Tome Thursday: Heir to the Empire

Hello everyone!

I was planning on doing a different book review this week as I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to finish the one I'd started reading during the previous weekend, but lo and behold, that seems to not be the case as I suddenly stumbled over the ending yesterday!

I hadn't been anticipating it, honestly.

When my e-reader tells me I have about 30% more of a book to read, I actually expect a hell of a lot more story to go along with it.

But at around 71% I suddenly found myself with the ending, and a 'to be continued' sticker and I was just there like ... wait, what?

So this does mean, however, that I can actually give you the original review I wanted, and not worry about pulling another book out from some sort of deep well!

It's time we all brushed up on our lightsaber skills, people.

We're headed into a galaxy far, far away, this time with the Heir to the Empire.

I have another Star Wars-centered book review somewhere on this blog, which I will be linking down below (Shadows of the Empire), which told the story about how our heroes planned on rescuing Han Solo during the Return of the Jedi, and explored this lizard-like alien ... thing of a mastermind who tried killing Luke.

Obviously, he kind of failed.

Now, with Heir to the Empire, we're sailing well and truly away from the movies and into the aftermath of the Galactic Civil War (the first of many, sadly, according to the Expanded Universe), namely, about five years later.

Timothy Zahn, the author of this trilogy which I have been told is a must read for a starting point into the universe, had somewhat a daunting task to fulfil.

After all, you had three heroes, Luke, Leia and Han, and they needed to go about and rebuild from the former Empire into what they named the New Republic (the Old Republic being the one before the Empire which collapsed with the rise of Darth Vader). So how does he do it?

Read on and you'll see, at least the beginning of it all.

The thing about this book, first and foremost, is that you need to know what happened in the movies. 

Because if you don't, it's moot point. 

How will you understand what Admiral Ackbar is doing, swivelling his fishy eyes around, if you don't know that he's an actual pseudo-fish? Or, from a race of sort of fish. I never did investigate thoroughly, but you get the idea.

And no, it is decidely not a trap, at least not yet.

I should give just a slight warning: reading the book is a pleasure. It reads well, has a lot of action sequences, familiar characters from the movies, and a cohesive sequence of events. But once you sit down to actually type up what you've read, you run into some plot holes, and start thinking. I'm not saying I didn't like it - I enjoyed reading! So much better than the sequel trilogy. But some of those plot holes ...

Anyway, the New Republic, five years in, seems to be struggling on chicken legs to establish some sort of order into the galaxy, which I find kind of funny, considering how long it seems to be taking, but at the same time ... it's a big ass galaxy. I can probably cut them some slack, right? Right.

So Leia is doing what Leia does best, which is to say she's one of the front runner diplomats, and the Council that's trying to wrangle the galaxy into some sort of democratic organisation again is starting to crack along the seams because, hello, politicians.

Somewhere in this motley group is Han, too, because he and Leia are now married, and also expecting twins so there's an additional layer for him which Leia occasionally forgets about.

Meanwhile, Luke is now left to his own devices and needs to rebuild the Jedi Order, starting with training his sister in the Force, because she, too, is sensitive to it (as movie viewers will know), and because her babies probably will be too. That's the speculation, at least.

And all the while this is going on, there's a new bad guy in town.

Remember the Galactic Empire? Did I say it was defeated?

Well, it was, but never forgotten. 

A new character makes his way onto the pages, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and somehow, without being a Force user, he seems to be on top of everything and everyone and is just evil with his mad skillz.

Which is fine, on some basis, but when you portray an enemy so remarkably efficient, and other characters often comment how different the Battle of Endor might have gone if Thrawn and not Vader had been leading the attack ... you kind of think that our peeps are doomed. And having that feeling at the very start of a new trilogy is slightly dangerous.

So what's our Grand Admiral up to?

