Star Wars: Heir to the Empire: The 20th Anniversary Edition [Hardcover]

For those who are considering the Kindle version, take a moment to think about the mechanics of reading it. The hardcover version has the annotations in the margins of the pages, meaning you can easily ready, shift your eyes over to the notes and continue reading. The ebook has the notes all the way in the back. The annotations are numbered in the text of the book, and those numbers are hyperlinked, so you can go back and forth between the two, but I have to say it's a bit slow. I'm on a Nook Color, but even overclocked to 1.2 ghz, it takes about one to two full seconds to go back and forth. It doesn't sound like much, but some chapters have 20 annotations, that's a lot of time waiting to go back and forth. Further, if the annotation falls on the margin of a page, you can easily confuse your ereader as it won't know if you're trying to turn a page or link to the annotation.

Still, I can't fault the content here. The introductions are great, and the annotations range from little tidbits to genuine insight into Zahn's head at the time he was writing this.

On September 6th, 1991 Star Wars fans were once again thrust into the heavens as Heir to the Empire blasted its way onto shelves and into the hearts of fans worldwide. With compelling characters and outstanding storytelling, author Timothy Zahn introduced readers to a new breed of characters that would make a tremendous impact for decades to come. In response to Zahn's stellar work, Heir to the Empire quickly rose to the New York Times Bestselling list and in so doing cemented both the book and Timothy Zahn into Star Wars history.

From page one the reader is taken back to the events shortly after the explosive conclusion to Episode VI as the Rebellion continues its long struggle against the Empire. Now, with the Emperor dead and gone, the Rebellion begins to consolidate its newly earned political and military power across a galaxy littered with the remains of the Galactic Empires naval armament. However, those in the Imperial navy have no intention to sit and wait for the Rebel reapers to call their names, instead they put in motion their own plans and in so doing introduce the reader to one of the best characters to ever hunt down rebel scum, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

>>>SOME PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD<<<

Mitth'raw'nuruodo, better known by Thrawn, is a Chiss; a species from planet Csilla and familiar in appearance to Humans. With blue skin and red eyes there is no doubt that Thrawn fits the physical appearance of a villain however, Thrawn recreates the average evil-doer persona with a mind that can only be described as genius. With an incredible talent for figuring out his enemies weaknesses through their artistic works, Thrawn uses his wisdom to quickly gain the rank of Grand Admiral. An achievement not one non-human has ever done before within the racist organization that Emperor Palpatine created.

Aided by an accomplished yet sometimes naive Captain, Gilad Pallaeon, Grand Admiral Thrawn uses the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera to hunt down a relatively unknown creature called a ysalamiri. This species, that looks familiar to a furry lizard, has the ability to create a Force suppressing bubble around itself that is designed to fend off Force sensitive predators. Thrawn opts to use the ysalamiri to control a dark Jedi called Joruus C'Baoth.

Joruus C'Baoth, is a clone of the powerful Jedi Master Jorus C'Baoth, (note the lack of the second U in Jorus), and was created by Palpatine. Tasked with the guardianship of the Imperial storehouse at Mount Tantiss, Joruus, is recruited by Thrawn to use a rare and powerful Force power known as Battle Meditation, a Force power that is able to aid and control the actions of battle troops. In exchange for his assistance, C'Baoth demands that Thrawn help him capture both Luke Skywalker and his sister Princess Leia.

Agreeing to C'Baoth's demands Thrawn sends a group of Noghri to capture Luke and Leia on the planet Bimmisaari. After the attempt is met with dismal failure, Thrawn convinces C'Baoth to focus his efforts on capturing Luke while Thrawn and the Empire narrow their search for Leia. In an effort to elude their hunters, Leia and Chewbacca, flee to the planet Kashyyyk hoping that Chewbacca's home-planet will give them an advantage. Meanwhile, Han and Lando plan a visit to a smuggler named Talon Karrde in the hopes of acquiring cargo ships to aid them.

Talon Karrde, a smuggler and information broker, played both sides of galactic politics not wanting to pick either side and seeing the profitability of staying neutral. Karrde using a heavily armed and armored ship called the Wild Karrde and hiring the aid of a hand full of capable and deadly coworkers like Dravis, a graduate of the Imperial Academy; Fynn Torve, a former associate of Han Solo that was known for his piloting skills; Aves, a chief aide and communications officer to Karrde; Zakarisz Ghent, a slicer known for being absent minded and the beautiful but deadly Mara Jade.

Mara Jade, a strong and highly complicated human female is Talon Karrde's second-in-command and former special agent(emperors hand) to Palpatine himself. Still loyal to her fallen Emperor, Jade is hellbent on destroying the man that killed Palpatine, who she looked to as a father figure. After a failed attempt to capture Luke Skywalker by C'Baoth, Luke is lost in space and is recovered by the Wild Karrde and transported to the planet Myrkr. While being held in storage sheds on the planet, Luke escapes and is quickly hunted down by Mara. While Luke and Mara struggle against each other, Thrawn joins Karrde on the planet effectively cutting off Mara's ability to return Luke to Karrde.

As the story continues politics, war and personal strife continue to unfold and in the end there is no happy ending. We even find out that Admiral Ackbar is arrested on charges of treason.

>>>SPOILERS END<<<

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire sets in stone how Star Wars books should be created. Timothy Zahn using incredible imagination and hard work produced a storyline that has stood the test of time and has single handily made the Expanded Universe what it is today. There are few other authors whose work is so eagerly anticipated and no other has created the fanfare that he and his work has.

The actual 20th anniversary issue gives far more than the original installment. Included in the new issue is a ton of added notes by the author himself telling snip-its of inside thoughts to the story. Also a nice feature is the secondary cover behind the new silver anniversary edition. Plus, a short story for all the Thrawn fans wraps up the whole package in explosive form.

For those who are true Zahn fans I suggest looking him up on Facebook, I have had a chance to talk to him about several pieces of his work and he has always been kind and generous to his fans whom post.

All Feedback is Appreciated. Thanks and Good Reading.

Timothy Zahn is very humble in the introduction to this 20th anniversary edition trying not to take credit for "restarting" Star Wars in the early 90's but the reality is that this novel did exactly that for me and millions of other fans and still to this day is the centerpiece and starting point for so many people jumping in to the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

This book is the "The Empire Strikes Backs" of Star Wars novels. One of the first and definitely one of the best and it still holds up incredibly well to this day with very few issues regarding canon on top of being such a great read.

My favorite aspect of this anniversary edition is probably the annotations done by Zahn, written in the margins of the book, exploring key concepts, characters or just noting on how to pronounce names. It really adds a new layer of depth to the novel and helps get inside of his head during and after his writing process. These alone are worth the purchase price to fans of the book who may have read this before.

On top of that we get a forward from Lucas Licensing, an introduction by Zahn, both recapping the history of this novel and its beginnings.

And lastly the a novella from Zahn is included titled "Crisis of Faith", which you may want to read after you read his latest book "Choices of One". It gives a new look into Grand Admiral Thrawn that should not be missed.

This is a fantastic package for the price and a must-own for any fans of the "Thrawn Trilogy" as it is commonly referred as.

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