- Why did EU authors make up one-off alien races? Oh I guess they're still doing that rather than validate the occasionally questionable choices of the EU authors. karking Delphidians, amirite?
- How does viewing art allow you to tell a species from a a single tactical manuver any-ah kark it I guess that's the point.
- Gotta love when the Clone Wars and the whole rise of the Emperor were just hinted at via political complexity and actual thought-processes instead of the abortion of something resembling 'writing' and 'plot' we got in the prequels. Thanks Lucas.
- Equally interesting is the ambiguous status of Jedi with C'boath. Was 'Sith' even a word yet?
- Talon Karrde is the original OG. I'm getting more inspired to write a smuggler character than anything else.
- God wookies are such a walking trope it's infuriating. Almost as badly as ewoks...
- The inclusion of the movies characters is significantly less egregious here than in the Black Fleet books. Maybe it's because they're the only main characters from the good guys, or simply that Zahn is a more compelling writer, hard to say. God at least there's no totally karking pointless ENTIRE PLOTLINE made up for the sake of karking Lando.
- 'Chariot Assault Vehicle' sure is a fancy name for an up-armored landspeeder.
- Jesus don't Luke and them ever get PTSD from slaughtering Imperials? Like literally in droves, constantly.
- So far Thrawn hasn't been all that clever it's just like he's genre savvy and knows that... oooooooh.
- Tell you what is goddamn convinient how every 'random' event happens to invovle the MC's again. It just HAD to be Lando's mole miners and they just HAD to show up again at Sluis Van. Sure is small for a galaxy. Whatever that's fiction in a nutshell I suppose.
- Zahn is definitely a solid and compelling writer even after 20 odd years. I have a hard time imagining most of the EU books standing up so well.
***
My initial devouring of the EU began probably 15 years ago, or maybe more. I read the Thrawn trilogy at that time, but remember nothing from it except that Thrawn himself was awesome.
This is to be a commentary of sorts on the series as I reread it. Prior to this in relatively recent memory I have also read the Black Fleet Crisis, which I shall constantly be using as a comparison.