Heir to the Empire

WHAT
A teen adventure fanfic for those who engulps anything Star Wars related. The book follows the same “Leia fleeing the Empire” plot and overall structure from the movies, and it has all the same characters in the same situations. While it does add some unique elements to the franchise, the story is pretty bland, it has some annoying cliches and the characters have no depth. If you want interesting Star Wars content, you're better of reading the Wookieepedia.

TLDR
- No literary value, poorly written fanfic. Cheap vocabulary, lacklusting prose
- Shallow characters, no personality development
- Poor dialog
- Omniscient villain
- Lack of conflict and suspense, predictable scenes outcomes
- Faithfully follows the movies plot structure (completely lack of originality)
+ Faithfully follows the movies plot structure (if you want to relieve that feeling)
+ All the movies main characters
+ Structurally well constructed plot. Scenes flow are logical
+ Easy to read and understand

PLOT
The Emperor has been defeated and while the fledgling New Republic struggles with internal conflicts, they're efforts are under a greater threat from a military genius who is rallying the the remaining Imperial forces.

SUMMARY

The story begins 5 years after the Battle of Endor, where Luke Skywalker defeated Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. The Empire is slowly loosing its grasp on the majority of the planets it had conquered since the destruction of the Jedi.

Han Solo is having trouble abandoning his outlaw ways and adapting to a life of politics. Leia is trying to find time for her diplomatic career, her Jedi training and her marriage, all the while worried with Luke's emotional problems. Luke is lacking a purpose in life, he does not know how to be a teacher for Leia, and he is from being a Jedi Master yet. He fells alone, being the last Jedi on the universe.

Meanwhile, Grand Admiral Thrawn is putting into practice his plan to destroy the New Republic. He is leading the Imperial Starfleet into an attack on an unprotected Republic base, one that would cripple their military power.

In order for this plan to succeed, he first needs to find the Emperor's secret stash containing powerful artifacts. He anticipates that the artifacts are protected by a powerful Dark Jedi, and so he first acquires a device to counter the Force. He is also counting on subjugating him into his service. In order to help Thrawn, the guardian asks that a Jedi to be delivered to him, alive. The only Jedis left are Luke, Leia and her twin unborn babies.

What follows are a series of attempts to kidnap both Luke and Leia, who are traveling the Galaxy with Han and Chewbacca on diplomatic missions. The Republic does not have the means to counter the Empire espionage, and so they must rely only on each other to survive.

ANALYSIS

First on the quality of the writing: it is awful. I've been reading almost exclusively Nebula award winners for the past 3 years and I can say this books feels like something I could have written. I would not call it literature, but fanfic. Not that there is no good prose in fanfic, but as a whole, it is written by amateurs who do not grasp all of the subtleties of a good narrative.

I'm not very good at criticizing bad prose, specially without examples, which I didn't bother to record any. I would say that “The show don't tell is weak with this one”. The exposition is bad as well, the way the characters are always explaining things with inner dialog or to the person next to them. Some paraphrasing: “... but the strike did not affect him. Could he be so cunning that he found a way to counter it? Perhaps he used some mind trick to fool him. Is this man really that powerful?”. The language is very crude, lacking depth. Although I hate the opposite, when it is full of alliterations, symbolism, misplaced poetry and unusual vocabulary.

All of this matters very little to me though. It might have encouraged me to finish the book and give it another star, but the plot is what matters the most, followed by interesting, relatable characters. And the plot sucked. And so did the characters.

The book have no sense of mystery or intrigue. Thrawn is constantly describing his tough process to his subordinates in a very straightforward way. He claims to be different from Vader, encouraging his crew to not be afraid of giving him bad news. However, in one situation, Luke uses the Force to pull off an impossible stunt to escape the general's ship. Thrawn then asks who was responsible for controlling the tractor beam that had Luke under control, and kills him for letting he escape, claiming “You must be ready for everything”.

I never really cared too much for the “one dimensional” critic of characters, but here it applies well. Thrawn comes of as an omniscient being. He is always aware of his enemies moves, always able to counter their deceits. He mentions that one time he destroyed 6 Jedi Masters at once. He encounters a man claiming to be a Jedi Master. He says that is impossible, therefore he is a clone. When Lea and Han are trying to loose track of him, they use 2 ships to escape, then have them connect to each other in space through a bridge and part separate ways. Thrawn then says: Lea is on the left, Han on the right. Where is the fun in that?

