Book review: Star Wars: Survivor's Quest, by Timothy Zahn
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Pros: Interesting Luke-and-Mara capstone to Timothy Zahn's novels set in the Star Wars universe
Cons: Might confuse readers who haven't read previous Timothy Zahn novels; too ship-bound
If you are a more-or-less regular reader of the Bantam Spectra/Del Rey Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, you're doubtlessly aware that though each novel or series of novels is pretty much a stand-alone work, it's also part of a larger mosaic. There are many instances in which a minor character, planet, or even old pre-Empire projects mentioned in one book will later play a larger role in the continuing Star Wars narrative.
This technique isn't exclusive to the Lucasfilm-licensed Star Wars projects; Paramount's Star Trek franchise has published hundreds of paperback and hardcover novels which not only tell "untold tales" of the famous starships Enterprise and their legendary crews, but also have their own internal - if somewhat looser - sense of continuity by the use of characters that appear only in the novels and not in the TV shows or feature films.
One of the best Star Wars writers, Timothy Zahn, is one of those writers who can slyly turn a seemingly trivial "historical reference" or a bit of dialogue in one or two novels, then develop those into larger and complex stories later on.
Zahn, who wrote the best-selling Thrawn Trilogy (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire, Star Wars: Dark Force Rising and Star Wars: The Last Command) in the early 1990s and kicked off the Expanded Universe series, has a set of uncanny writing abilities and techniques that make him on of the few superstars in the pantheon of Star Wars novelists.
Take, for instance, the entire Outbound Flight storyline, of which Star Wars: Survivor's Quest is a part. Introduced in the Thrawn Trilogy as part of the insane cloned Jedi Master Joru'us C'baoth's backstory, this top-secret Old Republic era project proposed by the real C'baoth has often been mentioned as the mission that earned the brilliant Chiss warrior Thrawn his high rank and position as the Empire's only non-human Grand Admiral. (In the Thrawn Trilogy, the Outbound Flight project is referred to as a Jedi exploration vessel task to go beyond the galaxy and travel across deep space in search of habitable worlds and intelligent life. Thrawn, then a very young officer, had been tasked to intercept it - and destroy it.)
Though the story of the flight itself wasn't revealed until Zahn's Outbound Flight was published in 2006, readers found out a few more things about that ill-fated mission in Star Wars: Survivor's Quest, a 2004 novel set 22 years after the events of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.
Survivor's Quest might have been published before the Prequels-era Outbound Flight, but within the convoluted chronology of the Star Wars narrative it's the eighth and final Zahn novel dealing with Outbound Flight and Thrawn's legacy.
Survivor's Quest's story kicks off when Talon Karrde, former smuggler and sometime collaborator with the New Republic, arranges a clandestine meeting with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker to inform them that the Chiss, the blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid race of which the late Grand Admiral Thrawn was a member, has sent Luke an urgent message.
The message, Karrde tells Luke and Mara, has been intercepted by someone in Karrde's organization, a middle-aged man named Dean Jinzler.
Worried that the message might have something to do with the vague but alarming unknown menace mentioned by the Chiss Admiral Voss Parck two years before on the planet Nirauan, Luke and Mara make their way to that Chiss world where Thrawn had set up a hidden fortress code-named "The Hand of Thrawn."
On Nirauan, Luke and Mara are informed that Karrde's report is true, the Chiss, by way of Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano (or "Formbi"), want the New Republic's most prominent Jedi Knight to know that they've found the remains of the ill-fated Outbound Flight, which had been destroyed by Thrawn several years before the outbreak of the Clone Wars and the formal rise of the Galactic Empire.
As a means for atonement and a gesture of goodwill, the Chiss (who disavowed Thrawn's actions as illegal) want to return what's left of the Outbound Flight spacecraft to the Republic.
Of course, Luke and Mara agree to go, but they're not the only ones who want to see the remmnants of the once-grand project, which not only carried six Jedi Masters, a select group of Jedi Knights, and a crew, but also some colonists who were intended to seed uninhabited worlds and provide a haven for citizens of the Republic if the Dark Times foretold in Jedi lore ever came to pass.
