Reading the EU: Heir to the Empire
Jan. 3rd, 2018 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maplemoodAuthor: Timothy Zahn
Stars: 4 (out of 5)
Okay, right off the bat: three of these stars go to the story as a whole. The fourth goes to Mara Jade, since she's the type of character who deserves a whole star to herself.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more, and especially to read more of the kinds of books I want to read. I've wanted to get deeper into the Star Wars Expanded Universe for ages, instead of just admiring it from afar, and you know, what better time to start that than four years after the whole thing's been retconned? I enjoyed Heir to the Empire a whole lot anyway; it's actually nice to think of it as being one of the many possible Star Wars universes, instead of the one and only option.
The story kicks off five years after Return of the Jedi; the New Republic is still struggling to build an at least semi-functional political system, and what's left of the Imperial forces are still doing their best to make sure that doesn't happen. So Luke's worried, Han's worried, Leia's pregnant and worried--and then, thanks to the Imperial forces' newest commander, Grand Admiral Thrawn, they have to deal with an attempted kidnapping on top of all that. Of the four (counting Thrawn's) main storylines, I ended up most invested in Luke's, especially when it intersected with Mara Jade's. At the start of the book, Mara is a smuggler, bent on hunting Luke down for reasons known only to herself. She's such a fabulously angry character, who puts on an act of being coldly calculating but is, at the end of the day, almost completely ruled by her emotions. There's a lot to her and her backstory that's only hinted at in this book, so I can't wait to get to Dark Force Rising and hopefully learn more. It was also great to see Lando and another one of his crazy/amazing schemes, and even though Han and Leia didn't share as many scenes as I was hoping for, they were lots of fun, both on their own and together.
So, yep, I'm really happy to have started my EU journey with this one. A solid story, lots of likable and/or interesting characters, and some very interesting bits of worldbuilding. Also, though I didn't put a huge focus on him in this review, Thrawn is a fantastically calculating villain. Like with Mara Jade, I hope more of his backstory and personal motivations will sneak into book 2.
(I should also probably sneak in a note that the Star Wars EU was officially renamed Star Wars Legends in 2014, but, if I decide to do more of these reviews, I'll be calling it the EU because I prefer that, and also because I'm lazy.)
Stars: 4 (out of 5)
Okay, right off the bat: three of these stars go to the story as a whole. The fourth goes to Mara Jade, since she's the type of character who deserves a whole star to herself.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more, and especially to read more of the kinds of books I want to read. I've wanted to get deeper into the Star Wars Expanded Universe for ages, instead of just admiring it from afar, and you know, what better time to start that than four years after the whole thing's been retconned? I enjoyed Heir to the Empire a whole lot anyway; it's actually nice to think of it as being one of the many possible Star Wars universes, instead of the one and only option.
The story kicks off five years after Return of the Jedi; the New Republic is still struggling to build an at least semi-functional political system, and what's left of the Imperial forces are still doing their best to make sure that doesn't happen. So Luke's worried, Han's worried, Leia's pregnant and worried--and then, thanks to the Imperial forces' newest commander, Grand Admiral Thrawn, they have to deal with an attempted kidnapping on top of all that. Of the four (counting Thrawn's) main storylines, I ended up most invested in Luke's, especially when it intersected with Mara Jade's. At the start of the book, Mara is a smuggler, bent on hunting Luke down for reasons known only to herself. She's such a fabulously angry character, who puts on an act of being coldly calculating but is, at the end of the day, almost completely ruled by her emotions. There's a lot to her and her backstory that's only hinted at in this book, so I can't wait to get to Dark Force Rising and hopefully learn more. It was also great to see Lando and another one of his crazy/amazing schemes, and even though Han and Leia didn't share as many scenes as I was hoping for, they were lots of fun, both on their own and together.
So, yep, I'm really happy to have started my EU journey with this one. A solid story, lots of likable and/or interesting characters, and some very interesting bits of worldbuilding. Also, though I didn't put a huge focus on him in this review, Thrawn is a fantastically calculating villain. Like with Mara Jade, I hope more of his backstory and personal motivations will sneak into book 2.
(I should also probably sneak in a note that the Star Wars EU was officially renamed Star Wars Legends in 2014, but, if I decide to do more of these reviews, I'll be calling it the EU because I prefer that, and also because I'm lazy.)