Star Wars

Everyone is gushing over Thrawn, and I agree, but I want to give some attention to how Luke, Han, and Leia all acted and talked like they did in the movies.

The books captured Luke’s optimistic and patient attitude, Han being clever yet rash and coating it all in a veneer of half baked one liners, and Leia seeing right through Han’s BS and in being very practical.

Being very early EU material, the books have such a different tone than works made after the universe was fleshed out. The Jedi order was treated as something so long gone that even records of it were hard to come by, the clone wars were vague and the implications about them set a very different picture than what was later established, and even the sith as a coherent order weren’t thought of yet- instead there were Jedi and fallen Jedi.

The feel of the books rode such a perfect line, being easy to follow but compelling.

Thrawn is one of the few fiction villains who is also written as an effective leader. It makes him scarier.

It is a sort of pulp science fiction that was very typical of it's time. It's not literature, but it is a fun read. Timothy Zahn has a degree in physics so his work is always reasonably accurate, especially his more recent work. He's one of my favorite science fiction authors.

I highly recommend the trilogy. It's a worthy addition to your Star Wars novel collection.

These are the sequels in my mind regardless of what Disney says. They will probably be pulled from further for future TV and film. Thrawn is arguably the second most interesting antagonist after Vader.

Complaint first, thrawn suffers from the same problem as Sherlock homes in that their genius is a contrivance of the author. I.e. they know perfect things because they’re written to.

Other than that the books are well written & paced. Amongst the best Star Wars books there are.