Specter of the Past (Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn, Book 1)

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Customer Reviews:

A worthy "follow-up" to the Thrawn trilogy [Posted on 2005-08-19]
I really liked this book. Zahn did a great job leading you along. You couldn't wait to start the second book in the duology A Vision of the Future.Luckily since I didn't get to read it till well after they had both been published I didn't have to wait. This is one of the better Star Wars books out there.

Zahn's triumph [Posted on 2006-06-13]
I really, really enjoyed Tim Zahn's retur to the Star Wars universe, especially since this actually makes political sense. Though I enjoyed the Thrawn trilogy, Thrawn himself was rather annoying, as I am sure that he was to Luke, Leia et al, since he was so good at making their lives miserable. But he was just so omniscient that he was a tad over the top, a Fu Manchu from the Galaxy far, far away. This time, he is just being imitated, with humorous results. Mara Jade is back, too, and nobody does Mara like Zahn does. I don't think the other authors that touch on her really understand her, at all, least of all B. Hambly. Highly recommended.

The Blah of Thrawn [Posted on 2007-05-22]
I put the book down about half-way through it because I just couldn't get into it anywhere near as much as the Thrawn Trilogy. I realize that this book is probably just a lot of setting-up for the 2nd book, but I decided that I'd rather read other books instead of be bored on the way. It probably would have been better if Zahn had stuck with his original idea of one book instead of making it a duology.

Instead of this book, I highly recommend the following 5-star novels:

Cloak of Deception (Star Wars)
Shadow Hunter (Star Wars: Darth Maul)
Labyrinth of Evil (Star Wars, Episode III Prequel Novel)
Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader (Star Wars)
Shadows of the Empire (Star Wars)

not as good as The Thrawn Trilogy [Posted on 2007-10-25]
This review is for The Hand of Thrawn Duology. This duology consists of Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future. This is the follow-up to The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn.

This story is about how the Imperials finally surrender to the New Republic. The overall story was good but the author was bogged down with tieing up loose ends from the rest of the Star Wars novels and comics.

If you are interested in reading a lot of the Star Wars books, I recommend checking this book out from your local library because the events in this book are important in some of the other Star Wars books.

A fair read... [Posted on 2008-10-13]
...but overall it was pretty meh. There were several 4+star moments, but there were not enough to average out the dull ones. There was minimal character growth on the part of the primaries and the few new roles were sparsely placed, hopefully setup for a larger role in the second book.

That brings me to the end of the book, which apparently is in the next installment. I would have been ticked if I bought this as a new release. I mean it's one thing to wait a week to see what happens on a tv show. It's a completely different deal to wait months and months for the second half of a book to come out. This is yet another case of the almighty dollar being more important than the creation of good quality writing.

Overall, the read is ok, but not what the first Thrawn set was. It does have fewer of Zahn's quirky dialogs like characters using "Point" as the realization and sudden end of verbal debates, the likes of which seriously annoyed me in the first set. The "ending" of this book leads me to believe the next volume will tie up many of the loose ends Zahn and others left dangling in the vastness of space.

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