Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy books may not be canon anymore, but they still hold a special place in the hearts of folks like me who remember what it was like to wait for almost a decade to find out what happened after Return of the Jedi. I reviewed the first book of the trilogy last year (link!), so it only makes sense to review the second one while we wait for Star Wars: Rogue One to be released.
(Begin opening crawl) Book Two: Dark Force Rising. Our heroes are scattered to different parts of the galaxy as they struggle to protect the fledgling New Republic from the remnants of the Empire.
Han Solo and Lando Calrissian continue to search for much-needed ships to strengthen the New Republic’s fleet. Leia Organa Solo and Chewbacca travel to the homeworld of the Noghri, desperate to convince the race of terrifying warriors to leave the Imperial Army. And Luke Skywalker heeds the call of Joruus C’baoth, the dangerously unstable Jedi who is secretly working for the Empire and hopes to turn Luke to the Dark Side.
Meanwhile, Mara Jade – the former Emperor’s Hand – wrestles with conflicting loyalties between her memory of the Emperor and her new ties to those outside the Empire’s control, forces within the New Republic have framed General Ackbar for treason, and Grand Admiral Thrawn is close to locating the long-lost Katana Fleet: two hundred Dreadnaughts known to treasure hunters everywhere as The Dark Force. (End opening crawl.)
Like a lot of trilogies, the first book sets the stage, the third book has the climactic scenes, and the second book…moves things along. Mostly. I could have done without the tiresome General Ackbar plot. It’s realistic that a new government would have lots of political backstabbing while everyone tries to find their place, but the entire story just made me hate the Bothan schemer, Counselor Borsk Fey’lya. (It’s gotten to the point that when Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi states “Many Bothans died to bring us this information,” my reaction now is “GOOD.”)
Han and Lando are dragged into this storyline and have to run around the galaxy looking for ways to clear Ackbar’s name. Fortunately they get sidetracked by rumors of the missing Katana Fleet, and the search for that was Zahn’s excuse to write entertaining back-and-forth dialog between Lando and Han, create exotic locations like space ports and otherworldly casinos, and hear entertaining stories of times gone by. (We really need to have a director film a scene of a barracks made out of memory-plastic getting hit by lightning. Having three whole buildings suddenly fold flat when the people inside were trying to sleep would have been something to see.)
Leia and Chewbacca have the most fascinating story with their trip to the Noghri homeworld, putting Leia right in the center of an entire race of aliens who have been ordered by Grand Admiral Thrawn to capture her. She has exactly one claim to the Noghri’s loyalties: she is the Lady Vader, daughter of the man who brought the Noghri into the service of the Empire. Leia has to walk a fine line here; she knows that the Empire is exploiting the Noghri, but she can’t attack their memory of the one person who was willing to help them when their world’s ecosystem was destroyed by fallout from a battle. She can’t insist that maybe having thousands of them die in battle is too high a price to pay without insulting their very touchy honor about paying a debt. And hanging around debating the issue increases the chance that someone will turn her over to Thrawn before he can find out that he’s been betrayed.
If there’s a storyline that I’m still not sure about, it’s the one with Luke and Joruus C’baoth. I keep reminding myself that Luke had met a grand total of two Jedi up to this point (the Emperor and Vader were Sith, so they don’t count) so he wouldn’t have a lot to go on when trying to judge what a Jedi was supposed to be like. You’d think, though, that having Joruus be domineering, impatient, judgmental, lacking any kind of compassion, and in every way completely the opposite of Yoda and Obi Wan would have been a giant red flag. But Luke thinks that Joruus is mostly bitter and damaged, and once again Luke decides that it’s up to him to save a very dangerous person from themselves. No telling how well that would have gone if Mara Jade hadn’t come crashing in to demand Luke’s help with a prison break.
Fan-favorite Mara Jade doesn’t get as much to do in this book. Mostly she wrestles with her orders for her to kill Luke Skywalker, orders that seem to have been literally branded into Mara’s mind – and nightmares – at the moment of the Emperor’s death. We all know that she’s going to side with the Good Guys eventually, but it’s interesting that the turning point for her wasn’t how much suffering was caused by the Empire, but how much Thrawn fails to measure up to the Emperor.
As much as I think Grand Admiral Thrawn is one of the best Star Wars villains, he’s a bit more fallible here, and there were a few times I felt the only reason such a brilliant strategian would jump to the wrong conclusion was because it was convenient to the plot. He still manages to stay several steps ahead of everyone, and he’s exactly as ruthless as he was in the first book. Having Thrawn standing calmly in the middle of a village that’s practically being flattened under blinding light and crashing thunder as his ship fires lasers into the atmosphere simply so he can Make A Point was an effectively frightening image.
Zahn continues to throw in the occasionally reference to the original trilogy (“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” “Never tell me the odds,” and other favorites) and it’s still fun to see the history of the Star Wars universe that was being created before George Lucas decided to create the Prequels and throw the entire Expanded Universe out the window (especially since some of the EU timelines seem to make more sense…) I’m going to consider this book a good baseline for comparison, since next week’s project is to read Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Life Debt, the second novel of the current series that explores what happened in between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and which is completely and officially canon.
For now.