Not only does Karrde's ex-associate Jinzler surface aboard Formbi's vessel as a Republic "ambassador," butCommander Chak Fel, the son of the famous ex-Imperial ace Baron Fel, and his small contingent of stormtroopers from the newly-formed Empire of the Hand, and a few aliens from curious race known as the Geroons - who are "starstruck hero-worshippers" grateful to the Jedi aboard Outbound Flight for freeing them from slavers - join the party as well.
Through the Force, Luke and Mara know Jinzler is no "Ambassador," but his intensely emotional attachment to Outbound Flight piques their curiosity even though he has used deception to wrangle a spot on the Chiss ship.
But instead of this being a simple interstellar cruise to the world where the remains of Outbound Flight lie, Luke and Mara realize that the situation is fraught with dangers. The deeper the ship they're on travels into Chiss space, the more suspicious the Jedi couple becomes. Soon, acts of sabotage and items that get stolen deepens the Skywalkers' sense of unease.
As if that's not enough, Mara has to wrestle the lingering sense of duality she has been fighting within herself ever since she met Luke Skywalker so many years before: Although she's now a Jedi Knight and loyal to the Republic, she can't easily hide the old feelings of respect she felt for Emperor Palpatine and his New Order when she served him as the Emperor's Hand.
Though Survivor's Quest has much of the trademarks of the Star Wars mythos - there are heroes, villains, use of the Force, snappy dialogue, and lightsaber action - it's a very small-scale story that refreshingly focuses on Luke and Mara's relationship early on in their marriage. It's a bit "claustrophobic" because it's mainly set aboard the Chaf Envoy and none of the other major Star Wars characters (Han Solo, Princess Leia, or the droids) make more than token cameos, if at all. Nevertheless, it allows Zahn to give readers a more in-depth look at the former farmboy from Tatooine in a way that channels actor Mark Hamill's earnestness and likability that very few other Star Wars writers truly get right.
Though Zahn infuses Survivor's Quest with lots of political chaff that some readers may not like much, he does have a very good talent for blending his story with those told in other writers' novels as well as the Star Wars movies.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the way in which Zahn starts blending in some tech and alien races from the Prequel Trilogy. In one scene, a cantina owner seems to have somehow acquired a droideka (a.k.a. wheel or destroyer droid), one of the many weapons used by the Trade Federation at the time of Senator/Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's rise to power. It's a technique the writer uses sparingly, but it gives the book some Star Wars continuity and also helps prepare readers for Outbound Flight itself.
This technique isn't exclusive to the Lucasfilm-licensed Star Wars projects; Paramount's Star Trek franchise has published hundreds of paperback and hardcover novels which not only tell "untold tales" of the famous starships Enterprise and their legendary crews, but also have their own internal - if somewhat looser - sense of continuity by the use of characters that appear only in the novels and not in the TV shows or feature films.
One of the best Star Wars writers, Timothy Zahn, is one of those writers who can slyly turn a seemingly trivial "historical reference" or a bit of dialogue in one or two novels, then develop those into larger and complex stories later on.
Zahn, who wrote the best-selling Thrawn Trilogy (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire, Star Wars: Dark Force Rising and Star Wars: The Last Command) in the early 1990s and kicked off the Expanded Universe series, has a set of uncanny writing abilities and techniques that make him on of the few superstars in the pantheon of Star Wars novelists.
Take, for instance, the entire Outbound Flight storyline, of which Star Wars: Survivor's Quest is a part. Introduced in the Thrawn Trilogy as part of the insane cloned Jedi Master Joru'us C'baoth's backstory, this top-secret Old Republic era project proposed by the real C'baoth has often been mentioned as the mission that earned the brilliant Chiss warrior Thrawn his high rank and position as the Empire's only non-human Grand Admiral. (In the Thrawn Trilogy, the Outbound Flight project is referred to as a Jedi exploration vessel task to go beyond the galaxy and travel across deep space in search of habitable worlds and intelligent life. Thrawn, then a very young officer, had been tasked to intercept it - and destroy it.)
Though the story of the flight itself wasn't revealed until Zahn's Outbound Flight was published in 2006, readers found out a few more things about that ill-fated mission in Star Wars: Survivor's Quest, a 2004 novel set 22 years after the events of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.
