traced from "inspired by" an upside-down anime plane mech.

 

Interesting! It always felt like a far too detailed and specific design to be not inspired by something else, though I had no idea how true that was. Now the big question is whether that was solely the artist’s choice or if Zahn or other people had input. This is the first Chiss ship to be portrayed in canon, so it’s not outside the realm of reason that the design was guided by someone beyond the artist.

As for the Star Trek inspiration mentioned earlier, I do consistently get a Trek vibe from Zahn, and especially so with his Ascendancy works. But again, I’m not very familiar with the franchise, so perhaps it is simply that there are commonalities in military science fiction that involves multiple humanoid alien species. Somehow, though, it seems different to me from other Star Wars works, which are also alien heavy. Perhaps it’s that these aliens are more human-like overall?

 

On a side note, I was reading Ian Rankin's latest pb - A Song for the Dark Times and I came across the word thrawn in a conversation there. Turns out that in Scottish it means
Thrawn adj. twisted, crooked, distorted; (of people) obstinate, intractable, etc.

Thrawn is frequently used with reference to stubbornness and absolute conviction.

https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/562 . Note - page contains user comments so I'll put a language warning here just in case. The article itself is fine.

 

That weirdly brings to mind the chimaera, and how much I love that name for a Star Destroyer despite that its taken from Greek Myth.

Which, it seems, is a Chekhov’s Gun waiting to fire in this trilogy.

 

Finished this tonight. It was a nice, easy read, though it’s two books into this trilogy and I’m still waiting

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for Thrawn to take a major L. It’s hard to build tension in a story when you have a character that can’t seem to fail. I’m starting to sympathize with Thurfiaj a little lol. I also thought that Che’ri was going to live up to the Skywalker name by using the Force to nudge the ship at the end instead of guiding the tractor beam. Unless I’m forgetting something, we’ve only seen Chiss force users use the Force like Anakin did when he was podracing. No telekinesis, no mind reading etc

 

My hope is that this all builds up to his exile, which I hope is contextualised as at least partially due to him failing some significant way in the political realm. I personally doubt it, just based on how these books usually go.

But that said,

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Jixtus did mention that he planned to isolate Thrawn, so maybe that, in addition to what’s going on with Thurfian and this ancient Chiss super weapon set up in the end results in scenario where Thrawn saves the day in the final novel but at great personal cost.

Also....I kind of hope Jixtus survives this trilogy. I could see him working as a good reoccurring Big Bad for the Unknown Regions stuff.

 

The Unknown Regions feel in some ways more like the Star Trek galaxy than the Star Wars one. No unified galactic government, just various factions in their own little corner of space, and a lot of the Unknown Regions are unexplored or unfamiliar even to their own denizens. Space is a wild frontier that people are still only in the process of exploring, rather than a familiar environment that was largely settled long ago and in which all the players are well known.

Some of his stuff also feels in line with Star Trek's faith that there's no problem, even the seemingly magical ones, that can't be solved rationally by human (or other) beings looking and thinking for answers long enough. The fact that even non Force users can immunize themselves by harnessing fauna like the ysalamiri, Thrawn repeatedly defying people with Force powers using mostly the power of his reasoning, really the entire character of Thrawn, all feel like things that would fit very comfortably on Star Trek rather than Star Wars. (Although you can also argue that it's ultimately a deconstruction of the Star Trek mentality, since Thrawn ultimately overestimates his own abilities and repeatedly underestimates those of Force users).

 

I’m really enjoying learning about Chiss food, but I have to say, “meat-striped fruit squares” sound pretty gross.


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It would explain why a certain character is so intent on keeping his appearance concealed.

 

Alliances was the first time Thrawn had seen...

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... a Grysk. He had heard much of them, but that seems to have been his first real encounter with them. Unless he was performing for Vader, which is possible but I think unlikely.