Author: Timothy Zahn
Title: Heir to the Empire
Publication Info: Spectra (1992) 
Summary/Review:
In 1991, I was a freshman in college when news that the Star Wars saga would be continued in books caused a flurry of excitement. In 2020, when an avalanche of new Star Wars content was just announced it may be hard to understand how excited we were to see the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia, Han and company. As the generation who grew up on Star Wars, we were promised a nine movie saga, but after Return of the Jedi there was eight long years of nothing. And so if the story was going to continue in books, we would read books.
The novel picks up five years after the destruction of the Second Death Star and defeat of the Emperor with the New Republic government now attempting to win the peace. But there are still parts of the galaxy under Imperial control and they are coalescing under a new leader, Grand Admiral Thrawn. In many ways, Thrawn is a more compelling villain than Palpatine as he has no sensitivity to the Force and instead uses his intelligence and studies his enemies’ culture to predict they’re behavior. Even with this book being de-canonized to the Star Wars Legends, the character of Thrawn has reemerged in other media, because he’s just that interesting.
I enjoyed this book on several readings and found it a good adventure, although it is very bookish and probably would’ve never translated to the screen. On the other hand, my wife and I read this to our Star Wars-obsessed daughter and my wife found it boring, while my daughter lost interest with only a few chapters to go. So, your results may vary.
Rating: ***
Panorama of the Mountains 
I really enjoyed this series years ago. I continue to read Zahn’s books in this series.
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