Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

A new month. And with a new month comes new posts... We'll new posts on old reads. It's hectic time for me with my move and job transitions lurking around the corner, but I'm trying to keep up on the back-blogging as best as I can. So, let's jump in. 


Star Wars. A franchise worth over $30 billion freakn' dollars! Hard to believe something so successful came from something so abysmal - I'm alluding to Lucas' first draft of the Star Wars screenplay. I strongly urge anyone to read this early draft of what would become the most lucrative Sci-Fi story of all time (excluding maybe Avatar). It's worse than awful and hardly bares any resemblance to what we now take as the first movie (aside from the name Skywalker being thrown around here and there). If you can take anything away from it's, it's... I don't know. Maybe Lucas paid someone to write it for him? I only say this because there's a wealth of imigination and creativity from various contributors within this franchise that - I imagine - has been generated entirely outside of Lucas' influence. Aside from the movies, television shows, video games, trading cards, and toys; there's giant library of published (and I'm sure non-published) fan-fiction that builds on the original story.

That brings me to this novel: Heir to the Empire. Taking place a few years after Return of the Jedi concludes, this book shows our heroes as they struggle to get the Galactic Republic up and running again with the Rebels having ruling control. Now, even through Vader and Emperor Palpatine have been knocked out of the picture, the Empire still exists. Stationed on the far outskirts of the galaxy, they are now ruled by Grand Admiral Thrawn...

...this guy (artist interpretations may vary).

Unlike the series' other villains, Thrawn has no connection to the force. Instead, he's just suppose to be a brilliant military commander. On top of that, he has the ysalamiri. What's a ysalamiri you ask? It's a small snake/salamander-like creature that's capable of blocking out the force around it. Thrawn is on his search to find a Dark Jedi to in his effort to restore the Empire and uses the ysalamiris' unique abilities to subdue any Jedi tricks. It becomes useful when he enlists an insane Dark Jedi clone named Joruus C'baoth to tag along for the sole reason of finding the only other Jedi still alive, Luke Skywalker. Wikipedia explains that author Timothy Zahn had the idea that C'baoth was suppose to be a clone of Obi Wan, but there's no evidence of that anywhere in the book - cool idea though; Luke's old master suddenly becomes he most powerful foe. 

Speaking of Luke, what have our heroes been up to all this time since the last film? Well, Han and Leia (now starting in Jedi training of her own) are now married with twins on the way while Luke is working to finish up the last of his own Jedi training - Obi Wan has appear in a dream indicating that he and the other Jedi apparitions are leaving for good (not sure where else they can go, but whatever); he's now completely on his own. The story builds as the gang (more specifically Luke and Leia) find themselves being hunted down by a mysterious race of bounty hunters still loyal to the Empire. Throughout these conflicts, the gang gets separated as Luke finds himself imprisoned by Talon Karrde (a smuggler similar to Han in his old days) on a jungle-planet covered with ysalamiris. Needless to say, Luke is completely without the force during his stay. While there another character is introduced, Mara Jade - Talon's second-hand man... er, woman. She's got a serious grudge against Luke while their rivalry is put to the test as they find themselves stranded out in the jungle as an attempted escape from by Luke from Talon's imprisonment goes awry. 

Through and through, I enjoyed this story. It was fairly entertaining and it was nice to revisit the old gang I loved so much as a child. However, this is not my favorite Star Wars story. Aside from this book, I've read one other Star Wars novel: Shadows of the Empire. I believe this might have been adapted to be one of the launch titles that came out with the N64 - sad to say that was a long time ago and really can't remember (I know I could just look that up on Wiki, but I'm lazy goddamit!). Anyways, this story exist to fill in the gap between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as Luke, Leia, Lando - and maybe Dash? - try and chase down Han's frozen body. I won't make this posting a full review on that book. Just take the recommendation that if you are ever curious in reading a Star Wars novel, I would side with Shadows. 

But stayed tuned... Heir to the Empire is only part one of the Thrawn Trilogy. Excited to see how the other two books turn out.

PS - Blogger is being a dick about formatting - hence why this post's aesthetics look a little screwed up. I'm too lazy to fix the HTML, so just deal with it.