#lio liveblogs: thrawn ascendancy series.

[loveoaths]

alright, i finished Star Wars: Thrawn: Ascendancy: Chaos Rising, and i have Thoughts. aside from the copious amount of colons in the title, it was… fine. it is the most Zahn of all the thrawn novels, and all my old criticisms of the thrawn novels are applicable here, too: no character development; same-old space mystery plot that ends in a naval battle with one or two creative maneuvers; women with the strangest character motivations you have EVER seen; etcetera.

i talk (read: rant) about this way too often, but i truly do feel that thrawn novels would benefit by letting him be wrong more often. he’s a military genius, but he sucks ar politics and people — so put him in situations that force him to engage with politics and people!!! he would be so much more interesting if we saw thrawn trying to apply his military know how to, say, a grounded chiss-regency era style plot. give me a thrawn wounded by a reckless battle maneuver and now stuck on mandatory medical leave somewhere and, OOPS WHAT’S THAT? ALL HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES FINALLY HAVE HIM IN THEIR TERRITORY AND STAGE A POLITICAL ASSAULT ON HIM? and now thrawn, mr genius mcsmarterson, has to lean on all those friends and allies he’s made to survive a political maelstrom. ar’alani, thalias, and samakro and their families are roped into keeping his stupid ass afloat and helping him play the political game, or at least shield him as much as they can from his own ineptitude. and at the same time thrawn is trying to sniff out enemy subversives influencing chiss society and planning a naval attack on the chiss fleet, and he has to juggle all of these problems while while also trying to remember which tiny fork to eat his salad with? and if he doesn’t pick the right fork the visiting syndicure will make him harikari on the SPOT???

now that would be a fun thrawn novel. hot damn.

[loveoaths]

the thrawn novels are so frustrating because they could be SO GOOD as proper mystery-action-military novels! but no. they’re 300 pages of slow plodding military tactics, the driest plot ever served, and a total lack of interiority or insight into thrawn as a character. in fact i’d argue that they’re purposefully structured to maintain distance between thrawn and the reader by only showing us other people’s pov on thrawn.

and on one hand i know that’s because if we were in thrawn’s head there’d zero suspense because he figures everything out immediately, but the solution to that is to just… put him in situations he can’t figure out so quickly, like, i dunno, the political situations he famously sucks at soooo bad. that would be fun! we’d get to be in his head and see how he tries to strategize surviving a dinner party like it’s a naval battle! interiority! character driven plot! we could have had it all!!