Let the Reader Beware

The Rantings and Ramblings of a retired student president of the Carleton College Science Fiction and Fantasy Alliance who is also studying to become a medievalist. Home for this year, but hopefully resuming my M.A. Program in York next year if all goes well.

Martinus (RL: Ross). 23. Male. Massive geek and nerd of many descriptions. Singer (but can't read music). Writer (fanfic). Chronic meta writer. Catelyn Stark/Samwell Tarly hybrid and proud of it. Callsign: Stan.

Resolute and stubborn stan of cerebral protagonists (and antagonists at times), honor-bound soldiers, flawlessly flawed 'righteous' warriors living in fear, walking identity crises (often of the morally-grey variety), children-at-heart, lost souls looking for somewhere to belong, lost souls who keep running, and those characters who take 'working inside the system' as a challenge, not a limitation.

This is not a spoiler-free blog for anything not currently airing.

I love nothing more than when characters reveal themselves while talking about someone else. And there is nothing more innately human than hypocrisy born of fear.

voices in the wilderness

After buying it about four months ago, I finally got around to sitting down with the 20th Anniversary Edition of Timothy Zahn’s cornerstone work Heir to the Empire. I started reading Star Wars novels with varying degrees of reading comprehension as early as kindergarten and first grade, and never really stopped until my interests in Sci-Fi and Fantasy finally diversified when I went to college. My first read of Heir was long enough ago that I cannot say with confidence if it was among one of the first novels I dove into or one of the last (I have a feeling I actually started in earnest with Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers), but it has certainly been one of the most lasting. Zahn’s characterization of the original heroes of the trilogy remains among my favorites, and several of his original characters managed to assume a place in my heart formerly occupied only by those who appeared on screen in the 1970s and 80s. 

But while it might not have formed the foundation of my own experience of Star Wars beyond the films, it does enjoy that distinction within the EU as a whole, which now consists of hundreds of novels, comics, graphic novels, young adult works, video games, and other media. Heir was the first authorized work to be published in the Star Wars universe beyond the novelizations of the films, and the haplessly outdated Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (whose author, Alan Dean Foster, among other things, lacked in 1978 the crucial information that Luke and Leia were siblings and that Darth Vader was their father).

The 20th Anniversary Edition of Heir is a typically pricey hardcover, but unlike many of the big books Del Ray has been churning out recently, this one might actually be worth the cost. In addition to a forward that details the fascinating process of bringing Star Wars back to life just after the Cold War that provided so many of its themes and aesthetics had ended, it also has marginal annotations by Zahn and his original editor, which displays Zahn’s own background in military Sci-Fi and the travails of reestablishing the universe while not running afoul of Lucasfilm, who then as now exercised not inconsiderable editorial power over books published with the ‘Star Wars’ name, including making Zahn conform to some material from already existing gaming books, as well as showing just how much about the material of the eventual prequels that Zahn had to allude to without setting himself up for massive retcons. The ‘Clone Wars’ mentioned by Ben Kenobi in A New Hope were nearly two decades earlier and implicitly waged by the Republic against the titular Clones, for example. The notion of ‘Sith’ as a title was vaguely defined and Zahn generally defaulted to ‘Dark Jedi.’ 

And much had changed within the universe itself (with nearly every single event or person referenced in the intervening years eventually fleshed out and integrated into later EU work). Leia and Han had just begun a relationship at the climax of Return of the Jedi - in Heir they are married and expecting twins. Luke has resigned his military commission and taken up the task of rebuilding the Jedi Order alone, plagued by anxieties about his father’s own fall and no longer having the aid of Obi-Wan (who makes his final visit to Luke in Heir’s opening chapters) and Yoda. The Empire had begun to collapse with the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor but it was by no means finished. Nonetheless, the Rebel Alliance had become the fledgling New Republic, based upon the world of the former Imperial Center (now given a name that would later be used in the prequels, Coruscant). Lando had ended a short military career and had gone off to other profitable ventures. Leia had picked up where she left off as a critical diplomat and leader in the New Republic, while Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar had retained their primary political and military leadership, respectively. Wedge Antilles was back in command of ‘Rogue Squadron,’ whose ranks would be filled out by Michael Stackpole in his X-Wing books. 

And onto this scene had come new faces. Representing the best of the Empire’s traditions of order and stability was the dogmatically loyal Gilad Pellaeon, who at last put a human face on the Empire, showing that not every officer in the Galactic Empire was a simpering fool or ruthless tyrant (a lesson that other EU authors would swiftly forget *cough* Anderson *cough*). And quite literally the Holmes to Pellaeon’s everyman Watson was the enigmatic and chillingly brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the vacuum that would have surely formed in the wake of Jabba the Hutt’s death and the disintegration of his criminal empire was Talon Karrde and his gang of profiteers, and the intriguing bridge between the Empire and the criminal underworld to counter Han Solo’s Rebel connections, Mara Jade. 

But Zahn’s greatest strengths, and what in my mind sets him apart from the pack of EU authors even now, is a fundamental understanding and grasp of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa (and to a lesser but no less crucial extent Lando, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO), and the terrific dynamic that exists between them. To me, at least, Zahn’s Luke flows beautifully as a burgeoning contemplative still anchored by his idealistic farmboy roots, Han a cynical but principled somewhat-reformed scoundrel who still thirsts for adventure, and Leia a phenomenally strong, compassionate, and brilliant political mind torn between a half-dozen personal identities but facing it all with the learned dignity of her youth. It may not seem like much of an accomplishment for Zahn to have so rendered George Lucas’s characters, but to be honest even before the fiasco of Fate of the Jedi certain EU authors had completely failed to portray these characters in a way that felt similarly genuine. Leia in particular has been chronically mishandled by several different authors who couldn’t find a balance between her roles as a politician, a Jedi-in-training, a plucky woman with a fiery temper (uh, yeah, no), and a mother. And following the death of Chewbacca in Vector Prime, Leia has become dangerously pigeonholed as Han’s wife/co-pilot, much of her narrative dynamism robbed in the process. 

