Thrawn

A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away, I was once absolutely amazed and thrilled when a certain Timothy Zahn revitalized the whole Star Wars franchise by picking up a few decades after the events in Episode Six, introducing the most charming and deadly enemy the New Republic had ever faced.

I was doubly amazed because there was no heavy reliance on BDOs, just strategical and tactical strength. Grand Admiral Thrawn came back from the outer rim and WIPED everything in his path.

My jaw dropped. I said to myself, MY LORD, I WISH WE HAD ANOTHER TRILOGY OF MOVIES BASED ON THIS. It's BRILLIANT!

Instead, we had a prequel trilogy and then two out of three after-trilogy and two side-stories.

AND NO THRAWN ANYWHERE.

I felt a great disturbance in show more the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

*crickets*


So, eventually, I got this bright idea. Go back to the original author of Thrawn and read all about Thrawn's rise to power. I avoided it only because I tend to avoid franchise novels, but come on! It's THRAWN!

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied. I loved getting an inside look into this brilliant guy with dual loyalties and enough wisdom for three sectors. :) So? Love to hate? Enjoy just how brilliant a villain he is because he's also complex and admirable?

Yep. All of the above. All the love of Darth Vader before we saw him as a kid and none of the mistakes. :)

Totally worth it. Easily my favorite SW novel after Timothy Zahn's original classic. :) show less

Grand Admiral Thrawn, the antagonist introduced into Star Wars literature in the now non-canonical Heir to the Empire, is reintroduced in this Disney canon novel. This story serves as something of an origin story, beginning with Thrawn being found by the Imperial Navy after apparently having been exiled his mysterious species of people, the Chiss Ascendancy. The novel depicts his rapid rise through the ranks in the years after the end of the Clone Wars. Thrawn is known for his brilliant observational and strategic skills, and throughout the novel the reader gets to see his internal monologue on how he unravels the words and mannerisms of others.

The novel is also told from the perspective of Eli Vanto, a young cadet from Wild Space who show more inadvertently becomes Thrawn's translator and assistant. At first resentful of the interference in his own career path, Vanto grows to respect Thrawn and also rises in the hierarchy of the Imperial Navy. They have Holmes and Watson kind of relationship. In a parallel story, Arihnda Pryce rises to become governor of her homeworld Lothal through similar skills of cunning.

This novel is less war story or space opera and more a work of political intrigue. Zahn does a great job at taking these putative villains - Thrawn, Vanto, and Pryce - and making them captivating and even sympathetic characters. This is an excellent novel and I look forward to reading the rest of the series. show less

Thrawn
by Timothy Zahn
Del Rey, 2017
$28.99; 427 pages
ISBN 9780425287071

This was everything I ever wanted out of a Star Wars novel. Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire Trilogy was my introduction to Star Wars novels. If this had to be the last one I ever read, I think I could be happy. Much like Rogue One, Timothy Zahn's Thrawn expertly painted in the gaps left by the original trilogy of movies, making an already great work of popular art even better.

This is so because Zahn managed to answer more questions than he posed. For example, the complete lack of aliens within the Imperial Navy gets a plausible explanation that fits in with all of the movies. Also, the process by which the Imperial Navy and Army came to staffed and led by incompetent show more lackwits, despite having the resources of an entire galaxy to call on, is laid bare. With an intentionally open-ended story, this is a remarkable feat. Not least because the available narrative space for Zahn is, if anything, more limited than it was when he initially created Grand Admiral Thrawn.

In 1991, references to the Clone Wars were just that. Zahn ended up making choices to move his story along [without any objections at the time] that were simply abrogated when George Lucas wrote the prequels. The gap thus created was a large part of what doomed the previous iteration of Thrawn's origin story, Outbound Flight. Trying to shoehorn in the continuity of the prequels made that book plod along without any sparkle. Thus, Disney's decision to sweep away all of the previous books, comics, and videogames seems to have given Zahn an opportunity to reimagine Thrawn without being bound by even his own works.

In my opinion, this Thrawn instantiates who he was meant to be better than before. He is the best version of himself. Zahn commented on his Facebook page that this is the same Thrawn we saw before, just in a new light. Maybe so. But he sure feels a bit different to me. It has been twenty-five years since Zahn introduced us to the Grand Admiral, and Disney's decision plus the weight of twenty-five years of additional writing experience created an opportunity to make something new.

