An example of how this novel's background was changed is that in the book, Luke mentions that the New Republic had only been on Coruscant for nine months and they moved there with relative ease, with the death of the Emperor and the seeming collapse of the Empire. Which is fine, you know that's a cool detail. However, the X-Wing series would later detail how the New Republic moved to Coruscant and it was a lot harder than Luke made it seem in this book. The New Republic made a move on Coruscant only two and a half years after Return of the Jedi, which means that they were in control of the planet for two and a half years BEFORE the events of Heir to the Empire. Not nine months. Oh and not only did they have fight to take the planet but they also had to wipe out a virus that was killing dozens of Non-Human beings. So they definitely did not have an easy time taking Coruscant. This isn't just a problem with this book though. It's actually a problem with the entire Bantam line of Star Wars novels from the '90s. There were many authors working on these books, with no coordination between them and the novels took place in different time periods, with some taking place between movies, between other novels, and even between what would become the prequel era and the first Star Wars movie. While I have my own problems with the Star Wars novels of the 2000s and the early 2010s, I did like that Del Rey and Lucasfilm Publishing made a coordinated effort to build a real continuity. Especially during the New Jedi Order series.
While C'baoth and Captain Pellaeon are really cool characters and I wish they'd been the villains of the trilogy, Grand Admiral Thrawn kind of sucks. Sure, he looks cool, and he's called a tactical genius throughout the books, but he's just a highly placed commanding officer in the Imperial Officer. Which doesn't make him any more special than Grand Moff Tarkin was in Star Wars and Kirtan Loor was in the X-Wing series. At least Tarkin had the Emperor and Darth Vader to answer to and Loor had Ysanne Isard. Speaking of Isard, Thrawn is just playing the same sort of political games that she was playing in the X-Wing series, except that she had sleeper agents, not just exotic listening devices, which just make Thrawn look uninspired and the New Republic look stupid for not realizing how Thrawn was getting information out of Coruscant the way he was.
The coolest characters to come out of this novel, and the most interesting, are Pellaeon, Mara Jade and the Noghri, the assassin race employed by Thrawn. Pellaeon continued to appear and be mentioned in many other Star Wars novels after this and eventually took command of the Imperial Remnant in novels set after this book. Sadly he didn't make it into canon through the current novel continuity or even through the TV shows like Thrawn did, but I thought he was an interesting person. I also love Mara Jade and think her journey from the Emperor's personal agent to Jedi Master is pretty great. Especially since how much of a deterrent she is in this book, despite working for Talon Karrde, another lasting character in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. As for the Noghri, they're interesting because they're a tragic race. At some point a battle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance caused significant damage and they were duped by Darth Vader into serving the Empire as covert tactical units with the promise that the Empire would help them recover.
I kinda wish that C'baoth was actually a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi like he was originally supposed to be. For two reasons. The first is that it would be so much more dramatic that Luke was sad because Obi-Wan could no longer speak to him through the Force only to have him show up as if he was back from the dead. Say what you will about The Clone Saga but Peter was greatly affected when he saw the clone of Gwen Stacy. Should've been that way for Luke. The second reason is because adding an extra letter to a character's name as a way to identify them as a clone is stupid. The original character's name was Jorus C'baoth, adding an extra u in there just makes it look like the author can't spell. Just leave the clone's first name as Jorus, not Joruus, and leave it in doubt as to whether he's the real deal or a clone. Especially since the extra letter is only something that Zahn does in this trilogy and wasn't carried over into Dark Empire or the Prequel Trilogy. Or anything else that had anything to do with clones in Star Wars.
The thing about this novel is that at the time, this is all we had in terms of new Star Wars adventures. There weren't any movies coming out, we all owned the trilogy on home video, and for whatever reason networks didn't see any profit in any Star Wars TV shows and even the comics hadn't started back up again when Heir to the Empire first came out. So because of that it's earned it's place as a popular novel in the Star Wars franchise. It's just there are now way better novels that came out after this.
Final Thoughts and Rating: If Heir to the Empire and it's two sequels Dark Force Rising and The Last Command had been the only Star Wars things to come out between 1991 and 1997, it would work better because nothing else would've come from it. But because it was followed by an entire slew of novels, comics and video games, many of them being way better than this novel, the only reason it stands out is because it was the first Star Wars novel to come out after the movies had all finished. There'd been a handful of Star Wars novels that came out while the movies were still in production, but this was the first new Star Wars story, with Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie in eight years. As the first Star Wars novel in a line of them though, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially with how much had to be retconned to incorporate the novels that took place between Return of the Jedi and Heir to the Empire. Because of this, I'm giving Heir to the Empire 6/10 stars for being an important novel in the Star Wars franchise, but for also being not as good as later novels were. At least for me.
Wookieepedia: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Empire
No comments:
Post a Comment