Thrawn: Treason

At a certain point, the idea of an all knowing protagonist gets extremely tiresome, and that is exactly how I felt for the entirety of Thrawn: Treason. Couple this with a plot that barely nudges the needle of the status quo by book's end, and you get a story that is admittedly better than the second entry in the series, but ultimately skippable for all but major fans of the character.

While an enjoyable read, this book suffers from being in a restrictive point on the timeline and from a main character that, frankly, stagnates after the trilogy's first installment. The book takes place just before the end of "Rebels," which is a difficult time to introduce - and make compelling - a new "big bad." Though some sense of the Grysk's threat comes in dialogue toward the end of the book, ultimately they fall flat as an adversary; frankly, the inter-Imperial politics and piracy angle would have made better focal points of the plot. Meanwhile, Thrawn's growth and development as a character seem to have severely tapered off after the first novel in the series. Here, he is mostly the same four-steps-ahead-of-everyone-else character he was in the "Rebels timeline" portions of "Alliances." Sadly, it's starting to get stale. There are still bright spots - Zahn writes well and is generally a pleasure to read (aside from a couple instances where he lets arcane details slow down what would otherwise be fast-paced bits of narrative). Eli Vanto is back, and he has some GREAT moments in the book that, refreshingly, don't involve playing Watson to Thrawn's Holmes. Commodore Faro, who starts out as a mostly flat background character, comes more into her own. And we're introduced to more Chiss - Navigator Vah'nya offers a fascinating glimpse deeper into the Chiss, and Admiral Ar'alani - for me - almost steals the show. Ultimately though, given Thrawn's legendary status in the fandom, and Zahn's undeniable stature in Star Wars literature, the failure to have a sufficiently compelling adversary to drive the narrative combined with a stagnated title character make an otherwise enjoyable book less fulfilling than it should have been.

If "Thrawn-iness" is a thing, then this is the Thrawniest thing to ever be created. It's Thrawn on steroids. That's either going to be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about the character. Regardless, this book falls somewhere in between the first and second installments of the series. It's far better than Alliances, but not nearly as interesting as the original Thrawn novel.