The vehicle by which we are introduced to Thrawn's early Imperial career is a political thriller. [along with excepts from Thrawn's journal] I didn't expect that [I'm not sure what I expected] but I think it works. While we do get to see Thrawn's tactical and strategic virtuosity, the scope of his campaigns are limited by the scope of his responsibilities. What we do get to see are the political machinations that characterized the day-to-day business of the Empire.

We get to see Imperial politics mostly through the eyes of Arihnda Pryce [a tie-in to the on-going Star Wars Rebels series] and Eli Vanto, an Imperial ensign who speaks a common language with Thrawn and ends up trailing Thrawn throughout his career. Pryce is exactly the kind of person who prospered in the years following the end of the Clone Wars: amoral, ruthless, and calculating. Here we find the root cause of the Empire's rot. Pryce, while bright and capable, came to be Governor of Lothal because of who she knew, and whom she had betrayed. A functioning bureaucracy requires a bit more probity than this.

Thrawn himself does not seem much bothered by the venality and incompetence of Imperial officers and politicians. Which strikes me as odd, and also as perfectly appropriate. Zahn made me feel that Thrawn was very alien. He just didn't want what I want, at least in the same way. The dust jacket for the book features this quote, which also looms large in an incident Thrawn's Imperial career:

There are things in the universe that simply and purely evil. A warrior does not seek to understand them, or to compromise with them. He seeks only to obliterate them.
The things that Thrawn finds abominable, and the things he finds excusable, are very different things from almost everyone around him. He clearly disliked the chaos of the late Republic, and liked the orderliness of the new Empire, despite its tyranny. I appreciated this, Thrawn really is an outsider, an alien, from a culture with a completely different point of view.

Yet at the same time he felt very familiar. The analogue I find ready to hand are the classical Romans. The Thrawn we meet in the early Empire is good at the hard virtues. His courage and stoicism are undeniable. As is his lack of pity. He is honest to the point of bluntness. He lacks the soft virtues: kindness, gentleness, compassion. He never seeks wanton destruction, but suffering as such does not faze him. Disorder does.

The portrait of Rome I have in mind is the one Chesterton painted in the first part of The Everlasting Man. Rome represented the best of the ancient world, but it was still very different from the Christian civilization that eventually replaced it. Just, but harsh. Uncompromising and stern. And very, very good at war. Most of us modern Westerners would also be taken aback at something a 1st century Roman commander would find obvious and proper, if we ever met one.

Much like Scipio Africanus, Thrawn's political adversaries tend to find him a bit of a naïf at politics. It is left ambiguous whether Thrawn is really bad at politics. All the Imperials think he is, but Clausewitz said that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Insofar as Thrawn is quite adept at manipulating his opponents on the battlefield, the idea that he cannot do the same to politicians seems strange.

It is just possible that Thrawn isn't interested, or doesn't care, because that is way his alien mind works. He could just have a blind spot there. It is also possible that is is playing a really long game. The story I'm thinking of is about John von Neumann, that he could have a normal conversation with absolutely anyone, from a 5-year old to one of his peers in physics and mathematics. The idea is that he was so smart that he was just simulating what normal looked like to whomever he was talking to. This is like that, but if you had the added goal of manipulating and controlling the person you were talking to.

What that long game really is, we don't know. We know more than we started, however, which is good enough for me. I loved this book, and I suspect many Star Wars fans will too. You might even like it if you aren't a fan. I've read a lot of Star Wars books, and I haven't liked most of them. This one is good, a thought-provoking exercise in order and justice through the mind of an enemy commander. show less

Why does this have a 4+ star rating?

The impression I get from this book is that 99.9% of the sentient beings in the Star Wars universe are stupid. The very few clever individuals get to be outstandingly successful without much effort. It's disappointing, but does explain how two guys take over most of the known universe and how a giant, minimally mobile worm with tiny arms becomes a galactic crime lord.

This was kind of awful. Major problems include:

Vanto: The Watson to Thrawn's Holmes. He seems to exist mostly to enable explanations of Thrawn's cleverness. Zahn spends a few lines having him bristle at being made an aide to a lieutenant, but shortly after he gives up any signs of being an independent character and becomes a slack jawed show more flunky.