Mara Jade was an awful character. She hated Luke, and every time she was near him, she made a point to let him know. This subplot was what made me stop reading the book. It was too much of a bad developed cliche. The antagonist that hates the protagonist because he did something bad to her, although the protagonist is not aware of what it is and likely it was not his fault. She then becomes a bad person, doing things that pale in comparison to the wrong that was done to her. Then they are forced to work together, possible leading to a friendship or a romance. It was also very clear that she had a connection with the Force, even though I did not read enough to find out.

The smuggler Derick, the one that replaced Jabba was also a terrible used cliche. The bad guy that is more honorable then all of the other characters combined.

I liked the fact that the author made point to include all of the movies main characters, but they are not further developed. In fact they feel pretty simple minded and shallow. Han and Leia strong personalities were pretty much wasted in this book.

The action scenes were uninspired, the use of Jedi powers was underwhelming. Thrawn send a team of assassins two times against Luke, and they fail both times. There was nothing thrilling to the scenes, they were just OK.

On the positive side, the book is still very readable. The scenes are concise, well connected, consistent with the plot. They flow well together, it is clear that the author gave some though into organizing them on a white board with stick notes. The fond memories of the Star Wars characters in my head plus the overall joy for the franchise made me want to see something that was not there, and I kept waiting to find it.

I found it interesting enough his attempt to replicate the overall feeling of the movies. The movie structure is basically maintained here, with Lea, Han, Luke, Chewbacca and Lando working together in order to solve a problem. Even though they all have new higher level responsibilities, they manage to find a way to abandon them and get together to be chased down by the Empire once again.


Read 10:30/13:08 80%

Executive Summary: Mostly lived up to the hype for me. Certainly more enjoyable than the prequels that Lucas put out, but that's not hard.Audio book: Do this in audio. Not only is Marc Thompson a great narrator who does a great job with almost all the voices, there is music and sound effects too that makes this more like a radio play than just an audiobook.There was no way I was going to read this after seeing Marc Thompson did this series, and I was not disappointed.Full ReviewThere is a lot of hype from the Star Wars geeks, that if you're going to read EU (now Legend) books, these are the ones to read. I personally was more Star Trek than Star Wars growing up.Sure I watched the original trilogy growing up and loved it. And like most people who grew up before the prequels, I was disappointed with those. So I was content to just consider the original trilogy the only thing I cared about and move on with my life.One of my buddies however is a HUGE Star Wars fan. He'd periodically try to get me to read this series to no real avail. Then earlier this year one of my favorite authors (well it's 2 guys, but whatever) wrote a book about Han Solo called [b:Honor Among Thieves 18050080 Honor Among Thieves (Star Wars Empire and Rebellion, #2) James S.A. Corey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385232527s/18050080.jpg 24581828]. My friend told me it's a pretty good book that could be read without reading other Star Wars books and he was right.I did the audio with Marc Thompson and that finally pushed me over the edge on giving this one a try. I know that Disney decided all the EU are no longer canon (if they ever really were), but I think they'd be stupid to discount this book completely when writing episode 7. If nothing else, Mr. Zahn adds some great characters to already beloved cast of the series.I found Admiral Thrawn a little too smart at places almost to feel unbelievable, but not often. He certainly makes for a great villian.Mara Jade I had heard of before, was not what I expected given what little I did know of her. I'll be curious to see how her character develops in the next two books.Talon Karrde reminds me a lot of Han Solo. Sure he's a criminal, but he's got a code he lives by. He's honorable to a point, and you don't mess with one of his own. It's interesting to see him fill the vaccum of Jaba the Hutt and he couldn't be more different from him.In addition to the great new characters all the big names are here, Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, C3PO, and R2D2. Plus others like Admiral Ackbar and Lando Calrissian.The story was pretty good and moved at a decent pace. My only real gripe with it is that sometimes there seemed to be a lot of “coincidences” like characters showing up at the same place at the same time, or some of Admiral Thrawn's insights.Being the first book in a trilogy I didn't expect a lot of resolution, but I thought it stopped in a good place. Of course I don't have to wait and have already jumped right into [b:Dark Force Rising 216442 Dark Force Rising (Star Wars The Thrawn Trilogy, #2) Timothy Zahn https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327870067s/216442.jpg 463790].Overall I found it enjoyable and wish I had read it sooner. Better late than never.

