You make some good points, and some of them were floating around in the back of my head when I was writing my original post. I might have to go back and check out the second and third books, if they are better, like you say.
It's not like I thought the death of Luke would make a better book. When I had gotten that far, I just felt like too many things went right for the protagonists. If you look at the movies, you'll see lots of permanent or semi-permanent things happen to the characters. Luke loses a hand, Han gets frozen, C3PO gets destroyed, Obiwan dies, Yoda dies, etc. In the first book of the Zahn trilogy, nothing serious happens to anyone. It just takes a lot of suspense and enjoyment out of the reading if you lose the sense that the characters are in any sort of danger.
I agree with you that Admiral Thrawn was an interesting character. He'd probably be a good reason for reading the second two books.
Bleh. I read the first of these books when I was 15, and the first one was so ridiculous I wasn't willing to waste my time with the other two. After about a third of the book, I was becoming annoyed enough at the book that I was hoping Luke would be killed.
Here's a couple reasons why:
1. Zahn obviously had no license to do anything permanent to the characters, or just didn't want to. Plenty of characters show up from the Star Wars movies, do all sorts of dangerous things, and nothing ever goes seriously wrong for them.
2. The times something seemingly dangerous happens, the good guy is rescued by some tremendous fluke! Just one example of many: Luke's X-Wing becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere space. It looks like he's going to be in trouble because he'll run out of air in a short while, but by sheer luck, a smuggler named Kard who we've also been following around in the book just -happens- across him and picks him up before that happens! Incredibly unlikely events like this seem to drive the book. At least when I watch the Star Wars movies I feel like there's something driving the plot besides dumb luck.
I've only read that one Star Wars book, and it was enough to turn me off to all of them. It's hard to believe all the rest can be that much worse than the Zahn books.
I thought the rave scene on the alien space-station thingie was especially cool. It was so realistic! There were strobe lights, and then the captain was on tripping out on LSD! The only thing missing was the mad techno beat!
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It's not like I thought the death of Luke would make a better book. When I had gotten that far, I just felt like too many things went right for the protagonists. If you look at the movies, you'll see lots of permanent or semi-permanent things happen to the characters. Luke loses a hand, Han gets frozen, C3PO gets destroyed, Obiwan dies, Yoda dies, etc. In the first book of the Zahn trilogy, nothing serious happens to anyone. It just takes a lot of suspense and enjoyment out of the reading if you lose the sense that the characters are in any sort of danger.
I agree with you that Admiral Thrawn was an interesting character. He'd probably be a good reason for reading the second two books.
Here's a couple reasons why:
1. Zahn obviously had no license to do anything permanent to the characters, or just didn't want to. Plenty of characters show up from the Star Wars movies, do all sorts of dangerous things, and nothing ever goes seriously wrong for them.
2. The times something seemingly dangerous happens, the good guy is rescued by some tremendous fluke! Just one example of many: Luke's X-Wing becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere space. It looks like he's going to be in trouble because he'll run out of air in a short while, but by sheer luck, a smuggler named Kard who we've also been following around in the book just -happens- across him and picks him up before that happens! Incredibly unlikely events like this seem to drive the book. At least when I watch the Star Wars movies I feel like there's something driving the plot besides dumb luck.
I've only read that one Star Wars book, and it was enough to turn me off to all of them. It's hard to believe all the rest can be that much worse than the Zahn books.
I thought the rave scene on the alien space-station thingie was especially cool. It was so realistic! There were strobe lights, and then the captain was on tripping out on LSD! The only thing missing was the mad techno beat!