Book 36: Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn

What's this?  A Star Wars book?  Yes, I felt it was time for a bit of fluff.  I like to read a few of these kinds of books now and then just for fun.  The series (this is the second book) starts about 5 years after The Return of the Jedi and continues the story from there.  Other than the original films, these are the best Star Wars stories I know of.  Instead of the prequel trilogy, Lucas should have filmed these.  I've read this set a long time ago and wanted to re-read them.  Before my little project here started I read the novelization of the prequel movies, the original movies and these seemed like the logical place to go from there.

At 440 pages it's only 63 pages per day.  Shouldn't really be a problem.


REVIEW:

This is the second of the Thrawn trilogy of Star Wars books.  It picks up where the last left off.  Leia and Chewbacca are on a mission to try to recruit a mysterious species for the New Republic while Luke, Han and Lando are searching for a long lost fleet of starships that could turn the course of the conflict between them and the remnants of the Empire.

The best part of these books are the characters.  Zahn writes the heroes exactly as you remember them from the movies.  Their personalities fit perfectly.  His new characters, especially his villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn, are well fleshed-out and believable with realistic personalities and motives.  Thrawn as a villain is way above what you would expect from a Star Wars novel.  He is well-cultured, subtle, intelligent and devious.  There are plenty of times when the heroes are one step ahead of him, but many other moments that he outwits them.

There are plenty of plots and counterplots to weave, on both sides, in this book.  It reads as a kind of treasure hunt.  Both sides are looking for the same thing, the Dark Force, a fleet of 200 powerful dreadnoughts, and they bounce around the galaxy following leads and false-leads.  As the end of the book approaches it turns into a race, the victor of which may tilt the balance of power in their favor.

Another thing that I particularly like is the level of detail included in Zahn's universe.  Zahn describes things like spacecraft controls, weapons effects and even Luke's Jedi powers in very believable and engaging ways.  It makes the experience much more immersive when these details are done right.

Overall, the book is a lot of fun.  The characters are accurate and familiar, the villain is sufficiently devious and challenging and the action is non-stop.  If they would make this trilogy into movies it would be many times better than Episodes 1-3.

9 out of 10.