I decided to revisit this book after Star Wars VII renewed my interest in the franchise. After twenty years the book still holds up and this trilogy is the best Star Wars fiction I've read, in my opinion.

I enjoyed the story, however it isn't one that challenges the way I see life, the universe, and everything. Thus a four star rather than a five.

What I liked:
- Fantastic storytelling. Star Wars movies were fairly straight forward in the story line. Zahn introduces some more complex characters while holding to the the spirit of the movies.
- The main antagonist, Grand Admiral Thrawn is a great improvement over the purely angry stereotype of the franchise. Zahn did not try to create an antagonist in Darth Vader's image.
- More subtlety in the political realm. There are some questions as to motives of characters and where they will impact the story.

What I didn't like:
- Mostly what I didn't like is associated with my declining interest in Star Wars in general. I'd like to see a little more complexity in the main characters.

- I'd like to be challenged in how I see the world and others. Star Wars is more about black and white good and evil. Unfortunately life doesn't end up being that simple.

A fun book, rife with zingy lines I would expect to hear from my favorite characters. This was my first Star Wars book and it seems like a good place for someone curious about the novels to start. It contains enough familiar characters, places, events, etc. to not feel overwhelming and like I needed to study beforehand, but was different enough to really hold my interest.

On my third attempt to read this, I finally got into the story. I just had to push that that incredibly dull and boring first half.

Honestly the plot wasn't that impressive, basically one big chase sequence with far too many references to the movies, but I'll give it a pass since it kept me entertained and I kept wanting to listen to more of the audiobook.

Speaking of which, like all Star Wars books, the audiobook is great.

Thrawn is totally uninteresting and his scenes are boring. Hopefully he will develop into a better villain for the series.

Mara Jade was the most interesting part of the story. (not quite as interesting as my girl Vestara Khai, but this is only Mara's introduction after all) I basically know what happens with her story line though, which kinda takes the punch out of it, but I'm still looking forward to actually getting to know Mara Jade better as a character rather than just a general story line.


Noted inconsistancies
- Luke can't understand R2's beeping without his ship's read out (and we are told such since he can't understand R2 when he ship loses power) but later Luke and R2 are in different rooms, again without power and no way to display a read out, and they hold a whole conversation, and understand each other perfectly.
- Unless I'm mistaken, Thrawn, or at least Pellaeon, was aware that Luke was on the planet yet later act like they didn't know

This is a really well done unabridged audiobook. In particular, the reader does a great job getting the voices to sound like their related actors (with perhaps the sole notable exception of his Harrison Ford impression) - and his Grand Admiral Thrawn sounds exactly like I imagined him. Using a somewhat Hispanic voice for Talon Karrde seems a little off though.

Spoilers ahead!

A fine beginning, but that's all. After reading it a lot of times, I feel quite disapointed with the first book, maybe because Zahn is almost building a “new Star Wars trilogy” and is introducing the new characters (despite being a lot of times better than the new movie trilogy...). I definitely prefer the third book in this book cycle, “The Last Command”.

This was fun! And it was great to finally see who characters like Thrawn and Mara Jade actually were (or are, in the case of Thrawn).
As fun and enjoyable as it was though, I'm not sad most of this was wiped away. Leia being interested in using a lightsaber is always going to sound weird to me. As well as Jedi clones.
Am now really looking forward to Rebels season 3 though. As well as Timothy Zahn's new Thrawn novel!

This was fun! In high school I read 100 million Star Wars novels (approx) and then pretty much dropped them for several years, but Ashley told me this was like “Ocean's 11 but with Han and Lando” (which is what pretty much every review says. I think it might actually be on the book jacket. If not, it should be, because it's exactly like Ocean's 11 but with Han and Lando. I mean there are even 11 people involved with the plan.)

Anyway, like I said, it had been a few years since I read a Star Wars novel so it took me a little while to get back into the swing of it and I ended up skimming some descriptions of spaceships or whatever. Like, I get it, it's a spaceship. In space. Or whatever.

It was fun! If “Star Wars Ocean's 11” sounds fun to you, you will probably think this is a fun book! If “Star Wars Ocean's 11” does not sound fun to you, you are probably just lying to yourself.