STAR WARS THRAWN: TREASON/ AUTHOR: TIMOTHY ZAHN / PUBLISHER: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Legendary Star Wars author Timothy Zahn returns for the final chapter of his second Thrawn trilogy, almost thirty years after his first – the classic Legends triumvirate of Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command – brought Star Wars back to the public consciousness in a big way. This time around he’s strictly in canon territory and brings with him the strongest chapter of this Thrawn trilogy.

Set during the back end of the fourth season of Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn: Treason sees the blue-skinned Chiss master tactician leave Lothal to head for a meeting with the Emperor alongside Rogue One’s director Krennic and A New Hope’s Governor Tarkin. A deal is struck – if Thrawn can get to the bottom of some logistical difficulties Krennic is suffering, he can keep the funding he requires to build his TIE Defender fleet. If not, that funding goes into Krennic’s ‘Stardust’ project, AKA the Death Star.

Enter Thrawn’s former aid Eli Vanto, one of the more interesting characters to come into the Thrawn circle in this new trilogy. He is battling the Gryks, enemies of the Chiss who entered the story in the second book Thrawn: Alliances and who could easily be elevated to become a major threat to the Empire if future stories opt to go in that direction. The question is, can Thrawn stay loyal to the Empire while helping the Chiss defeat the Gryks without upsetting the Meiloorun cart?

Here’s where the difficulties of writing Thrawn – a man clearly three steps ahead of anyone else in the room – comes to the fore. He’s too clever, too cunning, and too tactically astute to be outmanoeuvred, and therein lies the problem. Seeing things that no one else sees makes him cold, unrelatable and tough to root for, but thankfully Zahn is a canny enough world builder to set his tales in interesting and vibrant locations, giving Thrawn allies and adversaries like Eli Vanto, a former protégé much-missed from the second book who in the intervening time has progressed up the Imperial command ladder.

Zahn is a comfort blanket to Star Wars readers, popping up over the decades with trilogies and standalone stories that help structurally prop up their respective eras and bed in the continuity, and in Thrawn – one of the EU’s major players alongside Mara Jade – you have a character who is now embedded into the established canonical continuity. Should Zahn opt to return to continue the story of Thrawn through the years of the original trilogy and beyond into the post Return of the Jedi years we met him for the first time back in 1991 that would be a very welcome return indeed.