Review: The Heir to the Empire Trilogy

This review contains spoilers.

I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the Star Wars Extended Universe (with the exception of the excellent Darth Bane trilogy). Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy (1991-93), however, had proven me decisively wrong - and, indeed, has shown me why so many would have preferred an adaption of Heir to the Empire instead of the sequels we got.

The trilogy follows the efforts of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a military genius, to revive the Empire, five years after their defeat at Endor in Return of the Jedi. Thrawn is a refreshing take; rather than a new Sith lord leading a new Empire, Thrawn is a military commander leading the remnants of the Empire five years after the defeat at Endor. There’s no cackling evil, no random acts of violence, and no new superweapons - just a coldly calculating military genius, making intelligent use of the resources available to him. Like Sherlock Holmes, Thrawn is a character whose genius is shown through his companion, in this case Captain Pellaeon. 

Thrawn’s approach is typified in The Last Command. In one attack, he smuggles cloaked ships beneath planetary shields, and uses timing to create the illusion that the Star Destroyers outside are firing through the shield. In another, he drops cloaked asteroids into a planet’s orbit, forcing the planet to stay under its shields until it can clear them out - but he leaves them unsure of how many there are, thus paralysing them. 

The secondary villain, Joruus C’baoth, is an insane Jedi clone who Thrawn attempts to manipulate and control. C’baoth believes it is the place of the Jedi to rule, through mind control, and is a fairly interesting character due to his insanity. Ultimately, though, he strays into a lot of the same territory of the Emperor - seen most clearly in his final confrontation, in which he cackles in his throne room, blasting everyone with lightning, trying to turn Luke into his apprentice. He’s more compelling in the earlier books, before his insanity fully sets in, and when Luke goes willingly to learn from him, before realising what he’s gotten into.

Opposing Thrawn and C’baoth, we have the heroes from the original trilogy - Luke, Han, Leia, and Lando. These characters are all fairly well-executed; they act as you’d expect them to act, and speak like you’d expect them to speak. They don’t have particularly strong character arcs throughout, but that’s perhaps okay when they’ve completed their arcs in the movies, and now we get to see the result. Lando’s inclusion feels a little contrived at times, with circumstances lining up to drag him away from his latest financial scheme and into the Millenium Falcon.

Joining this cast are two new characters, smuggler Talon Kaarde and his assistant Mara Jade. Kaarde is a really fun character, a crime boss who is deeply loyal to his people, and who has a heart of gold beneath the profit-making exterior; in a way, he’s who Han could have become if he hadn’t ended up in the Rebellion. Mara is more interesting still - the Emperor’s former assassin, compelled to kill Luke Skywalker by his last command through the Force. Her growth throughout the series, to eventually befriending Luke, is the most compelling character arc of the lot. 

There’s also a large cast of side characters, from the familiar - Admiral Ackbar, Mon Mothma, Wedge Antilles, Chewbacca, and so on - to the new - Councillor Fey’lya, smuggler Niles Ferrier, Leia’s assistant Winter (who, I will admit, I thought was an Imperial spy until right near the end), and the Noghri assassin Khabarakh.

Zahn takes these characters throughout the galaxy, exploring a range of new planets. There’s the city-world of Coruscant, which Lucas picked up and used in the prequels. There’s the superheated Nkllon, on which Lando has built a mining city that trudges along on old AT-AT legs to stay ahead of the dawn line. There’s Myrkr,  a metallic-forest planet home to force-repelling Ysalamir worm-snakes. And there’s plenty more besides; one of the strengths of the trilogy is the variety of interesting new planets it takes places across, each of them slotting neatly into that ‘Star Wars feeling.’

Zahn’s plotting is tight, and his pacing is excellent. The story moves along at a pretty brisk pace, at times feeling like a movie. He consistently jumps between characters, which is something I often struggle with in a book if one’s story is less interesting than the others - but not here, where each character is always doing something interesting.

The most interesting of the new plot threads is the planet of the Noghri. Uncontacted and ‘primitive’, the planet was devastated by a starship crash. Vader arrived with the Empire and began repairing the planet in return for the Noghri’s service as elite assassins. During the story, Leia uncovers that this is a fraud, with the Empire secretly sabotaging the planet’s recovery to keep the Noghri as their indebted servants; the revelation turns the Noghri against them. 

Ultimately, Thrawn’s Noghri bodyguard assassinates him at a pivotal moment, bringing about his downfall with no dramatic speeches, no final clashes - just a manipulative villain undone by a detail he missed and a race he underestimated.

C’baoth’s defeat is a little less well-executed. As I mentioned before, the throne room scene in which he dies is a little too by-the-books. The main spice here is Luke duelling his own clone Luuke (yes, really), though the clone just attacks in silence, so it falls a little flat. Meanwhile, more and more characters pour into the room to be pinned down and do nothing - Han, Leia, and Kaarde all arrive but don’t contribute much of anything to the scene. The key event here is Mara killing the clone Luuke, thus breaking the Force compulsion on her to kill the real Luke; after which she kills C’baoth with Luuke’s lightsaber. Meanwhile, Lando and Chewbacca rig the complex they’re in to blow, and they all escape in Kaarde’s ship.

This leaves Zahn without many characters for the big fleet clash with Thrawn happening at the same time. Wedge Antilles is there, as is Kaarde’s number two Aves and coalition of smugglers; Kaarde building this coalition is a major subplot and very entertaining. Their part is small, though, and we don’t get much of a climatic battle there. Kaarde, in my view, should have been at this battle, rather than rushing to C’baoth’s complex to do not much of anything. I love the way Thrawn is assassinated and the Imperials fall into confusion and retreat - but a big space battle before would’ve built up the stakes in a way that would’ve added to the impact.

One of the weaknesses of Zahn’s writing is his action scenes. They’re not bad, per se, but they can be a little flat and lacking in tension. There are a few exceptions that are well-written and tense - for example when Luke and Mara are attacked by a vornskr dog in the first book. But, equally, there are a half-dozen scenes in which Wedge in his X-wing picks up a tail, is warned about it by his wingman, and pulls some clever flying so his wingman can shoot the tail; his final battle mixes this up by having him pick up two tails at once, dealt with by two wingmen.

I’m nit-picking a bit here, though. Ultimately, the Heir to the Empire trilogy is a lot of fun. Strong characters travel a galaxy full of interesting places, having well-paced adventures, opposed by a superb villain; the books are exactly what Star Wars should be.