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colinmcev 's review for:
Vision of the Future
by Timothy Zahn
Like many fans, I consider Timothy Zahn to be the best of the Star Wars novelists, so it goes without saying that I enjoyed Vision of the Future. However, for me, it didn't quite reach the same level as his excellent Heir to the Empire trilogy, which breathed new life into the Star Wars franchise even before the Special Edition films and prequel trilogy came along. Part of the reason is that there is simply so much going on in Vision of the Future, with so many subplots and characters, that it gets to be a little too much; even halfway through the book, new characters and new side stories are still being introduced.
Granted, most Star Wars novels are ensemble stories, so fans are already used to switching back and forth between various stories and narrators. But even by those standards, there is a lot to keep track of in Vision of the Future, including some subplots that easily could have been edited down or perhaps removed altogether. For example, pilots Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn are assigned to the Bothan homeworld to investigate possible plots against the planetary shield, only to be recalled shortly afterwards; and yet that storyline continues, with newly-introduced characters that we've not previously become invested in. Likewise, smuggler Talon Karrde and his new bodyguard Shada (who herself was shoehorned into the earlier book, Specter of the Past, at the last minute) spend a considerable amount of time searching for a newly-introduced character who has an extremely lengthy and convoluted back story, none of which really serves the main story at all.
I find most Star Wars novel trilogies often have a lot of filler material to justify having three books, resulting in at least one of them (usually the second one) feeling a bit flat. But Zahn's Hand of Thrawn story is a two-book series, and may suffer from the opposite problem: there is perhaps enough here to have justified splitting Vision of the Future into two books and making it a trilogy.
Despite all of this, however, Zahn is an excellent writer, and I did really enjoy Vision of the Future. It was particularly interesting to see the Thrawn decoy storyline play out, and to see the once all-powerful Empire now using guerrilla and "dirty tricks" tactics that might have been more common among the Rebellion a few years earlier. I also knew to expect the romance between Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade to fully develop in this book, and I was a bit dubious about how that would go, since I really love the Jade character, but it seemed to me that her pragmatism and hard-edged personality might make a romance story difficult to pull off. But by tying it into her development as a Jedi, and her helping Luke acknowledge his own limitations, I think Zahn pulled it off about as well as anybody could. Good stuff.
Granted, most Star Wars novels are ensemble stories, so fans are already used to switching back and forth between various stories and narrators. But even by those standards, there is a lot to keep track of in Vision of the Future, including some subplots that easily could have been edited down or perhaps removed altogether. For example, pilots Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn are assigned to the Bothan homeworld to investigate possible plots against the planetary shield, only to be recalled shortly afterwards; and yet that storyline continues, with newly-introduced characters that we've not previously become invested in. Likewise, smuggler Talon Karrde and his new bodyguard Shada (who herself was shoehorned into the earlier book, Specter of the Past, at the last minute) spend a considerable amount of time searching for a newly-introduced character who has an extremely lengthy and convoluted back story, none of which really serves the main story at all.
I find most Star Wars novel trilogies often have a lot of filler material to justify having three books, resulting in at least one of them (usually the second one) feeling a bit flat. But Zahn's Hand of Thrawn story is a two-book series, and may suffer from the opposite problem: there is perhaps enough here to have justified splitting Vision of the Future into two books and making it a trilogy.
Despite all of this, however, Zahn is an excellent writer, and I did really enjoy Vision of the Future. It was particularly interesting to see the Thrawn decoy storyline play out, and to see the once all-powerful Empire now using guerrilla and "dirty tricks" tactics that might have been more common among the Rebellion a few years earlier. I also knew to expect the romance between Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade to fully develop in this book, and I was a bit dubious about how that would go, since I really love the Jade character, but it seemed to me that her pragmatism and hard-edged personality might make a romance story difficult to pull off. But by tying it into her development as a Jedi, and her helping Luke acknowledge his own limitations, I think Zahn pulled it off about as well as anybody could. Good stuff.