Books Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn Summer 2019

I think that, seeing it in a TV/cartoon format a la "Rebels" would be perfect for that.

 

This book was excellent. I wasn't a fan of Thrawn: Alliances at all, bit relieved that this was Zahn back to his usual quality.

I still feel like the Grysk are still a bit of nebulous threat and could use some more background and expansion.

 

I was putting off finishing this book because I was enjoying it so much, if that makes sense to anyone. This being such an in-betweeny story I knew nothing of much consequence could possibly happen, but the ending was still a little underwhelming for me.

Spoiler

I'm most upset that Ronan survived. Hopefully Admiral Chiss lady will airlock him at the first opportunity.

I'm slightly puzzled that the idea of Thrawn having some kind of telepathic multi-core/brain processing power was dangled in our faces and neither confirmed nor denied. I think it's all but explicit now though, right? Or do I have to start a thread describing my terrible Thrawn theory?

 

Seemed like Zahn was just genuinely saying Thrawn was the Sherlock Holmes/Hannibal Lecter renaissance man style genius of his race rather than going any further with it.

 

Spoiler

Except that this book expands on the idea that Chiss have clairvoyance, explicitly states that they have telepathy and other strange mental powers... There are two or three scenes with Thrawn that seemed to me like he wasn't merely encouraging his underlings to think for themselves, but he was encouraging them to think for him. There's also that scene where he denies knowledge of 2nd or 3rd sight, whichever it is. That seems super unlikely. And there's the whole sucking at politics shtick, which is such an obvious facade yet I see readers accepting it at face value. Then there's the whole reading Ronan's mind thing, which harks back to the Thrawn/Vader book too. Is he just an exceptional cold reader, or is he actually reaching into others minds? The internal monologue moments when he's analysing body language and whatnot suggest his cold reading skills are not so great.

Maybe I need to plot this crazy idea out and articulate it properly.

 

Thrawn is not a telepath.

 

It seems a real stretch to jump to the conclusion that he could regardless. Been a few weeks since I read it, but I distinctly recall Thrawn specifically saying the exact opposite.

Actually that was one of my favorite points in the book, it shows Thrawn is truly unique amongst his people. Ar'alani accuses him of having telepathy (Probably sarcastically if I'm recalling correctly), and he responds that he doesn't read minds, he reads faces.

Which I like because it indicates that not even his fellow Chiss really get him.

 

It’s genuinely just that he’s a deductive genius with amazing powers of observation like Sherlock Holmes, I don’t think there’s anything more to it.

 

Liked this book more then the previous ones (which I did like); the plot moved at a quicker pace and I found the supporting cast more interesting. The wider range of perspectives was welcome. Krennic's representative was great. Just enough of a buffoon to be enjoyable to root against, but competent enough that you could understand why he had his job. Really interesting to see him misreading Thrawn's treatment of Karyn Faro, based on his own prior experiences and biases.

Liked how the Chiss seemed a lot less Vulcan-like and nationalistic (if not xenophobic) here and showing more of a range within the idea of being a culture that kept its privacy and tended to have a reserved public face (I honestly can't imagine an emotionally open Chiss like we got with Vanto's navigator friend or seeing the admiral's tender treatment of the rescued POW with the Legends take on them).

Spoiler

Was I the only one left wondering if the Vanto and the senior Chiss navigator were being set up as a possible couple down the road? Vanto specifically thinking about fraternization protocols seem oddly specific and suggestive if there wasn't supposed to be a seed planted.

Thought the SW website advertised it as the last installment of a trilogy.

Either way, I (as a paying customer ), would like to see more installments of some kind in the future. Really liked the Karyn Faro character (as great as the evil Imperials are, having those who're decent people on the wrong side of history adds more dimension to things) and would hate to see her disappear into the aether.

Would also be really interested in a spinoff on the Chiss ship that Vanto was assigned to; there were some pretty interested characters on that craft I'd like to learn more about, not to mention seeing what becomes of the project Vanto was working on.

 

Just finished and really enjoyed it.

As others have suggested...

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Eli and Vah'nya...seems like more than just friendship...but bound during the story by the constraints of serving on a warship together.

And why don;t the Chiss just buy some nav computers?? Use Navigators to blaze hyperspace paths but use the nav-comps to save the paths.

 

Because the Unknown Regions is constantly shifting and changing, so there aren’t any set hyperspace routes in that area of the galaxy. Each path they set probably isn’t going to be there after a certain amount of time.

