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

Wouldn’t surprise me if Zahn goes the route or not having the protagonists and antagonists meet. He did it with the original Thrawn Trilogy, so I could see that play out again here.

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But also, I kind of want Jixtus to survive the trilogy. He’s the first Grysk who is an actual character, and I kind of need that going forward for the faction to be interesting.

 

questions of this book.?

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The flashbacks sections, are they months or years before, i was little confused at first but then we learn it might happenned between the books, how far time between the first and second of this trilogy.?

 

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It’s been roughly a year between the first and second book.

 

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From my reading, Greater Good begins only a month after Chaos Rising ends. Thalias says to Che'ri "With all that was going on last month," she missed her birthday. There's also a reference to "Syndic Thurfian's efforts a few months back to make her betray Thrawn." So not much time has passed. Therefore the majority of the Memories sections are happening concurrently with Chaos Rising. Certainly not in between, Yiv is still around during Memories I.

 

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So how many months does this book take again, as it seems probaly many months, first we have this one character trying to manipuate two teens and again later as he on a farm and making drugs.

 

IIRC, the Memories cover 9 months--so 9 months after the events of book 1

 

I don’t think they were making drugs.

 

wasen't it drugs he made, it sonuded like, spices or what he said.

 

He said spices but I don’t think it was “spice” the drug, more the classical real world spices used for trading.

 

oh, ok. everytime i hear spices i think star wars drugs.

 

It's definitely not nine months after the end of Chaos Rising. The Thalias POV chapters have several references to the events of Chaos Rising being "last month" and "a few months back." The Memories chapters therefore overlap Chaos Rising and potentially precede Chaos Rising. A big clue is that Yiv is mentioned as an active power at the time, even though he ceased to be so at the end of Chaos Rising.

 

That's the retaliation against the Paatatus, which happens pretty early in Chaos Rising. I think Chaos Rising spans about a year and Greater Good picks up about a month afterward. Chronology was never Wookieepedia's strong suit.

 

Got it. I just misunderstood when I read the "9 months" bit. Thanks for clarifying!

 

Hmm, sounds somewhat relevant for pinning things down, including how long Chaos Rising takes.
We know Thalia remembers the events of last being in the military 'twenty years ago' (Chiss years?) when she signs on as a Caregiver to a new skywalker, so that would seem to set Memories 2, from book 1, around 40 BBY or sooner. Let's say Thrawn is 15-17, at the time. Then several years pass at the Academy, and so on. And with the Anakin scenes set soon after Ahsoka leaves the Order, will be around 19.5 or less, BBY.
So I'll assume that both books take place prior ROTS until otherwise stated, though we may not be far off the latter, by now.
Also, Cheri goes from 9 and a half or three quarters, to 'almost 10' for all that helps...

 

I really, really enjoyed this book as well as Chaos Rising. I love all the worldbuilding around the Unknown Regions and the internal affairs of the Chiss Ascendancy, the new interesting species and the way they interrelate, and generally the Wild West feel of the area. And I think it's awesome that we get to see the Unknown Regions through the eyes of their inhabitants instead of "explorers" who came from imperial territory.

My main criticism (that extends to the 2017-2019 Thrawn trilogy as well) is that I'm not 100% sold on the idea that this version of Thrawn is totally ignorant of politics. I definitely welcome the fact that his genius was taken down a notch, but I feel that this level of absolute ineptitude doesn't quite fit with the rest of the character. On the upside, it does mean that we get some brilliant deuteragonists to which he isn't always superior all the time, and that makes for some great character interactions.

A question about a species from this book, which I believe we've already seen in Treason even though the Wook lists them as separate species.

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My impression is that we already met the Agbui in Treason, and that in those events they're portrayed as a full-on Grysk client species. Specifically, in Treason chapter 15, we encounter the species that Un'hee calls the Scratchlings when Faro goes aboard the two conjoined Grysk ships that hold a communications triad. The description goes:

Later in the same chapter, when Thrawn is interrogating the pirates/smugglers, there's this bit of dialogue:

The description and the bit about touching people's heads for telepathy fit the Agbui. The only difference is the screeching voices, which I don't remember seeing mentioned in Greater Good.

At the end of the encounter with the "Scratchlings" in Treason, Thrawn has his stormtroopers shoot them dead after they pretend to surrender because he anticipates the fact that they'll try to blow themselves up together with the Imperials.

As far as I remember, there was no direct contact between Thrawn and the Agbui in this book (was there?) so I'm kind of expecting that there will be in the next book, to set up for the fact he knows they're a client species of the Grysk.

 

Am I the only who thinks there's a decent chance that character is actually Chiss?

 

This is absolutely one of my favorite things about these books, and it's what I've been wanting ever since the Hand of Thrawn and Outbound Flight books came out. We got a little glimpse at the EU Chiss during the NJO series but we never got a true dive into the Unknown Regions.

I hope they continue to expand the region and really go wild with it.

 

I kind of held that suspicion going into it, (hell I recall hearing a theory that the character was Thrawn’s long lost sister or even Thrass back from the dead in disguise) but the more I read the book the more I came to just believe what he said towards the end.

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Jixtus has a some significant gaps in his knowledge about the Chiss. If you look at his interactions with Haplif and Qilori, Jixtus had to rely on Haplif to figure out how Chiss society worked (Haplif hadn’t been briefed on the ruling families and how that functioned) and was unaware of the Sky-Walkers being the means of how the Chiss travelled through the Chaos.

 

My gut feeling about that character was that it could be some avatar of

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Palpatine himself. I mean, he ticks all the boxes @SyndicThrass listed and the gaps are definitely things he'd want to know. It would give a new dimension to the way Palps "recruits" Thrawn in the 2017-2019 trilogy, which would be a very Zahnesque sort of twist. It would also set the stage for Palpy's backup plan in the Unknown Regions.

Plus, with the fact that he's hiding his appearance gave me strong prequel vibes.

 

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A Grysk Palpatine figure!

 

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I think the easiest evidence as to why he's not Palpatine is that this is towards the end of the Clone Wars and there is no way Palpatine would be spending that much time on this.