I came across a passage in Dark Force Rising that illustrates to me why Zahn just gets Leia (and Han) in a way that a disappointingly large number of EU writers just don’t. 

And [Han] remembered too, the wrenching realization he’d had at the same time [that Leia was accepting his profession of love and shooting a pair of Stormtroopers off his back outside the Endor Bunker]: no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to totally protect her from the dangers and risks of the universe. Because no matter how much he might love her - no matter how much he might give of himself to her - she could never be content with that alone. Her vision extended beyond him, to all the beings of the galaxy.

And to take that away from her, whether by force* or persuasion, would be to diminish her soul. And to take away part of what he’d fallen in love with in the first place.

In this passage, Zahn shows me that he gets Leia as a writer the same way that her husband ought to get her. In Heir he also has a brilliant sequence where he easily establishes the strong twin bond between Luke and Leia, when Leia sends C-3PO to him upon feeling Luke’s emotional turmoil in the pre-dawn hours. It was established in The Empire Strikes Back, and strengthened in Return of the Jedi. And yet along with the notion that Leia, fully trained and focus, could be the equal of her brother Luke in the Force, it is one of the most commonly discarded or underused facets of their relationship (for more, see Rachael, obsessed with all things Skywalker twins). 

*fuck you very much Dave Wolverton

Beyond characterization, Zahn builds intricate and multi-threaded plots worthy of the plans of Grand Admiral Thrawn, adeptly using all three Rebel leads (especially impressive because Leia is pregnant and her unborn children are under threat) in ways that benefit and do justice to their characters and advance the plot towards a satisfying climax. Zahn is, especially in the Thrawn Trilogy and his equally brilliant Hand of Thrawn duology (which brilliantly faced the unenviable task of trying to clean up the mess that other authors had made of the EU while bringing the New Republic/Imperial conflict to a final end, allowing for new enemies to surface), simply a very fundamentally sound writer. His books are generally well constructed, well-paced, seed clues for future plot developments and twists smoothly within the narrative, and simply hold together very well. They aren’t just good Star Wars books, they are quality pieces of literature that could stand on their own. Their success paved the way for dozens of books to follow, some of which didn’t exactly match the quality of Zahn’s work, others that did. But though I’m surely biased, I think only Aaron Allston matches Zahn in his ability to use a truly ensemble cast in the Star Wars universe (Stackpole, for all his brilliance, gets way too bogged down in the stories of narrative favorite Corran Horn and Wedge Antilles, leaving the rest of the Rogue Squadron less than ideally developed). Allston and Zahn deftly manipulate multiple character POV’s to create a compelling and interesting story that is driven by real characters. 

While I, like much of the Star Wars fandom hold Zahn’s work (particularly his first two series) as pretty much everything the Star Wars EU can and should be, that’s not to say he hasn’t faced some criticism, some of it deserved. That said, he’s no more reliant on his pet characters than any other author, and as I mentioned, he does a better job with the originals than just about anyone else. Accusations of his characters being Sues/Stus are generally simplistic and based on failure to read closely - Thrawn is brilliant, but the only reason he comes across as damn near invincible (until he suddenly isn’t) is that he gets inside the heads of the POV characters, like a Sherlock Holmes in a galaxy far far away. Mara Jade might have a fantastical backstory and sometimes run the list of ‘fiery redhead’ tropes, but she’s a deeply flawed individual, psychologically damaged in ways that she still does not fully understand or wish to acknowledge by her service to the Empire (I always loved how she refused to believe that she was not the only Emperor’s Hand and even that the Clone Palpatine was genuine, because she’s too proud to admit otherwise). Karrde is clever, but he’s also plenty lucky, the same could be said of Jorj Car’das, his predecessor. Borsk Fey’lya is fantastic for the simple reason that he’s on the side of the good guys but often working against them for his own gain - just like any number of real-world politicians. And while other authors might have fumbled their writing of Zahn’s characters and made them too brilliant or erased their personal flaws, I don’t think their creator has ever really made the same mistake.**

As I said, I’m sure in the process of lionizing Zahn I have omitted his errors or weaknesses and celebrated his strengths, but in terms of the overall quality of his work compared with the remainder of the EU (and let’s be honest, the Prequels) my position stands. 

**I’m still not entirely sure about Thrawn and Mara in ‘Allegiance’ and ‘Choices of One,’ which while I have enjoyed, I don’t think are really that outstanding. (Outbound Flight on the other hand is stunningly good imo, and Survivor’s Quest isn’t a bad sequel). Zahn acknowledges he’s somewhat retconning himself in his marginal notes for Heir, but he does give Thrawn a formidable foe in Nuso Esva (his outmaneuvering Darth Vader really shouldn’t be surprising - Anakin Skywalker was never characterized as a brilliant strategist and leader - quite the opposite, actually). Mara seems far more skilled and trained in the more recent books than she was in Heir, though it is somewhat implied that a not inconsiderable part of her effectiveness is due to the power of the Emperor himself, who bolsters her efforts just as he bolsters the fighting spirit of the Imperial Navy.