Survivor's Quest might have been published before the Prequels-era Outbound Flight, but within the convoluted chronology of the Star Wars narrative it's the eighth and final Zahn novel dealing with Outbound Flight and Thrawn's legacy.
Survivor's Quest's story kicks off when Talon Karrde, former smuggler and sometime collaborator with the New Republic, arranges a clandestine meeting with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker to inform them that the Chiss, the blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid race of which the late Grand Admiral Thrawn was a member, has sent Luke an urgent message.
The message, Karrde tells Luke and Mara, has been intercepted by someone in Karrde's organization, a middle-aged man named Dean Jinzler.
Worried that the message might have something to do with the vague but alarming unknown menace mentioned by the Chiss Admiral Voss Parck two years before on the planet Nirauan, Luke and Mara make their way to that Chiss world where Thrawn had set up a hidden fortress code-named "The Hand of Thrawn."
On Nirauan, Luke and Mara are informed that Karrde's report is true, the Chiss, by way of Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano (or "Formbi"), want the New Republic's most prominent Jedi Knight to know that they've found the remains of the ill-fated Outbound Flight, which had been destroyed by Thrawn several years before the outbreak of the Clone Wars and the formal rise of the Galactic Empire.
As a means for atonement and a gesture of goodwill, the Chiss (who disavowed Thrawn's actions as illegal) want to return what's left of the Outbound Flight spacecraft to the Republic.
Of course, Luke and Mara agree to go, but they're not the only ones who want to see the remmnants of the once-grand project, which not only carried six Jedi Masters, a select group of Jedi Knights, and a crew, but also some colonists who were intended to seed uninhabited worlds and provide a haven for citizens of the Republic if the Dark Times foretold in Jedi lore ever came to pass.
Not only does Karrde's ex-associate Jinzler surface aboard Formbi's vessel as a Republic "ambassador," butCommander Chak Fel, the son of the famous ex-Imperial ace Baron Fel, and his small contingent of stormtroopers from the newly-formed Empire of the Hand, and a few aliens from curious race known as the Geroons - who are "starstruck hero-worshippers" grateful to the Jedi aboard Outbound Flight for freeing them from slavers - join the party as well.
Through the Force, Luke and Mara know Jinzler is no "Ambassador," but his intensely emotional attachment to Outbound Flight piques their curiosity even though he has used deception to wrangle a spot on the Chiss ship.
But instead of this being a simple interstellar cruise to the world where the remains of Outbound Flight lie, Luke and Mara realize that the situation is fraught with dangers. The deeper the ship they're on travels into Chiss space, the more suspicious the Jedi couple becomes. Soon, acts of sabotage and items that get stolen deepens the Skywalkers' sense of unease.
As if that's not enough, Mara has to wrestle the lingering sense of duality she has been fighting within herself ever since she met Luke Skywalker so many years before: Although she's now a Jedi Knight and loyal to the Republic, she can't easily hide the old feelings of respect she felt for Emperor Palpatine and his New Order when she served him as the Emperor's Hand.
Though Survivor's Quest has much of the trademarks of the Star Wars mythos - there are heroes, villains, use of the Force, snappy dialogue, and lightsaber action - it's a very small-scale story that refreshingly focuses on Luke and Mara's relationship early on in their marriage. It's a bit "claustrophobic" because it's mainly set aboard the Chaf Envoy and none of the other major Star Wars characters (Han Solo, Princess Leia, or the droids) make more than token cameos, if at all. Nevertheless, it allows Zahn to give readers a more in-depth look at the former farmboy from Tatooine in a way that channels actor Mark Hamill's earnestness and likability that very few other Star Wars writers truly get right.
Though Zahn infuses Survivor's Quest with lots of political chaff that some readers may not like much, he does have a very good talent for blending his story with those told in other writers' novels as well as the Star Wars movies.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the way in which Zahn starts blending in some tech and alien races from the Prequel Trilogy. In one scene, a cantina owner seems to have somehow acquired a droideka (a.k.a. wheel or destroyer droid), one of the many weapons used by the Trade Federation at the time of Senator/Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's rise to power. It's a technique the writer uses sparingly, but it gives the book some Star Wars continuity and also helps prepare readers for Outbound Flight itself.
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