Thrown is the best character outside the movie canon. He is interesting and scary at the same time and has a complexity that puts most if not all the movie characters that became add-ons after Return Of The Jedi to shame. Great character and a good story line where the empire, for a change, becomes the underdog.
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This book has gotten me into the Star Wars Expanded Universe. A fun read and interesting background to the Star Wars world. Even if you’re not a huge Star Wars geek, this can be enjoyable. I listened to the audiobook with my husband and had to wait for him to continue, otherwise would have likely finished it much quicker. Very good! ( )

Thrawn (#1) 2 1/2 (rounded up to three here - it was ok and yes, I like elements of it) stars

Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, all-though now considered non-canon (Legends), for many fans, is a stone cold classic. It introduced perhaps one of the most interesting villains in all of the Star Wars universe: Thrawn. And while, Zahn’s original trilogy might not have aged well, it holds a dear place in my heart as it was one of the first EU books I read. Now, branded as Legends, it has been reduced to what I consider an entertaining “what-if” scenario.

Hands-down Thrawn is one of the best villains to come out of the Star Wars universe. He’s a military Sherlock. A mastermind of military and combat prowess who excels at defeating his enemies without the use of the Force. He gives Tarkin a run for his money. A few years back Disney wisely reintroduced Thrawn in Rebels and Timothy Zahn was hired to reprise his role as author to a new novel about him. Thrawn #1 is the result.

The novel starts off strong. Like many origin tales, Thrawn begins with our Chiss protagonist alone and exiled on a planet at the edge of known space.. A good chunk of the novel is also told through the eyes of Eli Vanto, a lowly Imperial cadet who is taken along on an investigation of this jungle world because of his knowledge of these backwater systems. When the crew encounters Thrawn, they are immediately impressed by his survival skills and knowledge of military strategy, traits that are said to be valued by the Chiss Ascendancy. Obviously, these skills are also highly sought-after in the Empire, leading the Imperials to bring Thrawn to Coruscant so that Emperor Palpatine can decide his fate. Despite being an alien, Thrawn manages to impress the Emperor with his eloquence and persuasiveness, and immediately gets assigned to a military academy to hone his skills and knowledge of the Imperial Navy. Eli Vanto is sent along with him, in order to be translator and guide to all things related to the Empire’s culture and society.

Meanwhile, on a mining planet called Lothal, we get another origin story for another Rebels character: Arihnda Pryce, a young company heiress,who is planning to take revenge on the Empire by infiltrating the very system she despises. It’s an alright storyline but honestly, I could care less about Pryce. She distracts from the engaging aspects of the novel which not surprisingly centers on Thrawn( as this a very character-focused novel). When Pryce is introduced, and our attention is off of Thrawn, the novel loses its momentum and becomes a bit pedestrian. If your a fan of Rebels, you’ll like it. If not, you’ll be a bit bored.

What I enjoyed about this novel is how it detailed just how Thrawn became so successful even in the face of the Empire’s xenophobia. And I enjoyed how Zahn managed to put us into Thrawn’s head. For the most part, this book is fairly dry - Zahn is a rather stark and to the point writer. But he excels when he gives us glimpses into Thrawn’s masterful mind and military action. When we are with Vanto and Pryce, the story falters a bit, simply because Zahn isn’t the most engaging writer and because Thrawn is such an incredible character in comparison to everyone else.
Thrawn isn’t among the best novels I’ve read from the new canon, that would go to anything published by Claudia Gray. However, Thrawn is such a fascinating character that I’m willing to dismiss some of the narrative and technical flaws of this book.

Audiobook Comments: Marc Thompson, the narrator, is great at male voices, and his voice for Thrawn and Palpatine was AMAZING but I really did not care for how he handled some of the female voices. Men attempting female voices just really doesn’t work.

Verdict: Worth reading if you’re a fan of Star Wars Rebels or the EU (Legends) stories or military sci-fi. This wasn't a bad entry in the Star Wars canon but it wasn't mind blowing either. It was just ok. It was entertaining enough but also a bit of a slog in places. ( )

Overall not a bad book. Thrawn is a character that was introduced back in the EU days of Star Wars. His character then was set in the time after Return of Jedi and was for all intents and purposes set up as the new bad guy. As any Star Wars fan knows, Disney scrubbed away most of the material in the EU when they bought it all and called those stories Legends and are no longer considered "canon". Of course now they can cherry pick characters and story elements from the EU as they wish which is certainly what they have done here. In this book, the first of a trilogy I believe, Thrawn is now set in the time before A New Hope. This of course is to prevent conflict with the new sequels that Disney has been making.

It works for the most part. The author, Timothy Zahn, had been considered by many the best Star Wars author back in the day when the EU was started with his series of books. Since then, and particularly since Disney bought it all, there are other authors who now considered the best. But with Thrawn, Zahn is back and in fine fashion.

This book is the first of what I believe will be a trilogy and covers the beginning of Thrawn appearing in the Star Wars universe and his rise in power and the ranks of the empire. There are outright hints of a more deadly and evil danger out in the universe that make one wonder if it relates somehow to the Vong. The Vong, another EU creation, were the centerpiece of a bunch of EU novels which I never read but some people really enjoy. In the EU they exist decades after Return of the Jedi so who knows. Maybe the subsequent novels in this new trilogy will explain more.

Having said all that, I did enjoy the book and the new characters, especially Eli Vanto. I look forward to learning more about his story particularly after his new assignment at the end of this book. ( )

My hands are warm, I hold my mouse tight, my eyes squint at the Goodreads form.

Argh. I wanted to love this book. I love Thrawn and Zahn and still think the original Thrawn series is the best Star Wars prose we've had to date. While there is nothing wrong with this book, Zahn remains an able writer, there just isn't any real development of titular character. It's a weird sort of origin story in that Thrawn does not change over the course of the book. Sure, his human apprentice goes full circle, but I really couldn't care at all about that. We don't really get to know Thrawn as anything more or less than what we already got in the previous EU or Rebels. Ironically, the most well-developed character in the book is Governor Price!

This is not a bad book, but it's also not a particularly impressive one either. Thrawn is a novel that seems more like a necessary work to establish the credentials of the Grand Admiral in the new canon, rather than a truly engrossing take on the character. Why Zahn could not be unshackled to do both is what puzzles me. ( )