Timothy Zahn

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars

Ryan LaFerney

30 years after being published, Heir to the Empire is considered by most fans to be the rebirth of the Star Wars Saga in multimedia (coupled with the comic Dark Empire and the computer game X-Wing a year later) before Disney acquired Star Wars in 2012. Now Heir to the Empire is no longer considered canon but it is still considered a classic and is one of the most important sci-fi books of all time.

Timothy Zahn’s Heir to Empire was released in 1991, followed by Dark Force Rising in 1992, and The Last Command in 1993. This trilogy is largely credited with breathing life into the Expanded Universe and revitalizing Star Wars as a whole as mentioned above. 

Heir to the Empire brings back the gang we all loved from the originals: Luke, Han, Leia, Lando and gives us some amazing new characters: Thrawn and Mara Jade. Roughly, the story follows the campaign of the newly re-appeared Grand Admiral Thrawn to unseat the New Republic and put the Empire back in charge of the galaxy. Thrawn’s plans for that are complex, to say the least, but very effective. Of course, along the way, it has Leia being pregnant with twins, political infighting among the upper echelons of the New Republic, a returned dark Jedi Master, a whole species of people who worship Darth Vader, and more.

The reason these books have remained popular is that Zahn was able to achieve something I think the sequels failed in: He was able to maintain the tone and feel of how the original films felt while giving us a completely new story with intriguing new characters. These books could have recycled plot points from the original films but they didn't. Both Thrawn and Mara Jade are nuanced and mysterious characters, and have interesting motivations and fascinating backstories. Mara Jade is a former operative for the Emperor who hates Luke Skywalker and Thrawn, is an outsider, who rose to the top of what was left of Empire after the battle of Endor, using his cunning mind and strategic patience to achieve his ends. He is not so much of a Palpatine loyalist as he is an smart military opportunist and this makes for extremely interesting continuation of the Empire, one that isn't necessarily beholden to the legacy of Palpatine per se. 

Heir to the Empire is intriguing and a ton of fun and in my mind, will always be canon.

Phillip Santiago

While I find some flaws in Zahn's prose, I really enjoyed the plotting. It felt like an organic continuation of this story. Weirdly, if I wish there were more changes to the final draft, it's regarding Mara Jade. Intriguing character, but the reveal about her past oddly lacked atmosphere. It's about as far from the Revelation in Cloud City as you can get. Knowing what I know about where Mara goes next, I kind of wish her obsession with Luke wasn't this...one-dimensional, but I'm still intrigued to see how Zahn develops her further.