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**The release date is officially listed as July 23, 2019**


.....droolio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GyIRTdIMs

Remember when the Empire could support multiple projects? Pepperridge Farm remembers. But really though the premise sounds interesting.

Originally posted by Galan007
http://i.imgur.com/DKWG4tQl.jpg




.....droolio

How the fvck are they going to make this fit within continuity? Thrawn and Sheev seem to get along just fine during season 4 of Rebels, including the finale.

Didn't the last one take place before/during season 4 as well?

Looks good.

Originally posted by HP Legend
Looks good.

Originally posted by The_Tempest
How the fvck are they going to make this fit within continuity? Thrawn and Sheev seem to get along just fine during season 4 of Rebels, including the finale.

Didn't the last one take place before/during season 4 as well? I'm curious about the timeline as well.

The previous novel took place between season 3 and season 4, just after the battle of Atollon. Fast-forward to S04E10, and Tarkin had arranged a meeting between Thrawn and Palpatine, so that Thrawn could discuss the importance of his TIE Defender project over that of the Death Star -- implying that Palpatine hadn't yet decided which project should take immediate precedence. Of course, later in the same episode is when the fuel supply for the Defenders was destroyed, which compromised the entire project -- this failure is likely why Palpatine opted to divert all funding to the Death Star.

That said, the description for this novel implies that it is set after Palpatine had decided to put Thrawn's project on the back-burner... Which means it should logically be set sometime between S04E10 and the finale.


As for the 'treason' thing: in the previous novel, Vader accused Thrawn of treason when he was planning to use Imperial assets to attack the squadron of Grysk forces. Even though the Grysk only posed an immediate threat to a small number of Chiss at the time, Thrawn explained that engaging them would be mutually beneficial to both the Chiss AND the Empire... And Vader begrudgingly agreed.

I imagine the same type of scenario(albeit on a larger scale) will present itself in this upcoming novel: the Chiss homeworld will be under assault from Grysk forces, and Thrawn will want to deploy an abundance of Imperial resources to assist them... Except this time Thrawn will have to explain his motives to Palpatine himself, who will question where his loyalty truly lies. Might even be a "better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" type of scenario, wherein Thrawn acts on his own discretion against the Grysk, and then must explain his actions to Palpatine after the fact. /shrug

Originally posted by Galan007
http://i.imgur.com/DKWG4tQl.jpg




.....droolio Sounds great. I'll have to read the second book very soon.

Ah, Thrawn. The only good material New Canon has produced.

A Trench film would be better.

Originally posted by Beelzebub
Ah, Thrawn. The only good material New Canon has produced. Not the *only* good material, imo, but certainly the best so far.

"Its treason then"

Originally posted by Galan007
Not the *only* good material, imo, but certainly the best so far.

Lost Stars and Rogue One: Catalyst MIGHT qualify as good if I'm being generous but more likely they fall under decent.

Rogue one, the movie, and the Vader comics probably qualifies as "good."

*Shrug*

Let's just say that Thrawn is the only material produced by Disney thus far that I'd label as "unambiguously good."

I really enjoyed Lost Stars.

Im massively behind on the canon books. Intend to catch up on Bloodlines and Thrawn.

Originally posted by Beelzebub
Lost Stars and Rogue One: Catalyst MIGHT qualify as good if I'm being generous but more likely they fall under decent.

Rogue one, the movie, and the Vader comics probably qualifies as "good."

*Shrug*

Let's just say that Thrawn is the only material produced by Disney thus far that I'd label as "unambiguously good." I would agree that the Thrawn novels are above all other canon material, in terms of overall quality/enjoyability... That's Zahn for you.

Suffice to say, I have very high hopes for Treason. I do wonder, though, if Zahn is going to stop here(now that his 'neo-Thrawn Trilogy' will be concluded), or if he will continue writing Thrawn in the future, given that his fate is still up in the air..?

As far as I'm concerned, Zahn is the only person who should be handling Thrawn at this point. All things considered, Filoni portrayed him quite well in Rebels(Lars Mikkelsen is the most perfect VA I could've ever hoped for), but Zahn just takes his characterization to an entirely different level.

Originally posted by Darth Thor
I really enjoyed Lost Stars.

Im massively behind on the canon books. Intend to catch up on Bloodlines and Thrawn. I'd read the two Thrawn novels before anything else. They really are great.

Originally posted by Galan007

I'd read the two Thrawn novels before anything else. They really are great.





Wait... Theres two already? Or are you including the new one?

Originally posted by Darth Thor



Wait... Theres two already? Or are you including the new one?

There's two already.

Originally posted by Darth Thor



Wait... Theres two already? Or are you including the new one? There are currently two Thrawn-based novels that have been published in new canon: Thrawn and Thrawn: Alliances.

Treason will be the third.

Alrite cool. Will start with both of them.

How is Bloodlines?

Originally posted by Darth Thor
Alrite cool. Will start with both of them.

How is Bloodlines? I didn't care much for Bloodline, tbh, but that could be because I really don't give a rat's ass about Leia trying to make her way in the New Republic. /shrug

Zahn recently teased a new character from Treason:


When asked if Captain Pellaeon would make an appearance:


He also commented on the vastly different tactical approaches taken by Thrawn and Krennic respectively:


Zahn went on to say that he has plans on pitching more Thrawn-based novels to Lucasfilm/Del Rey:


And given the success these novels have had so far, I imagine they'll allow him to do pretty much whatever he wants... So hopefully we'll find out what became of Thrawn after the events of Rebels in these forthcoming projects. It's a story that I only trust Zahn to tell, tbh.