 

Spoiler

I felt like the book did a really good job of explaining why Thrawn wanted to destroy Lothal. His loyalty to the Empire was being questioned, and by destroying Lothal it would convince Palpatine that maybe Thrawn was loyal after all.

 

Thrawn being bad at politics is supposed to be legit, it's not a facade. Zahn has said so himself.

I have to admit though it strikes me as a bit strange for him to be a tactical military genius but hopeless at politics, but then again, this is a guy who supposedly beats people by looking at their art . . . I don't think realism is a big priority

 

Well, there is quite a bit of ground between "master of politics" and "politically incompetent".
So, while definitely short of the former, Thrawn doesn't automatically have to be the latter.

He does recognise he is not as good at this as others

Spoiler

see his comment to Faro towards the end of the book, that she is better at politics than him

.

However, knowing he has that reputation of not being smart in the political arena, I can imagine him playing on that to an extent. Making others become overconfident and thus underestimating him

Spoiler

as did Grand Admiral Savit who seemed to see Thrawn only as someone else's pawn

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Thrawn does have blind spots and he isn't perfect at everything - just as well.


If him and Ezra ever have a fireside chat about the Emperor and his true powers, Thrawn would realise that his neat plan of somehow using the Empire (or waiting for Palpatine to die to select a better candidate) was doomed from the start. As he said in the first new Thrawn book: He gambled and lost.

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Calling major BS on this one.

All areas of all galaxies are constantly shifting and changing. All planets are in motion, all stars they orbit are in motion, all galaxies are in motion. Any decent navigation computer is going to know this and use those orbital/gravitational data to plot courses that make sense.

IIRC the unknown region is at the edge of the GFFA. Objects at the edge are moving considerably SLOWER than objects in the core, which, IIRC, is where we find places like Coruscant.

 

Thrawn gives an explaination for the nature of the UR in Thrawn Alliances. I assume, as a native of the area he knows what he’s talking about.

 

Oh I accept it as a contrivance, but it is a very bee-essy one for the reasons stated...

One could imagine the unknown regions being a comparatively opaque area of the GFFA from the perspective of the core and the rest of the galaxy due to dust or nebulae obscuring their view - a ship from the Empire might have badly out of date and incomplete data preventing normal hyperdrive calculations, but I don't see a good reason why a ship from an interstellar civilisation living within the unknown regions would have such problems with their local (and most visible) chunk of galaxy.

So I guess the unknown regions must be a patch of rogue spacetime where Star Wars magic physics works slightly differently, thus requiring Dune spacing guild navigators.

 

Well, if we look outside of Zahn’s stuff, didn’t Wendig imply in his Aftermath Trilogy that there’s other bizarre phenomena going on that’s deadly and obstructive? Gravity weirdness, cosmic storms and Eldritch creatures and the like?

That would imply that beyond physics there’s some kind of supernatural component to making that part of space so difficult to get through.

 

The way I see it, the Unknown Regions is such a big and spooky place, that the Grysk could simply be just one faction of many. In Legends you had the Vagaari, Ssi-ruuk, Killik, Infinite Empire, Nuso Esva’s Empire, various Sith fiefdoms and that’s before getting into the Vong. The Last Jedi novelisation has Snoke outright confirming that there are dozens of hermit kingdoms out there at the very least.

If anything, it seems to me that the Grysk are in over their head when it comes to someone like Palpatine.

 

I was very surprised by how Thrawn's conversation with Pryce regarding her destroying the Defender factory's fuel supply did not appear (or was even mentioned) in the book. As we know, due to Pryce's careless action, the Defender production line has been completely halted. With that being the case, wouldn't that pretty much guarantee that the funds would not be given to Thrawn? Also, is it possible to tell where exactly in the book that incident took place? Thrawn seemed very occupied with the Grysk situation the entire time, and there was no mention of him having had a conversation with Pryce anywhere (let alone the sudden fact that the Defender production has been abruptly halted). Did it happen before the start of the book? And unless Thrawn was trying to hide this fact from Tarkin and Krennic (which I seriously doubt he would have), how did the consequences of Pryce's actions not make it anywhere into the book?

 

On Pryce: With Zahn moving away from her plot after the first book, I'd love if he did a Pryce-centric story after this. Her fall from innocence in the first Thrawn novel was excellent. It doesn't have to be a full novel, even a short story or comic would be great. Like an addendum or epilogue of sorts.

 

So, what new information do we learn about the Grysk in this book?

 

Some stuff about their methodology, but not as much as you’d think.