The Imperial Navy: I can hardly be disappointed, but I am. These are the guys who routinely fail against a ragtag band of scrappy rebels. Every Imperial who isn't Thrawn or Vanto is either a blustering ass or a mindless follower. No wonder the organization has problems.

Price: WTF? She becomes a grasping, backstabbing political operative so she can avenge her parents. Once she's made the improbable leap from peon to planetary governor she not only fails to take revenge but also leaves her parents sweating away in the mines. When she finally goes to shoo them away from impending danger she unexplainably turns from the lady who helped people find affordable housing to a mass murderer. That whole endeavor seems out of character and makes little sense. Her whole character also seem like filler. She has a few touchpoints with Thrawn, but those are mostly unimportant and could be worked out using some other means than Price.

Night Swan: Moriarty to Thrawn. A clever, noble rebel leader with his hand in many a pie. He was a humble man of the people until that great scourge, that galactic injustice, high commodity prices, causes him to join the fight against the empire.

Human centric governance: Thrawn gets a hard time for being an alien in the mostly human navy. However, he seem s to be the only non-human in the whole organization. Only a few non-human authority figures show up at all. This is a vibe the author could really roll with, but he doesn't. World's are rebelling because of labor conditions and commodity prices and vague claims of corruption. Why not rebel because you are being oppressed by an alien species (humans)? Also, what is the imperial logic there? Lots of empires were/are racist, but most of them make use of troops and low level government from the conquered people. The empire should have some favored non-humans helping them keeps the rest of the galaxy down. show less

Thrown is the best character outside the movie canon. He is interesting and scary at the same time and has a complexity that puts most if not all the movie characters that became add-ons after Return Of The Jedi to shame. Great character and a good story line where the empire, for a change, becomes the underdog.

Timothy Zahn’s beloved creation, Thrawn, has returned to the Star Wars canon in his new novel by the same name. Thrawn spans the period of time between the character’s first encounter with Imperial forces up to his appointment as Grand Admiral. His tactical rise up the ranks of the Empire is witnessed by new character, Eli Vanto, Thrawn’s interpreter and aide, and Star Wars Rebels character, Arihnda Pryce, who embarks on her own ambitious path to power. While the plot occasionally suffers from an overabundance of villains, multiple points of view offer an intimate look into the lives of three fascinating characters.

Thrawn’s highly analytical narration sets him up as the Sherlock to Vanto’s Watson. Their interactions provide show more the most insightful moments in the narrative, particularly when Zahn highlights their similarities. While Arihnda Pryce narrates a third of the novel, her journey concentrates more on what occurs behind the scenes, so maintaining focus proves difficult at times. Nightswan, Thrawn’s main nemesis, adds a sense of mystery, but apart from a brilliant confrontation near the end, doesn’t provide much else.

The plot is highly episodic, jumping from mission to mission. Zahn navigates the timeline brilliantly, even while juggling multiple perspectives. Eli’s and Arihnda’s character growth, or decline, depending on one’s point of view, is the closest the reader gets to understanding how much time has passed. Thrawn’s determined personality and strong self of self remains static, but intrigues nonetheless as he reflects on his rapid promotion to Grand Admiral.

Where the beginning starts with a bang (quite literally), the middle sometimes feels like a slog, specifically when characters make detailed observations on mining procedures and trade. Zahn also waxes heavily on the Empire’s nepotism, which most readers are already well-versed in, so these sections tend to drag. The climactic and brutal last few chapters more than make up for the dull moments though.

Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn will satisfy new readers, as well as those who enjoyed his original trilogy. Zahn’s contributions to Star Wars have proven to be a force of nature, and will hopefully continue to impress as the new canon marches forward. show less

This was my first (but certainly not the last) foray into Star Wars novels. I loved seeing the Empire from the other side of the coin. The book's character's largely don't see a need for revolution, don't frame their worldview around that. After so much media with a lens of breaking the status quo, this was a refreshing twist.
Thrawn and Vanto have a remarkable camaraderie and the characters really bring out the shine in each other. Thrawn's tactical genius is graced with his love for art and appreciation of human life, which is something the Empire sorely lacks. Their escapades and military maneuverings always had me glued to the page.