The Last Command by Timothy Zahn

The conclusion to the epic adventure begun in the number one New York Times bestselling Heir to the.Empire and continued in Dark Force Rising, this final volume spans a galaxy in flames, as the Empire threatens to engulf the New Republic and its brave defenders.

THE LAST COMMAND
The embattled Republic reels from the attacks of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who has marshaled the remnants of the Imperial forces and driven the Rebels back with an abominable technology recovered from the Emperor's secret fortress: clone soldiers. As Thrawn' mounts his final siege, Han and Chewbacca struggle to form a coalition of smugglers for a last-ditch attack against the Empire, while Leia holds the Alliance together and prepares for the birth of her Jedi twins. Overwhelmed by the ships and clones at Thrawn's command, the Republic has one last hope -- sending a small force, led by Luke Skywalker, into the very stronghold that houses Thrawn's terrible cloning machines.

There a final danger awaits, as the Dark Jedi C'baoth directs the battle against the Rebels and builds his strength to finish what he had already started: the destruction of Luke Skywalker.

The last part of Luke, Leia and Han vs Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Overall it's a nice conclusion to the trilogy with some pretty interesting mysteries and dangers. Some story events are quite sudden and satisfying, while some of them happen "just cause" or can be easily predicted and don't lead anywhere. The Jedi action is still cool and—sometimes—impactful. However space battles are hard to understand.

And although there are the same characters here as in original Star Wars trilogy, in this book they feel too stable and not evolving at all—especially considering it's the third book. Luke is somehow still very naive and likes to surrender, but he should be a cool Jedi master. Han and Leia are too same. Also some character decisions, lines and reactions feel just too strange and unimaginable.

So if you've read the first two books, you'll most probably read this one as well.

Familiar characters in their ongoing struggle between good and evil.

Executive Summary: A pretty good end to a pretty good series.

Audio book: Once again another excellent job by Marc Thompson making this one a must listen in my opinion.

Full Review
In the third and final book of the series, Mr. Zahn does a pretty good job wrapping things up. My only main gripe was that for a series called The Thrawn Trilogy, the ending with regards to Admiral Thrawn felt a lot more rushed compared to some of the other story lines.

That said, I was happy with the ending. Parts of the ending I didn't see coming, but probably should have. I thought he wrapped up Mara's story particularly well. I was a bit disappointed this book didn't have the same scale of space battles as the last two though. It did have the requisite lightsabre duel that was two books in the making.

This book seemed to focus a lot more on Talon Karrde, who is probably my favorite new character of the series. A lot of the parts I found slow in the last book are paying dividends here and important to the resolution of some of the threads.

In general, I have a lot of the same feelings about this book as I did with the last two. Admiral Thrawn still feels a little too smart to be believable at times, though not nearly as bad as the last book. The writing could be a little better. However, this is a series to read more for the fun of being back in the Star Wars universe and not something that is read for the high quality prose.

Overall this was a pretty fun series that makes me want to check out some other star wars books in the future. I'll just need to filter through them to hit up the best ones, because their are far too many of them for me to want to read them all.