Excerpt from the novel:
https://www.starwars.com/news/thrawn-treason-exclusive-excerpt

Good scene. I like how Thrawn was 'reading' the expressions/emotions of Tarkin and Krennic during their meeting. It is also finally mentioned in canon that there were indeed more Grand Admirals in the Empire than just Thrawn... Though it was implied that Grand Admiral Savit inherited the rank primarily due to his family's elite status or w/e... As Tarkin goes on to note that Savit's tactical skills are inferior to Thrawn's.

This was a really good read -- probably my favorite of the trilogy, tbh. I'll probably comment on it more in days to come, but some initial thoughts...


-The Grysk are definitely being set up as *the* threat to the galaxy. According to Thrawn, they are so efficiently adept at manipulating those they conquer that he estimated it would only take ~100 of them to enslave an entire world and force their complete allegiance.

-There are still 12 Grand Admirals in canon.

-Assistant Director Ronan is portrayed almost identically to Krennic: you love to hate both of them.

-Very cool to see Eli Vanto back in the fray. He and Commodore Faro got a lot of limelight.

-It expanded on the Chiss Ascendancy quite a bit(we now know some of their navigators have 'second sight' AND 'third sight'), though Thrawn is still considered a unique tactical genius even among the Chiss.

-Thrawn's final battle with Grand Admiral Savit displayed possibly the best tactical manipulation/warfare I have ever seen in any SW material. Thrawn dominated him utterly and completely. It was glorious.

-We find out how Captain Pellaeon came to join Thrawn's cause in the Rebels finale.

-All things considered, Zahn managed to tie this into the Rebels timeline seamlessly.



Speculation: after reading this I'm pretty sure that Thrawn allowed himself to be 'ported off to the Unknown Regions with Ezra and the Purrgil in the Rebels finale. Either that or it was just a happy coincidence things played out that way... Because by the end of this novel(which is set immediately before the finale), the Chiss Admiral Ar'alani was certain that the Chiss Ascendancy was going to be wiped out by the Grysk very soon without Thrawn's help, and asked him to make a choice between the Empire and the Chiss... And I have no doubt the Chiss still command his ultimate loyalty, so being *poofed* away like that would have presented the perfect means for Thrawn to 'defect' from the Empire, without it being considered full-fledged desertion/treason.

That being said, I imagine the next time we see Thrawn we'll learn that he has been in the Unknown Regions battling Grysk forces the entire time. I'd also bet money that he convinced Ezra to join his cause... Because once Ezra learned of the Grysk threat, he'd undoubtedly want to help fight them as well.

The new SW doesn't deserve Zahn tbfh.

I'm still not sure on this whole Grysk thing, from the way it sounds, it just seems weird that 30 years later there wasn't any mention of them, that they didn't do anything notable to the galaxy if they were so prepared and ready to invade, which the proper time would have been after the collapse of the Empire.

....Unless the Chiss wipe them out in some maneuvering that cripples them indefinitely and thus they never get heard from again. I feel like that would be a bit anti-climactic though...unless they'll appear after the ST and the Chiss were holding them back. But you'd think someone would have found out.

....Still they sound a hell of a lot more interesting that the Resistance vs The First Order.

Zahn's Thrawn trilogy in new canon is far any away above everything else. Granted there is quite a bit of canon material I have enjoyed(mostly on the comic book side of things), but Zahn's work is just on a different level.

Zahn also stated that he's definitely not finished writing Thrawn, and wants to write at least one more Thrawn novel for sure -- possibly even a whole new trilogy(likely set in the period after he and Ezra were Purrgil'd away)... Those books would undoubtedly explore the all-out war between the Grysk and Chiss following this novel.

But yeah, as of the conclusion of this novel, the Grysk still pose a huge threat to the galaxy/Empire, so clearly something must happen that stalled them from attacking the galaxy in the years between ANH and the ST. /shrug

Yeah this was a fantastic read.

One thing that's interesting about the Grysks is that it's never really been alluded to how many are actually out there. So far all we've seen are very small Grysk task forces and they have still managed to infiltrate this far into the empire AND put up this good of a fight against the likes of Vader and Thrawn.

really interested to see where Zahn goes from here.

There was a reference to the Grysks' potential numbers in the previous novel:


That could certainly be nothing more than a story Thrawn was repeating, but I'd imagine their numbers are extremely vast nonetheless... And as I mentioned above, the Grysks' ability to enslave worlds by using their own fears against them(to the point where the inhabitants of these worlds will literally die for the Grysk) is really quite something. For all we know, the Grysk could have already conquered hundreds/thousands of worlds in the Empire, and no one would be the wiser until the actual invasion of the galaxy was commenced.

It would have been a LOT more interesting.

It also seemed like Krennic and Tarkin were on the same level in the empire's command structure.

anyone else get that impression?

The novel is set just before the Death Star was operational, and Krennic was the Director of the Death Star project at the time. So where matters involving its construction were concerned, he and Tarkin were on equal(ish) footing. Once construction was completed, however, Tarkin was able to usurp command of the Death Star from Krennic, no questions asked.

IOW, Tarkin still had far more overall power/authority.

Then Tarkin had a memory wipe and forgot in ANH that the DS was completed. :P