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From the Publisher

Grand Admiral Thrawn threatens New Republic in epic Star Wars tale

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

It's five years after Return Of The Jedi : the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven out the remnants of the old Imperial Starlfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi Twins. And Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights. But thousand of light-years away, the last of the emperor's warlords has taken command of the shattered Imperial Fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the new Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to build. The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale -- in short, a story worthy of the name Star Wars. ®, (TM) and © 1995 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

From the Inside Flap

It's five years after Return of the Jedi: the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven out the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi Twins. And Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights. But thousand of light-years away, the last of the emperor's warlords has taken command of the shattered Imperial Fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the new Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to build. The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale--in short, a story worthy of the name Star Wars.

From the Back Cover

It's five years after "Return of the Jedi: the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven out the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi Twins. And Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights. But thousand of light-years away, the last of the emperor's warlords has taken command of the shattered Imperial Fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the new Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to build. The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale--in short, a story worthy of the name "Star Wars.

About the Author

Timothy Zahn is the author of more than sixty novels, nearly ninety short stories and novelettes, and four short-fiction collections. In 1984, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novella. Zahn is best known for his Star Wars novels (Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising, Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, Survivor’s Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, Choices of One, and Scoundrels), with more than eight million copies of his books in print. Other books include StarCraft: Evolution, the Cobra series, the Quadrail series, and the young adult Dragonback series. Zahn has a BS in physics from Michigan State University and an MS from the University of Illinois. He lives with his family on the Oregon coast.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER

1

“Captain Pellaeon?” a voice called down the portside crew pit through the hum of background conversation. “Message from the sentry line: the scoutships have just come out of lightspeed.”
Pellaeon, leaning over the shoulder of the man at the Chimaera’s bridge engineering monitor, ignored the shout. “Trace this line for me,” he ordered, tapping a light pen at the schematic on the display.
The engineer threw a questioning glance up at him. “Sir . . .?”

“I heard him,” Pellaeon said. “You have an order, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” the other said carefully, and keyed for the trace.

“Captain Pellaeon?” the voice repeated, closer this time. Keeping his eyes on the engineering display, Pellaeon waited until he could hear the sound of the approaching footsteps. Then, with all the regal weight that fifty years spent in the Imperial Fleet gave to a man, he straightened up and turned.

The young duty officer’s brisk walk faltered; came to an abrupt halt. “Uh, sir—” He looked into Pellaeon’s eyes and his voice faded away.

Pellaeon let the silence hang in the air for a handful of heartbeats, long enough for those nearest to notice. “This is not a cattle market in Shaum Hii, Lieutenant Tschel,” he said at last, keeping his voice calm but icy cold. “This is the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Routine information is not—repeat, not—simply shouted in the general direction of its intended recipient. Is that clear?”

Tschel swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Pellaeon held his eyes a few seconds longer, then lowered his head in a slight nod. “Now. Report.”

“Yes, sir.” Tschel swallowed again. “We’ve just received word from the sentry ships, sir: the scouts have returned from their scan raid on the Obroa-skai system.”

“Very good,” Pellaeon nodded. “Did they have any trouble?”

“Only a little, sir—the natives apparently took exception to them pulling a dump of their central library system. The wing commander said there was some attempt at pursuit, but that he lost them.”

“I hope so,” Pellaeon said grimly. Obroa-skai held a strategic position in the borderland regions, and intelligence reports indicated that the New Republic was making a strong bid for its membership and support. If they’d had armed emissary ships there at the time of the raid.. . .

Well, he’d know soon enough. “Have the wing commander report to the bridge ready room with his report as soon as the ships are aboard,” he told Tschel. “And have the sentry line go to yellow alert. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Spinning around with a reasonably good imitation of a proper military turn, the lieutenant headed back toward the communications console.

The young lieutenant . . . which was, Pellaeon thought with a trace of old bitterness, where the problem really lay. In the old days—at the height of the Empire’s power—it would have been inconceivable for a man as young as Tschel to serve as a bridge officer aboard a ship like the Chimaera. Now—

He looked down at the equally young man at the engineering monitor. Now, in contrast, the Chimaera had virtually no one aboard except young men and women.

Slowly, Pellaeon let his eyes sweep across the bridge, feeling the echoes of old anger and hatred twist through his stomach. There had been many commanders in the Fleet, he knew, who had seen the Emperor’s original Death Star as a blatant attempt to bring the Empire’s vast military power more tightly under his direct control, just as he’d already done with the Empire’s political power. The fact that he’d ignored the battle station’s proven vulnerability and gone ahead with a second Death Star had merely reinforced that suspicion. There would have been few in the Fleet’s upper echelons who would have genuinely mourned its loss . . . if it hadn’t, in its death throes, taken the Super Star Destroyer Executor with it.

