Heir to the Empire

Spoilers ahead!

A fine beginning, but that's all. After reading it a lot of times, I feel quite disapointed with the first book, maybe because Zahn is almost building a “new Star Wars trilogy” and is introducing the new characters (despite being a lot of times better than the new movie trilogy...). I definitely prefer the third book in this book cycle, “The Last Command”.

WHAT
A teen adventure fanfic for those who engulps anything Star Wars related. The book follows the same “Leia fleeing the Empire” plot and overall structure from the movies, and it has all the same characters in the same situations. While it does add some unique elements to the franchise, the story is pretty bland, it has some annoying cliches and the characters have no depth. If you want interesting Star Wars content, you're better of reading the Wookieepedia.

TLDR
- No literary value, poorly written fanfic. Cheap vocabulary, lacklusting prose
- Shallow characters, no personality development
- Poor dialog
- Omniscient villain
- Lack of conflict and suspense, predictable scenes outcomes
- Faithfully follows the movies plot structure (completely lack of originality)
+ Faithfully follows the movies plot structure (if you want to relieve that feeling)
+ All the movies main characters
+ Structurally well constructed plot. Scenes flow are logical
+ Easy to read and understand

PLOT
The Emperor has been defeated and while the fledgling New Republic struggles with internal conflicts, they're efforts are under a greater threat from a military genius who is rallying the the remaining Imperial forces.

SUMMARY

The story begins 5 years after the Battle of Endor, where Luke Skywalker defeated Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. The Empire is slowly loosing its grasp on the majority of the planets it had conquered since the destruction of the Jedi.

Han Solo is having trouble abandoning his outlaw ways and adapting to a life of politics. Leia is trying to find time for her diplomatic career, her Jedi training and her marriage, all the while worried with Luke's emotional problems. Luke is lacking a purpose in life, he does not know how to be a teacher for Leia, and he is from being a Jedi Master yet. He fells alone, being the last Jedi on the universe.

Meanwhile, Grand Admiral Thrawn is putting into practice his plan to destroy the New Republic. He is leading the Imperial Starfleet into an attack on an unprotected Republic base, one that would cripple their military power.

In order for this plan to succeed, he first needs to find the Emperor's secret stash containing powerful artifacts. He anticipates that the artifacts are protected by a powerful Dark Jedi, and so he first acquires a device to counter the Force. He is also counting on subjugating him into his service. In order to help Thrawn, the guardian asks that a Jedi to be delivered to him, alive. The only Jedis left are Luke, Leia and her twin unborn babies.

What follows are a series of attempts to kidnap both Luke and Leia, who are traveling the Galaxy with Han and Chewbacca on diplomatic missions. The Republic does not have the means to counter the Empire espionage, and so they must rely only on each other to survive.

ANALYSIS

First on the quality of the writing: it is awful. I've been reading almost exclusively Nebula award winners for the past 3 years and I can say this books feels like something I could have written. I would not call it literature, but fanfic. Not that there is no good prose in fanfic, but as a whole, it is written by amateurs who do not grasp all of the subtleties of a good narrative.

I'm not very good at criticizing bad prose, specially without examples, which I didn't bother to record any. I would say that “The show don't tell is weak with this one”. The exposition is bad as well, the way the characters are always explaining things with inner dialog or to the person next to them. Some paraphrasing: “... but the strike did not affect him. Could he be so cunning that he found a way to counter it? Perhaps he used some mind trick to fool him. Is this man really that powerful?”. The language is very crude, lacking depth. Although I hate the opposite, when it is full of alliterations, symbolism, misplaced poetry and unusual vocabulary.

All of this matters very little to me though. It might have encouraged me to finish the book and give it another star, but the plot is what matters the most, followed by interesting, relatable characters. And the plot sucked. And so did the characters.

The book have no sense of mystery or intrigue. Thrawn is constantly describing his tough process to his subordinates in a very straightforward way. He claims to be different from Vader, encouraging his crew to not be afraid of giving him bad news. However, in one situation, Luke uses the Force to pull off an impossible stunt to escape the general's ship. Thrawn then asks who was responsible for controlling the tractor beam that had Luke under control, and kills him for letting he escape, claiming “You must be ready for everything”.

I never really cared too much for the “one dimensional” critic of characters, but here it applies well. Thrawn comes of as an omniscient being. He is always aware of his enemies moves, always able to counter their deceits. He mentions that one time he destroyed 6 Jedi Masters at once. He encounters a man claiming to be a Jedi Master. He says that is impossible, therefore he is a clone. When Lea and Han are trying to loose track of him, they use 2 ships to escape, then have them connect to each other in space through a bridge and part separate ways. Thrawn then says: Lea is on the left, Han on the right. Where is the fun in that?

Mara Jade was an awful character. She hated Luke, and every time she was near him, she made a point to let him know. This subplot was what made me stop reading the book. It was too much of a bad developed cliche. The antagonist that hates the protagonist because he did something bad to her, although the protagonist is not aware of what it is and likely it was not his fault. She then becomes a bad person, doing things that pale in comparison to the wrong that was done to her. Then they are forced to work together, possible leading to a friendship or a romance. It was also very clear that she had a connection with the Force, even though I did not read enough to find out.

The smuggler Derick, the one that replaced Jabba was also a terrible used cliche. The bad guy that is more honorable then all of the other characters combined.

I liked the fact that the author made point to include all of the movies main characters, but they are not further developed. In fact they feel pretty simple minded and shallow. Han and Leia strong personalities were pretty much wasted in this book.

The action scenes were uninspired, the use of Jedi powers was underwhelming. Thrawn send a team of assassins two times against Luke, and they fail both times. There was nothing thrilling to the scenes, they were just OK.

On the positive side, the book is still very readable. The scenes are concise, well connected, consistent with the plot. They flow well together, it is clear that the author gave some though into organizing them on a white board with stick notes. The fond memories of the Star Wars characters in my head plus the overall joy for the franchise made me want to see something that was not there, and I kept waiting to find it.

I found it interesting enough his attempt to replicate the overall feeling of the movies. The movie structure is basically maintained here, with Lea, Han, Luke, Chewbacca and Lando working together in order to solve a problem. Even though they all have new higher level responsibilities, they manage to find a way to abandon them and get together to be chased down by the Empire once again.


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