Luke and Mara Skywalker join a diplomatic mission to enter the crash site of an old spaceship. The mission is visibly pointless and way below their Jedi levels and qualifications. However, someone somewhere knows this is not the case and their powers are going to be needed. The plot thickens, as the story progresses.

This wasn’t bad at all but the story suffered from a slow start, followed by endless descriptions of battles. I didn’t fancy any of the details about the precise lightsaber’s movements. I found this boring. Jedis are also too OP for my taste. Someone that OP doesn’t even need to move to disarm an enemy, as we known from many scenes with Darth Vader.

Somewhere below the surface hides Thrawn and the threat he so much fears. However, the book gives no new information about Thrawn or his nemesis.

Overall, not bad, but maybe better for a movie script than a book. 3/5 stars on my shelves.

PS. This is only my second book this month. I got stuck again and find it difficult to read. I even ordered some thrillers to help me get out of the block with no luck yet.

Thrawn is a highly creative blue humanoid smurf-like creature from the Star Wars universe.

You can’t take this book too seriously, knowing it’s part of the Star Wars universe. However, Zahn gave his best here and the story significantly exceeded my expectations. It is a fine quality space opera, with a charismatic main character, whose superpower is his military skill. He’s a mix of Ender and the Stainless Steel Rat.

The supporting characters aren’t two dimensional and I suspect we’ll see some of them again in the sequels. Vanto, in particular, could have his own book. There is no mention of the force anywhere, no midichlorians, no magic at all. The storm troopers are able to hit their targets. This is an improvement over the usual trope in the Star Wars universe I’ve seen so far, where the final battle is decided by use of the force, rather than skill.

The print quality is superb and despite that it’s possibly targeting teenage readers, I enjoyed it. 5*/5 and will order the continuation soon.