Even after five years Pellaeon couldn’t help but wince at the memory of that image: the Executor, out of control, colliding with the unfinished Death Star and then disintegrating completely in the battle station’s massive explosion. The loss of the ship itself had been bad enough; but the fact that it was the Executor had made it far worse. That particular Super Star Destroyer had been Darth Vader’s personal ship, and despite the Dark Lord’s legendary—and often lethal—capriciousness, serving aboard it had long been perceived as the quick line to promotion.

Which meant that when the Executor died, so also did a disproportionate fraction of the best young and midlevel officers and crewers.

The Fleet had never recovered from that fiasco. With the Executor’s leadership gone, the battle had quickly turned into a confused rout, with several other Star Destroyers being lost before the order to withdraw had finally been given. Pellaeon himself, taking command when the Chimaera’s former captain was killed, had done what he could to hold things together; but despite his best efforts, they had never regained the initiative against the Rebels. Instead, they had been steadily pushed back . . . until they were here.

Here, in what had once been the backwater of the Empire, with barely a quarter of its former systems still under nominal Imperial control. Here, aboard a Star Destroyer manned almost entirely by painstakingly trained but badly inexperienced young people, many of them conscripted from their home worlds by force or threat of force.

Here, under the command of possibly the greatest military mind the Empire had ever seen.

Pellaeon smiled—a tight, wolfish smile—as he again looked around his bridge. No, the end of the Empire was not yet. As the arrogantly self-proclaimed New Republic would soon discover.

He glanced at his watch. Two-fifteen. Grand Admiral Thrawn would be meditating in his command room now . . . and if Imperial procedure frowned on shouting across the bridge, it frowned even harder on interrupting a Grand Admiral’s meditation by intercom. One spoke to him in person, or one did not speak to him at all. “Continue tracing those lines,” Pellaeon ordered the engineering lieutenant as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back shortly.”

The Grand Admiral’s new command room was two levels below the bridge, in a space that had once housed the former commander’s luxury entertainment suite. When Pellaeon had found Thrawn—or rather, when the Grand Admiral had found him—one of his first acts had been to take over the suite and convert it into what was essentially a secondary bridge.

A secondary bridge, meditation room . . . and perhaps more. It was no secret aboard the Chimaera that since the recent refitting had been completed the Grand Admiral had been spending a great deal of his time here. What was secret was what exactly he did during those long hours.

Stepping to the door, Pellaeon straightened his tunic and braced himself. Perhaps he was about to find out. “Captain Pellaeon to see Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he announced. “I have informa—”

The door slid open before he’d finished speaking. Mentally preparing himself, Pellaeon stepped into the dimly lit entry room. He glanced around, saw nothing of interest, and started for the door to the main chamber, five paces ahead.

A touch of air on the back of his neck was his only warning. “Captain Pellaeon,” a deep, gravelly, catlike voice mewed into his ear.

Pellaeon jumped and spun around, cursing both himself and the short, wiry creature standing less than half a meter away. “Blast it, Rukh,” he snarled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

For a long moment Rukh just looked up at him, and Pellaeon felt a drop of sweat trickle down his back. With his large dark eyes, protruding jaw, and glistening needle teeth, Rukh was even more of a nightmare in the dimness than he was in normal lighting.

Especially to someone like Pellaeon, who knew what Thrawn used Rukh and his fellow Noghri for.

“I’m doing my job,” Rukh said at last. He stretched his thin arm almost casually out toward the inner door, and Pellaeon caught just a glimpse of the slender assassin’s knife before it vanished somehow into the Noghri’s sleeve. His hand closed, then opened again, steel-wire muscles moving visibly beneath his dark gray skin. “You may enter.”

“Thank you,” Pellaeon growled. Straightening his tunic again, he turned back to the door. It opened at his approach, and he stepped through—

Into a softly lit art museum.

He stopped short, just inside the room, and looked around in astonishment. The walls and domed ceiling were covered with flat paintings and planics, a few of them vaguely human-looking but most of distinctly alien origin. Various sculptures were scattered around, some freestanding, others on pedestals. In the center of the room was a double circle of repeater displays, the outer ring slightly higher than the inner ring. Both sets of displays, at least from what little Pellaeon could see, also seemed to be devoted to pictures of artwork.

And in the center of the double circle, seated in a duplicate of the Admiral’s Chair on the bridge, was Grand Admiral Thrawn.

He sat motionlessly, his shimmery blue-black hair glinting in the dim light, his pale blue skin looking cool and subdued and very alien on his otherwise human frame. His eyes were nearly closed as he leaned back against the headrest, only a glint of red showing between the lids.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Worlds
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 1992
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553296124
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553296129
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.16 x 0.99 x 6.85 inches
Book 1 of 3 ‏ : ‎ Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy - Legends
Best Sellers Rank: #34,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #78 in Space Operas
- #91 in Galactic Empire Science Fiction
- #389 in Science Fiction Short Stories
Customer Reviews:
(11,253)

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Timothy Zahn

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Timothy Zahn is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than forty original science fiction novels and the bestselling Star Wars trilogy Heir to the Empire, among other works. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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Customers say

Customers consider this book one of the best Star Wars books ever written, praising its action-packed plot and how it picks up seamlessly from Episode VI. The writing is well-crafted, and they appreciate how it stays true to the original characters while introducing or developing major EU characters. Customers find it an amazing piece of the Star Wars Universe and a fantastic start to a trilogy of Star Wars books. The pacing receives mixed reactions, with some finding it good while others note it starts out slow.

