3/5 Rancors - Timothy Zahn returns to the Star Wars universe with his eighth novel set in the galaxy far, far away. This time he has a new era to play around in: Allegiance is set right after the events of A New Hope. It features many familiar film characters as well as a prominent role for a teenage Mara Jade and an intriguing squad of rogue stormtroopers. Perspectives vary among fans of the Expanded Universe as to how fleshed out the three years between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back truly are. If you include the Marvel comic series, the newspaper strips, and various articles in journals and magazines as canon, this period is already quite busy. If you are incorporate novels only, it is considerably thinner. My personal take on canon is to not spend much time dwelling on it: if it is Star Wars and I am entertained, I'm happy.
In Allegiance, Zahn weaves a very complicated plotline that verges on being a mystery tale. Many new characters are introduced and then quickly discarded as events unfold, making the story a bit choppy. For this reason, it's likely to be a more satisfying read when digested in larger chunks than read piecemeal a chapter or two at a time (which is what I did).
A few new characters do stand out, though, and they are the five Imperial troopers on the run who comprise the Hand of Judgment. Much like Karen Traviss and her beloved clone troopers featured in her Republic Commando novels, Zahn takes a group of helmeted anonymous soldiers and makes them dynamic individuals. Their attempts to reconcile their doubts concerning the Empire with their need to to serve the galaxy honorably are quite interesting and continue the trend in Star Wars of shading gray into what once seemed like straightforward good vs. evil yarns.
Zahn is indisputably a big fan of his two most famous characters he has created, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade. Thrawn does not feature in this story, but Mara certainly does. While I very much enjoyed the role she has played in Zahn's books so far, I felt her characterization in this novel stretched credulity. She is a teenager (eighteen, I believe), and yet she possesses the poise, confidence, and skills of someone far older. She is depicted too favorably compared to Darth Vader for my tastes, and I would have liked to have seen a Mara who is making novice mistakes and desperately trying to claw her way up the Imperial ladder into Palpatine's good graces.
What is more disturbing is comparing Mara in Allegiance to Luke. While their ages are similar, they couldn't be portrayed more differently. Luke is stumbling, uncertain of himself, and appears to have regressed to the farm boy we saw at the start of Episode IV, not the newly emboldened warrior at the Yavin ceremony who has just destroyed the Death Star and saved the Rebellion. Han and Leia behave largely as they did toward the end of A New Hope and fare a bit better.
Timothy Zahn is an entertaining writer and I always enjoy his Star Wars stories, but I would classify this one as a more middle-of-the-road effort than his usual. I would be onboard for a sequel featuring the Hand of Judgment more prominently, possibly focusing on what seems the almost inevitable path that will lead them to joining the Rebellion.
1 comments:
This book was a bit of a disappointment for me. Given that this is penned by the author of the Thrawn Trilogy (and a Hugo Award winner to boot!) - I had higher expectations. The publisher should have done more to market this book more as a Star Wars mystery - than as a standard adventure. The conspiracy of pirates, mercenaries and double-crossing Imperials plotting to take over a major space sector just didn't feel important in the grand scheme of things that our Rebel heroes will face in the near future. Zahn sadly succumbs to the temptation to portray Luke Skywalker as an awkward and angst-ridden "teenager" full of self-doubt. I wanted to see more confidence in Luke. This is the guy who destroyed the Death Star and nailed Tarkin. He should have a little more confidence than this! Mara Jade's interactions with Darth Vader were also off-putting. I had a hard time believing that Lord Vader could be so casual around someone else with close [force] connections to the Emperor (look what he did to Prince Xizor!). I had always thought that the Emperor's Hand was a position so secret that even Vader would not have known of the identity of the Hand. The stormtrooper protagonists featured on the cover are far too one-dimensional. I had a very hard time separating them from each other and I couldn't have frankly cared if they had been picked off by Imperial Intelligence, Mara or the Rebels. There are some nice touches to this story. It's great to see Disra was a schemer long before the Hand of Thrawn duology. I also really liked the mercenary Caaldra - with his penchant for fire traps and wild goose chases. Definitely one of the best henchmen (e.g. non-main villains) featured in the Star Wars Universe. To be clear, this book is not "bad" - it's just not Timothy Zahn "great". It feels mediocre. If you like Zahn, you should give this book a read - but don't expect the Thrawn Trilogy here - 'cause you won't get it.
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