 Hey everybody, welcome back to my Star Wars channel. My name is David and today we've got a vintage book review. We would be honored if you would join us. All right, welcome back to the channel. Thanks for being here. I love the vintage stuff. I love the vintage stuff because that's when I grew up. I grew up right along with Star Wars, right? I was there to see Star Wars in 1977 and I've been with the franchise ever since and so I have a lot of vintage toys. I have the vintage books I got. I got a lot of vintage stuff and I continue to collect vintage stuff alongside the new stuff. Pretty much if you put Star Wars on it, I'm going to buy it. I am a fan of the franchise. I don't hate on anything. What I've been doing is I've been reading the original vintage series, reading the original classics, reading them in order, reading them in order, and asking the question, do they still hold up? Are they still good books? Do they carry the weight that we remember? Would they make good movies? Are they canon? Asking a few of those questions and just kind of doing a book review letting you know what these classic books were like. Today we're going to look at the second book of the Thrawn series. This is Dark Force Rising from Timothy Zahn. All right, Dark Force Rising, Bantam Publishing 1992. This is book two, like I said. Lots of people love the trilogy here. They love this Thrawn trilogy. And the first book was Air to the Empire. I reviewed that a long time ago. I know it's been a long time. That book came out in 1991. I like that book. All right, the plot. The plot for Dark Force Rising and please forgive me if I cannot pronounce all these hard names. This is five years after Return of the Jedi. And the Republic is born, of course, from the defeat of Darth Vader, the Emperor, and the Death Star. And now the Empire is dying. It's, you know, it's floundering. And so we turn to their new villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn. One of the characters is a smuggler named Talon Card. He was left on the base of Merkur. He is now fleeing from Thrawn. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker meets the Dark Jedi, Joris Seaboth, and agrees to let Seaboth be his teacher. And he teaches him on the planet Jamarck. But Thrawn captures Card, the smuggler, and Mara Jade finds that she once again needs help from Luke Skywalker, even though she hates him because, you know, she feels like Luke killed Emperor Palpatine and that was her master. So Mara travels to Jamarck and she and Luke together defeat Seaboth. And then the two of them infiltrate Thrawn's hideout and save the smuggler. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Lando Calarizian try to find evidence against another guy whose name I can't pronounce. Basically he's a traitor to the New Republic. He works for Thrawn. But before Han and Lando and Luke can find any real evidence concerning this guy, they find out that Thrawn's forces have arrived on the planet. They manage to escape and Han and Lando are saved by a third group, which takes them to an unknown location where they meet the legendary general Garm Bell Ilbas. Now Bell Ilbas declines to help their New Republic defeat Thrawn because of personal problems. And meanwhile, Leia keeps the promise she made with the Nagri from Book One and she arrives on a devastated planet. Leia manages to get the entire Nagri race to side with the New Republic against Thrawn by revealing the fact that it was the Empire that actually devastated their planet and not the Alliance. Meanwhile, the New Republic finds out from Talon Card that an old leader of his, Captain Hofner, revealed the secret of the legendary Katana fleet to Thrawn. And this fleet is made up of 200 Dreadnaughts that could tip the balance of power in Thrawn's favor over the New Republic. During the Battle of the Katana fleet, the New Republic manages to destroy some of the cruisers, but Thrawn wins. Alright, so how was the book? Well, it was kind of like my overview. It was very wordy. I also felt it was confusing. There was lots of hard to pronounce character names. And Timothy Zahn does that all the time. It goes over the top with his Star Wars names. And when the names all look familiar and I can't pronounce them, then it's hard for me to kind of picture what this person looks like. And then when I see that name again, I'm asking myself, who is that? Right? So part of the struggle, just in reading the book, was placing names with characters and figuring out who all those people were. Was the book good? It was good, but it wasn't as good as the first book. The first book was really my introduction to Timothy Zahn and I loved it. And I was really looking forward to this book, hoping to love it too, but I didn't. And I found myself really working through a lot of the slow parts, hoping that some good parts, some action parts were coming and they just didn't come fast enough. And then by the time I was getting close to the end of the book, I was really wishing the book was over. Really, because this book comes in the middle between the first book and the second book, then this book becomes a bridge, right? It's a bridge and there's not a lot going on. And it's just a lot of characters moving back and forth. So it's kind of hard to evaluate the book as a standalone book. Is the book canon? No. I think we're getting to the part of the vintage books where they can no longer be canon because so much other stuff is happening. Now, would I make this book into a movie? No, I would not make this book into a movie. I don't know. Now, after having finished reading book two, I feel like this is a way overrated trilogy. I think we all remember this trilogy differently and, you know, reading it now in 2021, it just doesn't hold up for me. And like I said, I had to work hard to complete this book. I had to really push myself. So I don't think it was as well written as book one. I mean, the only reason I pushed through the series is because everyone loves this series. You know, they talk about it with great fond memories of it and everyone loves Thrawn as a character. But there just wasn't enough of even Thrawn in this book for me to push through this book. I mean, it was hard. And oh, and the ending of this book was a super letdown. All right, that's everything I can say about Dark Force Rising book two of the classic vintage Thrawn series from Bantam books. What I recommend it, I mean, only if you feel like you have to read every book. Like I said, I loved the first book. Didn't really like the second book. So now I'm really skeptical about the third book. And I actually paused this series, because I was a little nervous about getting to the third book. And I've started reading The Bounty Hunter Wars. So I've started reading this trilogy. This trilogy is an outside trilogy that takes place kind of in its own little independent world. I've already finished book one, and I'm halfway through book two. So the reviews that I do next will be about this series. Before I finish the Timothy's On series. Tell me what you think about Timothy's On. Tell me what you think about Thrawn. If you like that original trilogy, or if you've read it recently, or if you think they hold up, I'm probably totally wrong. Prove your case below. Thanks for watching, guys. May the Force be with you.