Well, he's after technology, actually. Some sort of mountain fortress that Emperor Palpatine managed to squirrel away and nobody from the Rebel Alliance ever knew about it, so Thrawn is now hustling to grab some stuff he needs so that he can attack said Alliance and reinstate the Empire. On his way, he also picks up some weird little critters, ysalamiri if I remember the spelling right, who apparently repel the Force, or at least make some sort of shield around themselves that the Force can't penetrate. So our baddie picks up a number of these, too, and a Dark Jedi (read: Sith, but apparently this nomenclature didn't come into play until the prequels) who will take Luke, Leia and the twins, mold them in his image, and ...

Ahem.

So, yeah, our bad guy has a plan. The Empire tests different points of the Republic's working circle, and the council is scrambling to keep up.

Also, there's apparently a hit out on Luke and Leia, as, during several diplomatic missions, our group gets attacked and they barely escape. Eventually they split up so that each can do their job and try and cover as much ground as possible, and Leia heads over to Chewbacca's home world where she finally comes face to face with her would-be assassins, who suddenly don't want to kill her because she's Vader's daughter - and Vader was the one who saved this assassin race, the Noghri.

Okay. Problem one, done.

Problem two, and the biggest one, is Luke almost ending in the Empire's grasp, only to be floating around space until he gets picked up by smuggler Karrde and Mara Jade. This last name is significant to any Star Wars fan, as, in the EU, SPOILER ALERT, she later goes on to become Luke's wife. But at the moment, she kind of wants to kill him for killing Palpatine, so, you know.

Romance can wait.

While Luke is Karrde's prisoner, Han and Lando Calrissian also land on Karrde's planet, by accident more than design, and of course, where there's smoke there's also fire, so Thrawn also makes his appearance. Suddenly, everyone's scrambling and stormtroopers are shooting and Mara and Luke are working together and even though Luke can't use the Force (because this planet is full of those Force-repelling creatures) he's still badass.

And to top EVERYTHING off, Thrawn finally launches his campaign against the Sluis Van Dockyards, aka the Republic's biggest docks, using cloaking technology and some mining technology to try and steal the ships there. Unfortunately for him, the Millenium Falcon with our heroes happens to drop out of nowhere into the battle, too, so it doesn't end the way the Empire wants it to.

But there isn't much time to waste celebrating - Leia returned to Coruscant and found that problem three had just begun: Admiral Ackbar, arrested.

At which point, we say SAYONARA, GALAXY! and need to go pick up Dark Force Rising, which is the second of this trilogy.

It's a bumpy ride, I'll give you that!

And yeah, while I was reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were some slightly nagging  bits of information for me.

For instance, apparently, our movie heroes are high up in the hierarchy of this New Republic, but somehow they have the time to bounce around the galaxy and get into trouble. Okay, I can probably buy that with the diplomatic missions and such, but ... still.

Secondly, the plot of the book smells suspiciously like the original trilogy sort of meshed together. A bad guy, apparently omnipotent (sans Force this time), who wants the Skywalker twins, Luke gets a tugging call to go train with this weird new Jedi that's surfaced, we mess with smugglers, and Leia is under threat of assassination. Actually, scratch that, this last bit is weirdly like the prequels in a way, but this book came before them.

Thirdly, it's implied that Mara Jade seems to be a bit Force sensitive, but somehow, on a planet and even on ships close to those anti-Force salamanders, where Luke's powers are nul and void, she still seems to retain hers, to a degree. 

Fourthly, if I have to read one more time how brilliant her golden-red hair and green eyes were, I'm going to actively throw the book across the room. WE GET IT, WE REALLY DO.

Fifthly ... I don't know, I'm not sensing much character growth from our trio of heroes. They're just the same as in the movies, and I was kind of hoping in this book for something new and exciting. Which I got, in some areas, but not in all of them.

And sixthly, Thrawn can't possibly know everything. That defeats the purpose of him then losing, because it makes no sense.

But I need to get my hands on the second book. PRONTO.

So I guess you could say it's a fifty-fifty!

xx

*image not mine

Shadows of the Empire

Star Wars EU