Andrew's Review of The Last Command

5/5 Rancors - 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!