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Small Nerd Reads Heir to the Empire

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Chapter 28
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    • We've got speeder bikes pursuing Luke and Mara now, and they have no idea if there's more than the ones they noticed. Naturally, they just go straight ahead while pretending to be Completely Normal People Who Got Lost. This involves Luke making his face all puffy with Myrkr's equivalent to poison ivy to make him less recognizable. Eventually, they run into the search party, where Luke goes by the name Jade and pretends that Mara is his captive. Of course, they're both treated as prisoners, because the Empire is just like that, I suppose. Soon they meet a fellow captive: Han. As they're all being moved to the local jail, Luke has R2 send a message to 3PO about when to send in the cavalry.
     
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    • Chapter 29
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    • So Lando and C-3PO are watching the prisoner procession from the last chapter. Also some guy working for Karrde named Aves is there too. I don't remember if Aves has shown up before. Does anyone know about him? Actually, is Aves male? I'm not sure if all these instances of "he" and "his" refer to Aves or Lando. Anyway, Lando gets Luke's message about waiting to attack and decides to roll with it. Aves isn't happy about it, but things work out.The stormtroopers die, and it's time to make the getaway.

    This was a short chapter, so I may as well explain something about why I don't like Mara's character. I haven't noticed a single thing about her that I find interesting or redeeming. She doesn't seem very regretful about the whole "personal assassin of the Emperor" thing, and in general she just feels kind of generically grumpy and mean. I admit confirmation bias might be involved here, but that's the impression I have of her.
     
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    • Small Nerd said:
    Actually, is Aves male? I'm not sure if all these instances of "he" and "his" refer to Aves or Lando.
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    Aves is male, yes:
    Heir to the Empire pg 361 said:
    Crouched down beneath the windowsill, Aves shook his head.
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    Small Nerd said:
    She doesn't seem very regretful about the whole "personal assassin of the Emperor" thing, and in general she just feels kind of generically grumpy and mean. I admit confirmation bias might be involved here, but that's the impression I have of her.
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    That's ... pretty much how she is in this book, IIRC. I mean, there are two more books in the trilogy for her character to develop.
     
    Chapter 30
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    • In the aftermath of the breakout, Karrde decides that it's time to leave Myrkr for good. Considering how mad Thrawn'll be at him, I can't say it's a bad idea. Well, everyone gets going, but Karde gets the time to wring a favor out of Han. The favor is a big ship to help Karrde's outfit evacuate more quickly, of course. With nothing else to do on the trip to a planet with decent medical facilities (Lando got reaaly banged up in the fight), Han and Luke catch each other up. The planet they're headed to? Sluis Van. Wow, practically everyone's going there. Speaking of, Thrawn's finally launching his attack on the place. First the cloaked ship, then all the rest, no special heroics, they're coming to get ships and not lose them. Gain ships? Is Thrawn going to hack the shipyards or something?
     
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    • Apparently the scene with Karrde in the aftermath was where Zahn had originally intended to end the novel, but his editor thought it needed a bit more.
     
    Chapter 31
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    • We see the attack start from Wedge's POV as the special freighter arrives at Sluis Van. Then it blows up, revealing a whole bunch of TIE fighters. Time for Rogue Squadron to do its job. That's what Han and Luke wander into. Well, there's already a bunch of Star Destroyers there when those two show up, so I suppose some time passed during the POV change. They enter the fray, naturally, but I doubt it helps much.

    Thrawn, meanwhile, notices the Millennium Falcon arrive and has the mole miners he stole from Lando burrow into the NR's ships. That explains what he wanted with them. Cool boarding tactic! The extra ships certainly help the battle go Thrawn's way, though Wedge, Luke, and Han put their heads together and figure out right quick Thrawn's goal of stealing a fleet for himself.

    They decide to try and undo/prevent the thefts, but who knows if that'll work. Especially since Thrawn's intent on having the captured ships scram soon. But then Han remembers that the mole miners run on remote control, so Lando can mess with them. Han asks Lando to make them run so they'll ruin the ships' internals and make Thrawn's prizes useless. That's super clever. And it works, so Thrawn decides to cut his losses and retreat. After all, he still has what he needs for his ultimate victory.
     
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    • Chapter 32
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    • Cleanup of the battle is well underway, and not everyone is happy about Han wrecking a fleet to save it. No time to dwell on that, though, because Han gets a message from Coruscant. Leia says that Admiral Ackbar's been brought up on charges of treason! Failure's making his move, it seems. Han and Luke head to Coruscant in hope of saving the New Republic from his ambition.

    ...And that's Heir to the Empire! I think I understand better why people like the Thrawn Trilogy so much from reading it, but I'm not sure I'll be reading the other two books in the set, especially since I already knows what happens in them. I'm not really sure what book I might do a Let's Read of next, so I'm open to suggestions. See you soon!
     
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    • Darthtabby said:
    Did you read the TV Tropes page for the trilogy or something? I was under the impression you were actually surprised by a lot of the things that happened in Heir!
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    The New Essential Chronology, actually. It gives a general outline, but it doesn't get very specific about much of anything.
     
    I'm not really familiar with the New Essential Chronology, so I don't really know what it says exactly.

    I wanted to comment on a couple things with Mara and the Noghri.
    I'm not sure Mara having served the Emperor from a very young age would make much difference to you. In case the Chronology didn't go into detail with the Noghri though, well... Leia feels guilty about what happened to the Noghri's home planet (she presumes it was a Rebel ship whose destruction damaged the planet's ecosystem because the sort of stuff that would cause such desrtuction was carried by older vessels like the ones the rebellion used in its early days) until a conversation with the matriarch of Khabarakh's clan makes her realize that the damage occured during the clone wars. She ends up proving to the Noghri that the Imperial "decontamination" droids are actually keeping their land poisoned.

    The TV Tropes article for the Thrawn trilogy essentially states that the heroes beat Thrawn not so much because they're smarter, but because what goes around comes around. (Note I'm paraphrasing heavily.) I'm not sure I entirely agree for various reasons, among them that Thrawn was deliberately written as a character who commands the respect and loyalty of his troops rather than simply their fear (Zahn wanted Thrawn to be different from other Imperial characters in that regard). But I think there's some truth to it as well.
     
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