Star Wars RPG Blog

It’s hard to believe that 15 years ago, Star Wars fans had very little other then the original trilogy.  There were some very cheesy comic books put out by Marvel and the role playing game was still in it’s first edition but even there the content was limited.

I vividly remember stopping at the local book store at college and having one of those double take moments when I thought I saw the Star Wars logo on a book in the best seller section.  It was the spring of 2002 and what I saw I knew I had to buy.  It was a book called Heir to the Empire by an author I had never heard of (Timothy Zahn).  I didn’t have much money in those days and I probably didn’t eat (or drink) well that week but I bought the book and took it back to my apartment.  Needless to say, my roommate was as big of a Star Wars fan as I was and when I showed him the book I think what came out of his mouth was WTF.  He had it finished that night and I finished it that weekend.  It was a long overdue Star Wars fix for the both of us.

From that point, I kept up with the books pretty much as they came out.  Some were really good and some were only okay.  New characters were introduced and then some main ones were killed off. Along the way, my favorite books were still those original three, eventually called the Thrawn trilogy.  So anytime a book by Zahn was set to come out, it was one I made a special point to pick up and read.

I finally got around to Outbound Flight and finished this weekend and it was Zahn at his best.  The book has two diverging story lines.  The first is an early look at Thrawn.  The second deals with the Outbound Flight project which was introduced in Zahn’s last book, Survivors Quest.  This story line also highlights Jedi Master Jorus C’baoth, who was the driving force behind the Outbound Flight project, which is a grand colonization expedition into the unknown reaches of space.  Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi also play a big part in this book and it’s a nice look at the two as a transition between episodes one and two.

The coolest parts of the book had to be where Zahn shows his mettle as a top notch tactician.  Zahn takes on everything from a nomadic race to a Neimodian droid fleet.  As always, Zahn stays one step (or even two or three) ahead of all of his opponents and he makes everything he does look easy. 

You also get some brief and vague mentions of the Yuuzhan Vong and then a secondary mission of Outbound Flight was to try to figure out what happened to the Jedi Vergere, who plays a big part in the New Jedi Order series.

So you get a little bit of everything.  Zahn’s masterful writing, an early look at Zahn and some back story regarding some of the other books.  I highly recommend this book and I’m really looking forward to his next book, Allegiance.