James Review -- Star Wars: Thrawn

This week I decided to review Star Wars: Thrawn by Timothy Zahn. 

Shortly after the book begins, a scouting party from the Venator-class Star Destroyer Strikefast finds an encampment on a planet in the Unknown Regions. Following standard operating procedure, they begin to study the encampment, but after suffering causalities, the destroyer’s commander, Captain Voss Parck, orders them to withdraw. Captain Parck swiftly realizes that the encampment’s inhabitant, Thrawn, managed to board the Strikefast by disguising himself as a stormtrooper and captures the Chiss exile. 

After an interview, aided by Cadet Eli Vanto, who speaks a rare language known by Thrawn, Parck decides to take the Chiss to Emperor Palpatine who assigns Thrawn to a three-month course at the Royal Imperial Academy to study Basic and Imperial technology and procedures with Vanto finishing his own training there while tutoring Thrawn in Basic.

Thrawn and Vanto manage to evade both traps designed to get them expelled from the Academy, and assaults from fellow cadets to graduate second and third in their class. Vanto is assigned as Thrawn’s aide but even after graduating they face prejudice due to Thrawn being nonhuman and Vanto’s home far from the Core. They also face jealousy from superiors embarrassed by Thrawn’s superior skill, at times leading to retaliation against their few friends among their superiors. Eventually they meet a pirate known as Nightswan, the first of many encounters with Nightswan’s plans to spark rebellion against the Empire.

Meanwhile Arihnda Pryce is driven from her home on Lothal after the family has to give up their mine holdings there in response to local Imperial officials framing her mother for embezzlement. Pryce sets out to gain the power and status needed to retaliate against her enemies. During her rise through the ranks, she inadvertently became part of an organization linked to Nightswan and aides Thrawn and the Imperial Security Bureau in dismantling the group. In time she becomes governor of Lothal, but eventually the area where her parents live is taken by Nightswan’s rebels with Thrawn assigned to root them out. She receives permission to launch an effort to rescue her family but events swiftly go out of control sending the plans of both Pryce and Thrawn disastrously awry…

I give this book 9.5 out of 10. I enjoyed the various characters and learning more about their goals and motives. I also respect the author for being willing to stand against the Rebels writers efforts to paint Thrawn as more of a stereotypical Imperial. The only things I felt could be improved were expanding some of the space battles and adding more detail to a few sections. Honestly I think giving the Thrawn and Pryce plots separate novels and filling the space with more details on the plot of each character would have been great.