 Hey everybody, welcome back to the Star Wars channel. My name is David and today we got another book review for you. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Star Wars channel. I'm so glad you're here. One of the things that I do here, if you don't know, is I decided a while back that I would read all of the Legends Star Wars books in order. I would read them in order because, well, for a couple reasons. One, I never read them before. I never read them before, and I've been a Star Wars fan all my life. Been a Star Wars fan since the very beginning. Second reason is because a lot of the people who have read these books keep going on and on and on about how great they are and how they would have been great movies. In fact, better movies than the movies that are out currently. Some people have said that. And so I thought, you know what? I'm going to put that to the test. I'm going to read them now in, you know, 2019, 2020 and see if that claim really holds up. Do these books still pack a punch? Do they still carry some weight and are they good Star Wars stories? Are they good interpretations of our favorite characters? And so today I got a good one for you because I finally moved into the Timothy Zahn books. I haven't read Timothy Zahn yet. I know how have I been a Star Wars fan this long. I've not read Timothy Zahn. But I've been reading them from the beginning. So Timothy Zahn comes in at Air to the Empire, which is where we are right now. And I got to say, I've been kind of hard on some of these books in the past. They haven't really been, you know, everything that I would have expected. But can I just say, Timothy Zahn is a great writer. He really is. And I could tell a world of difference. I mean, I haven't even gotten into the review yet, right? Having started the review yet. And I already want to tell you, I could tell a world of difference in his writing style. As soon as I started the book, as soon as I began the book, I thought, you know what? I think I'm going to like this. I think I can't wait to read this trilogy, the Air to the Empire trilogy. So let's talk about the book. Air to the Empire, like I said, Timothy Zahn, 404 pages. This was published back in 1991 from Bantam Spectra. This book became so popular. Well, the series became so popular, actually, that it was turned into an audiobook. It's also been adapted as a comic book. So this takes place five years after Return of the Jedi. The Rebel Alliance, of course, has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader, defeated the Empire. And they're driving out all of the remnants of, you know, the Empire all throughout the galaxy. And Princess Leia and Han Solo, they're married by now. They're expecting twins. And Luke Skywalker is beginning to come into his own as a Jedi Knight. So we're going to have a new enemy, right? A new villain emerges. And this is Grand Admiral Thrawn. And you, of course, you Star Wars Rebels fans are going to remember Thrawn from being inserted into that series. But this is where he started. So he begins to kind of sweep up any remnant Imperial forces and kind of get them together. And he's got a Captain Gilead who is helping him. The two of them find a, like a crazy, old, evil Jedi clone named Joris Caboth. And he is going to be guarding this kind of vault of weapons that the Emperor has hidden on this planet called Weyland. Right at the beginning of the story, Luke is captured by smugglers. And once that's happened, the Empire goes out to retrieve him. Han Solo comes out to retrieve him. But before either of them can take him, Luke escapes. And Mara Jade, who is a bounty hunter and she's kind of out for revenge, she wants to kill Luke, she captures him and they reluctantly team up. But secretly Mara Jade hates him and she's kind of always looking for a reason to kill him. Meanwhile, across the other side of the galaxy, the evil Jedi clone, his whole plot is to kidnap Leia's twins when they're born and he wants to train them as dark Jedi's. So they kind of want to keep Leia hidden. The good guys do. And so Chewbacca leaves with her and they go to Kashyyyk. And then there's some back and forth and back and forth where people planet hop and they move from place to place. There's more escapes. There's more near misses. And eventually the entire story culminates in a giant space battle. And of course, Rogue Squadron comes in at the end and saves the day. Lots of firsts in this book. Lots of firsts. A lot of the things that we associate with the Legends novels, things that we say, oh, you know, I really like this aspect of the story, begin here, you know, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Timothy's on still writing about him. There's a new Thrawn trilogy out right now that, you know, is becoming canon. So there's that. This is the first time I think we learn that Leia's pregnant with twins that she's having two kids that there's going to be the, you know, the two kids, Jason and Jaina. And later, of course, they'll have another son, Anakin. The other first here is the introduction of Mara Jade, who's the redheaded, attractive bounty hunter who later becomes Luke Skywalker's wife. So lots of lots of firsts happen in Air to the Empire. And I have to say a lot of the other books, a lot of the other Legends books felt like stories where our favorite Star Wars characters were inserted into them and they just became Star Wars stories. Whereas this one, I feel like Timothy's on actually created a Star Wars story and utilize the characters. Well, like you don't see him inserting C3PO at R2-D2 into like random spots, just to let you know, like, don't worry, this is still a Star Wars story. He's not patronizing. He, you know, he's very deliberate with his intention and the story plot going forward. And I appreciated the voices of Han and Luke and Leia. I think it's not, it's hard to get them to sound like you'd expect them to be in the films and to say lines of dialogue that you would expect them to say in the films. And I think, you know, I think this is one of the reasons why Timothy's on it so popular, because he has dialed into that voice. I think the other thing that's fun, at least in this for me, is the back and forth between Luke and Mara Jade, because I know, you know, the end of this, I know they eventually get married. So it's one of those fun romance sequences where, you know, I hate you, you hate me, and there's this back and forth, kind of like how there was with Han and Leia at the very beginning, where they had this kind of biting dialogue, but secretly you were hoping that they would get together. You get that from Mara Jade and Luke. So that's fun too. Couple questions I ask at the end of all of my reviews. Number one, is this still canon? Legends series books have been stripped of canon ship authorship, and they are no longer considered to be canon, but sometimes there isn't really anything in the book that deviates from canon. So is there anything in this book that would deviate from canon? At this point in the new series, it doesn't appear as if Han and Leia had twins, right? It doesn't appear yet. I mean, we haven't watched the final film yet, but so far at this point, we don't feel like Rey has a twin. And even if she did, they would have different names, right? Even though the names of the twins don't come out in Air of the Empire, they're not born in Air of the Empire, but you still know they exist, right? You still know there's twins. So I would have to say, even just for that one point, Air of the Empire should not be canon, should not be canon. Would this make a good film? I think it would, because it does have some light-diver stuff in it, and we kind of always like that. It does have a big dogfight at the end in space. We always like that. There's nice rivalry, and back and forth, there's a good villain. I don't know that it ends well for a standalone film. I think when Timothy Zahn wrote these books, he knew it would be a trilogy, and I think the jury is still out as to whether I would say, yeah, we should make the trilogy into a film. So I can't say if I would want this to be a film or not. What do you think? Did I get it right? Did I get it wrong? Did you read Air of the Empire? What is your opinion of Timothy Zahn? Tell me in the comments below. Thanks for sticking with me through this book review. I can't wait to get to the next one. May the Force be with you. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.