markk

Timothy Zahn opens the final volume of his Thrawn trilogy a month after the events of his previous book, Dark Force Rising. Having successfully captured the vessels of the Dark Force fleet and staffed them with his new army of clones, Grand Admiral Thrawn begins a relentless campaign of conquest against the New Republic. As world after world falls to the Imperial forces, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo search in vain for the location of Thrawn's cloning facilities while Leia Organa Solo prepares to give birth to her twin children with Han. And with an Imperial target on his back Talon Karrde tries to organize his fellow smugglers into a force allied with the New Republic against the Empire. Yet the key to turning the tide rests with Mara Jade, the former agent of Emperor Palpatine who has just recovered from weeks of medical treatment. But can she convince the New Republic to trust her before Thrawn rebuilds the Empire once more?

 

Having introduced a range of characters and plot threads in the previous two entries in his series, Zahn faces the challenge in his concluding volume of bringing his story to a satisfying conclusion that maintains the quality of his earlier books. This he does, thanks in large measure to maintaining a narrative consistency that is often missing from later entries in the franchise. While diehard fans of the original trilogy may be dissatisfied with how Zahn marginalizes some of the main characters from the movies in favor of his original creations (particularly Han Solo, who spends much of the book in the background of events), it results in a much richer universe from which so much would grow. And this, in retrospect, is the book's greatest achievement, as in combination with its preceding volumes it revived what was until then a fading franchise, sparking the production of so much of the media that followed. It is difficult to imagine a greater acknowledgement of Zahn's success than that legacy.