Back in Ye Olden Days, before the Star Wars prequels came out, the way to experience Star Wars outside of the original trilogy was through books. There were a whole slew of officially licensed Star Wars novels, but the trilogy that started them all was the one by Timothy Zahn, now called the Thrawn Trilogy or the Heir to the Empire Trilogy. I read them when they come out, and I would generally read any of the new Star Wars novels as they were published. They were never officially canon according to Lucas, but they were about as close as it got.
In the years since, of course, much has happened to the Star Wars franchise. The prequels came out, and then the property was bought by Disney, and all the old “extended universe” (EU) novels were officially rendered moot, as Disney made the decision to go in a different direction with the franchise. Some of the characters and places of the EU have been used in the new shows and movies, however. It was Timothy Zahn who first named the Imperial capital planet of Coruscant. Thrawn has shown up in Ahsoka and other shows (animated and live action), etc.
After all this time, I thought it would be fun to revisit the Thrawn Trilogy and see how it stacks up. My original plan was to just read the first book (Heir to the Empire), but I ended up continuing on through the rest of them, so that should give you an idea right away about what I thought of the first.
Really, it’s an interesting experience in what might have been. In hindsight, looking back at the Star Wars universe through these novels, I can’t help but think it could have been incredible to adapt this material, recasting Han, Leia, Luke, and the gang, instead of jumping 20 years into the future. This is even more clear to me when you consider what the sequel trilogy did with those characters. It was great to see them on screen again with the original actors playing them, but that insistence on keeping to the old guard made it so the movies were this strange blend of nostalgia and trying to do something new.
You don’t have any need for that in the novels. They pick up five years after the end of Return of the Jedi, and there’s just no baggage. Luke is training Leia to be a full Jedi. She’s got a lightsaber of her own, she’s married to Han, and she’s pregnant with twins. The more I think about it, the more I think recasting would have been the way to go. Yes, it would have been jarring at first, but there are plenty of examples of recast characters that worked out just peachy. (I could say the same for Indiana Jones, but that’s a topic for a different post.)
In the end, I don’t want to spoil too much of the trilogy for you, but I do want to encourage you to read it, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. Some things will feel strange if you grew up with the prequels. There are no Sith, only “Dark Jedi,” for example, and R2-D2 most definitely doesn’t have convenient rocket boosters built into him for . . . why in the world did they do that in the first place, anyway? I’ve had a lot of fun revisiting these, and I might even go on to read some of the other EU books now.