Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

your new Mara Jade stan account

My rating: 4/5

Pub Date: May 1991

Legends/Canon: Legends

Timeline: 9 ABY

Welcome back to the Star Wars Book Club! Today we’re talking about Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn. As per usual, this review will be spoiler free, so read on at your leisure.

Photo from starwarsfandom.com

I haven’t read very many books on the ABY side of the Star Wars timeline (only 3, counting this one) and this is my very first official Luke, Leia, and Han adventure. I think it was a good introduction for me to this point of the larger story where Luke is struggling with how to rebuild the Jedi, Leia is struggling to make a new government, and Han is struggling with his place in this new world where he isn’t so much of a smuggler anymore. They are a good cast of characters, obviously, and I definitely liked their portrayal in this book a lot more than when I read about them in Shadow of the Sith a few months ago.

As far as plot goes, Heir to the Empire is the first book in the original Thrawn trilogy, a.k.a. the first time Thrawn was introduced into the Star Wars expanded universe. His military strategy was as intensely complicated here as it was in Thrawn (2017) and I struggled just as much to keep up with him and his big ideas. Timothy Zahn, though, does such a great job of writing Thrawn’s character. At this point in the timeline, Thrawn is a Grand Admiral in the thoroughly depleted and pushed to the edge of the galaxy Empire, and he desperately wants the Empire to be back in power. The plot is mostly driven by Thrawn’s military goals and the fallout from them that ripples through the other characters in the book.

One of these other characters is someone whose name I’ve heard floating around, but didn’t know anything about: Mara Jade. She’s got a chip on her shoulder against Luke, and that was a fun subplot to watch unfold. Even after only reading about her as a side character in one book, I have officially jumped on the bandwagon of making Mara Jade canon. Do I think that will actually happen? Well, after some spoiler fraught Googling, I think it’s probably not super likely. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still hope for it anyway, and it certainly doesn’t take away any of my enthusiasm for reading more about her in the Legends content we have.

While Mara Jade was probably my favorite thing to come from this book, my interest was also piqued about the concept of Dark Jedi. They are mentioned in this book briefly, and now I find myself wanting to delve deeper into that topic. After all, Asajj Ventress is technically a Dark Jedi, and she’s one of my favorite characters. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised when I delve into the dark side of the Force focused books in the near future.

I don’t have much more to say about this book that connects very well with what I’ve said so far, so without further ado, here are my last thoughts in random bullet point form.

• Bpfassh, C’baoth, Fey’lya - someone please send me a pronunciation guide. Please.

• We got to see more Noghri, that’s pretty cool. Especially because I never knew there more than just this guy from Rebels:

  

  Also from starwarsfandom.com

• Han and Leia are having twins. This is the first I’ve heard of this. The difference between Canon and Legends can be quite confusing at times, and this is one of those times.

• Talon Karrde, smuggler extraordinaire, but he has morales? I’m so curious to see what kind of role he plays in the next two books of this trilogy

In the end, I’m looking forward to reading book two, and in my opinion this is classic Star Wars reading for good reason. Timothy Zahn knows what he’s doing.

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Thanks for reading and being here at the Star Wars Book Club! If you’ve ever read Heir to the Empire let me know what you thought of it down in the comments.

See you in a few days with the book list for March and in a few more days with a review of Dark Force Rising.