Spot on climax to a great trilogy

books:


	• The Last Command (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 3) Timothy Zahn Spectra, 1994 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 153 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Thrawn Meets his End

In many cases, a reader or viewer of Star Wars can anticipate what will happen in a story before it even starts. One expects the Rebellion/New Republic to be victorious in the end. This does not make the plot any less interesting. One has a vague idea of how the Thrawn Trilogy will end. Still, it is a quality read.

As Thrawn's plan begins to unhatch in "The Last Command", his relationship with Dark Jedi clone C'Baoth begins to crumble. At the same time, the New Republic is pulling allies from sources once thought to be unlikely. The greatest wild card in the story is Mara Jade. If you have not read other Star Wars books that chronologically occur after this book, her fate is a mystery. The author could not have written a more appropriate end to their conflict. Perhaps this is the biggest curve in the story.

As I have expressed in other reviews of Star Wars books, I tend to prefer when the story focuses more on dialogue than on battle scenes. With the exception of the end, this book does not dwell for extended periods in the tedium of describing battle scenes. For myself, this made the book a much quicker read.

Ranking the Thrawn Trilogy in order of preference, I would suggest the second book is best, while this book is the next best. By far, I liked the first book in the series the least. Trends in the reviews seem to follow my opinion to a degree.

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A fitting end to a superb series!

The Last Command wraps up all of the loose ends that were established in the other two novels in the series. Mara Jade's character is redeemed and from her memorable introduction, to her fight alongside Luke in Myyrkr forest, to her battle with him against C'boath, her character comes full circle and her ties to the Dark Side are finally severed.

Having certain plot points established early on helped when the book took some surprising turns! I was not expecting them and it made this book the most exciting of the three. I have read many of the Expanded Universe Novels and aside from Shadows of the Empire, none of the others come close to this series.

The Star Wars novel franchise is an interesting one, but it holds little interest for me much beyond this time-line in the Star Wars saga. 5 Years after Return of the Jedi is plenty of time to tell a new story about our beloved heroes. But the Expanded Universe has stretched out into 50 or so years after. Honestly these poor characters can't live in peace, because the publishers need to sell more novels. I likely won't be reviewing the other novels as they don't really compare with the ones I've already noted.

I apologize for the derailment, but I just needed to share that with those that may have been following my book reviews on Star Wars. Thanks! This is a wonderful read and all the character's story arcs are resolved in a exciting and logical fashion.

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Decent Ending To A Decent Series

I must say that this Thrawn trilogy was quite an enjoyable read. Not a 5 star read but definitely a 4 star.

This final book in the trilogy is not without it's merits and kept my interest for the most part. Overall, however, I had a hard time getting captivated, not because the story was uninteresting, just the writing style was a little plain at times.

Overall, I definitely recommend this book and the trilogy to all Star Wars fans.

Spot on climax to a great trilogy

The Last Command is the climactic novel in Timothy Zahn's superb Thrawn Trilogy, a series published in the early 1990's that laid the groundwork for much of the Star Wars Expanded Universe that was to come. All of Zahn's carefully constructed plotting comes together here in an action-packed and highly rewarding tale, intertwining the militaristic and precise storyline of Grand Admiral's Thrawn's campaign against the New Republic with the more metaphysical struggles of Luke Skywalker and insane Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth. All the main characters from the Original Trilogy take starring roles alongside Thrawn, C'baoth, smuggler Talon Karrde and ex-Emperor's Hand Mara Jade.

Grand Admiral Thrawn has built the armies and resources he requires for a full-out assault on the New Republic. Key to his plans are the clone army he's creating out of Spaarti cylinders, his newly-acquired Katana fleet of Clone Wars-era dreadnoughts, and cloaking shield technology taken from the Emperor's private storehouse of treasures and technology on the hidden planet Wayland. Thrawn's plans for disabling Coruscant are innovative and quite unexpected, making extremely good use of the cloaking shields. As in the first two books, he is generally a step ahead of his opponents, using his careful analysis of people and cultures' artworks to gain a heightened understanding of their motivations and likely courses of action. For some, Zahn's portrayal of Thrawn might verge too close to making him omniscient, but several key errors act to humanize ("Chiss-ize?") the Grand Admiral and make him more believable. To me personally, Thrawn is one of the most intriguing and entertaining villains in all of the Star Wars stories.

Significant portions of this story focus on Talon Karrde and his efforts to unite disparate bands of smugglers against the Empire. Karrde's journey finally takes on aspects of Han Solo's from the films, as Karrde discovers a wellspring of goodness within himself and is finally able to put profit behind helping people and saving the galaxy. It's interesting learning about the struggles for power between the smugglers after the untimely demise of Jabba the Hutt, and the scenes in which Karrde is double-crossed as he attempts to persuade his peers to his side are quite gripping.

Luke has come to terms with his disappointment at learning that C'baoth is a power-hungry and insane clone of the real Jedi Master, and in this final volume he takes a more proactive role to set things right. Echoing the days of being Rebels fighting a guerilla war against the Imperials, Luke and his friends violate all sorts of rules to break Mara out of imprisonment on Coruscant and use her to get to Wayland and set the stage for the final confrontation with C'baoth. For her part, Mara must deal with the titular last command of the Emperor's implanted in her head, ordering her to kill Luke Skywalker. Zahn's way of permitting her to deal with this imperative and simultaneously allowing Luke to live is quite unexpected.

Of the three books, this one has the most material that is in conflict with the prequel films and later EU, but for the most part everything still hangs together well enough. The clones are portrayed as far more unstable than the ones we met in the films and none of them show any evidence of individual personalities here. There are some timeline things that are a little off, but again, the overall feel of Zahn's story works just fine with everything that has come since.

The Thrawn Trilogy is a terrific Star Wars reading experience and fundamentally important to understanding the Bantam series of novels published throughout the 1990s. Zahn continued on to write quite a few more Star Wars novels, fleshing out the stories of Outbound Flight, Mara Jade, and the enigmatic Hand of Thrawn. Highly recommended!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The embattled Republic reels from the attacks of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who has marshaled the remnants of the Imperial forces and driven the Rebels back with an abominable technology recovered from the Emperor's secret fortress: clone soldiers. As Thrawn mounts his final siege, Han and Chewbacca struggle to form a coalition of smugglers for a last-ditch attack against the empire, while Leia holds the Alliance together and prepares for the birth of her Jedi twins. Overwhelmed by the ships and clones at Thrawn's command, the Republic has one last hope--sending a small force, led by Luke Skywalker, into the very stronghold that houses Thrawn's terrible cloning machines. There a final danger awaits, as the Dark Jedi C'baoth directs the battle against the Rebels and builds his strength to finish what he had already started: the destruction of Luke Skywalker.

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