SPOILER FREE
Star Wars: Thrawn is written by New York Times Bestselling Author Timothy Zahn. Zahn is no stranger to the Star Wars galaxy, he is the mastermind behind the Legends canon epic known as the Thrawn Trilogy: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. I’ll provide links to amazon below so you can pick those up if dont already have them!
Summary: The empire takes a mysterious alien into custody. Due to the rarity of the individual, the officer in command decides to deliver the alien directly to the Emperor as some sort of trophy. The bond is formed immediately between the Emperor and this alien, a Chiss named Thrawn. Thrawn swears his loyalty to the Empire. His impressive background and military expertise leads Thrawn to many successes in the Empire, climbing the ranks faster than anyone else. Because of his alien species he does face adversaries which brings him some strife, but there isn’t much he can’t handle.
The antagonist in the novel is brilliant, only Thrawn stands a chance at piecing the puzzles together that are laid out by this individual, called Nightswan. He’s responsible for theft of a strong material that is being used by the Empire to build a certain military space station. The side story involves a young woman, Arihnda Pryce and her struggle with power and success. I want to tread lightly and not reveal spoilers, so moving on.
Characters: Because Thrawn was loaded with so many fantastic characters, I’m going to mention three of them.
Thrawn: calculated, well spoken, and well trained. The mains a military genius. He is a strange being to the known galaxy, only myths exist of the alien species, the Chiss. Thrawn is the man you’d want on your side. I found myself routing for him… I should be, because he’s a filthy imperial. To better understand his foes, he studies their art. Thrawn is one of the most elaborate and impressive character we’ve been gifted in the new canon.
Pryce: A woman from Lothal. I was actually impressed by this character, she was secondary, and somewhat disconnected from the story of Thrawn, but her story was just as fun and interesting. Her path is a crazy one. I liked this character but by the end of the book, I hated her. Not because she was poorly written, but because of her personality and what she does. Only after this book did I find out she’s in the Rebels TV show.
Finally, Eli Vanto: The character I feel a lot of us regular guys can relate to, you have plans, you can see your success paying off, then crap just hits the fan and you wind up in places or situations you never expected. I routed for Vanto from page one.
Overall Thoughts: This book is absolutley amazing! If you are a Legends fan who can’t bring yourself to read a canon book… but your watching or reading this review anyway, do yourself a favor and pick up this book. Timothy Zahn can seriously write a novel. I’ve heard folks complain that there wasn’t enough action in the book, I found just the right amount. The perfect balance of action and politics. This novel focuses on thing that is very very important, that a lot of books on both the new canon and Legends lack. STORY!
As of now, I’m going to claim that Thrawn is definitely in my top 3 canon novels. I think this is the first book I’ve read that demands a trilogy. I hope Thrawn survives season 4 of Rebels… a show I don’t watch, so we can get more books focuses on his character.
Rating: I give this book a 5 out of 5