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269 customers mention content, 250 positive, 19 negative

Customers praise the content of the book, describing it as one of the best Star Wars books ever written.

Great book. Wish the sequel trilogy was made from this series. Love it. To bad a lot of main cast is probably too old to play the characters.Read more

This is a good book, but uses too much references to the movies. It's great to set the mood, but it over uses the references to the movies....Read more

Excellent book, love the side notes as you read along.Read more

Loved this book. Could hardly put it down. Excellent story, fast paced and well written. Highly recommended for any star wars fan.Read more

198 customers mention readability, 183 positive, 15 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a satisfying and exciting read that is particularly enjoyable for Star Wars fans.

Great read! The story is well driven and easy to fly through. This book does a great job of expanding on the Star Wars universe....Read more

...than a few grammar issues I've noticed so far, Heir to the Empire is good read and a definite good place to start for any new EU readers....Read more

This is a great first book to feed you SW cravings. Definitely exciting, complex and entertaining. As usual, books tell more than movies ever could.Read more

...Definitely worth the read. I would like to see these Trilogies compiled into one book....Read more

138 customers mention story, 125 positive, 13 negative

Customers enjoy the story of the book, describing it as action-packed and a great episode seven plot that propels the narrative forward.

Great story. Well written by the extended universe God, Timothy Zahn. Great narration with the Audible add on. Definitely worth the time.Read more

Great storytelling that really tied in with the original trilogy. Should have been episode VII.Read more

...loved characters of the original Star Wars trilogy and you have a fantastic story....Read more

Very good story. havent read this since grade school. picked it up to tide me over until the next installment, and forgot how great this trilogy is....Read more

114 customers mention character development, 104 positive, 10 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, noting that the writing stays true to the original trilogy's characters, with one customer highlighting the creation of multi-dimensional villains.

This was a really good read! Great characters both old and new, and plenty of action, humor, and drama!...Read more

Great character development, great and well organized story, i should have read this book years ago! Excited to Read Dark forces Rising!Read more

Superb characters, good character development. A definite must read for any Star Wars/ Sci-Fi fans....Read more

It's still a compelling read that is hard to put down. So many great new characters got introduced in this 3 part series....Read more

82 customers mention writing style, 69 positive, 13 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, describing it as wonderfully well written and the best Star Wars novel, with one customer noting the author's skill in portraying Han Solo.

Book is well written and an easy read. Beautifully designed and lain out for the reader of any age. Thrawn is amazing! Can't help but love him.Read more

...Very well written other then the heavy use of sardonically. Look forward to nexttwoRead more

Zahn is a great author that really appreciates the universe and does his research on it. Would recommend to any fan of Star Wars!Read more

...Zahn is a solid writer with a good feel for the Star Wars universe, and creates compelling villains for the dying Empire.Read more

48 customers mention authenticity, 45 positive, 3 negative

Customers appreciate the authenticity of the book, describing it as a beloved part of the Star Wars Extended Universe, with one customer noting how it follows the spirit of the original series.

This is solid sci-fi and excellent star wars. This is what the third trilogy should have been....Read more

for a key piece of the expanded universe i thought it wonderful that an annotated version of this book came out....Read more

Very nice written, an excellent history which leaves no choice but to keep reading! Pretty sure next book will be as good as this one, can't wait.Read more

Fantastic Book on the Star Wars Expanded Universe. A Must Read for any true Star Wars Fan. Dark Side for Life.Read more

38 customers mention series quality, 38 positive, 0 negative

Customers praise this series as a fantastic start to a trilogy of Star Wars books that continues the original trilogy.

I can't wait to read the next one, this is going to be an awesome series, I wonder what happens next.Read more

Good seriesRead more

Book 2 and 3 are the best in the 3 part series, but 1 is essential, of course. It's a little slow in some places, but overall, keeps a solid pace....Read more

...Good start to the series !Read more

34 customers mention pacing, 21 positive, 13 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book, with some appreciating its good flow while others note that it starts out slow and has a different rhythm than expected.

Great book with a good pace. Neat to get to read about characters that I have loved for so long in a different story....Read more

The book is kind of slow at first but picks up. Trying to finish the series before the new movie come out in December....Read more

...Heir to the Empire is well-written, fast-paced, smart and exciting....Read more

...It's very fast paced and will definitely keep you up at night. From not wanting to put it down, not because it's scary...Read more

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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