Chaos Rising

4.5.

I really enjoyed this book! It's more familiar of the first book in which we see more of Thrawn's character and personality. For instance, knowing now that Thrawn sees people as assets is a really good bit in how he interprets the world. Thrawn's failure of understanding politics is also well noted here which makes for good stakes politically. The military battles also felt great because there was stakes - we don't know whether Yiv would succeed or not, it's good storytelling!

The use of flashbacks is really good and develops Thrawn and Ar'lani well and adds that their relationship is really close and by the time of Treason we can assume they had a falling out. I also love how this book crossovers with Alliances, that's a really good scene.

Thalias and Che'ri are secondary characters but are rather good. It shows how being around Thrawn can change you in an interesting way.

I don't really have any criticisms of this book, it's really well made.

Another solid Thrawn novel. 3.5 stars.

I'm honestly getting a bit tired of reading about Thrawn. There's only so many times you can read about how smart and tactical he is before it becomes not so impressive anymore. At this point I'm just way more interested in what Thrawn is up to right now, and I honestly think he'd work much better as a side character.

Granted, this book does do a few new things with him (how he was more compassionate compared to now), but as with the previous trilogy - the standouts for me were the side characters. In the previous books that was Eli Vanto, this time it was Ar'alani.

I liked the Memories, and I liked certain parts of it, but I'm not sure this is interesting or juicy enough for an entire new series? It was enjoyable, sure, but it doesn't really justify its existence. Unless you are really interested in the Chiss and politics, though I found even the latter to be a bit shallow here.

Timothy

More of the same. I would honestly rather Thrawn outsmarted a big bad with art like Seth's from Superbad.