Timothy Zahn wraps up his “Hand of Thrawn” duology with the meaty “Vision of the Future”(1998), which — at 520 pages for the hardcover and 694 pages for the paperback — is the longest Bantam “Star Wars” novel. (In fact, in Germany it was split into two books.)
It’s also meaty in terms of the page-count spent on each thread. Whereas previous Zahn novels found our heroes quickly bouncing from planet to planet, sometimes stopping so briefly that you barely had time to register the name of the planet, Luke and Mara spend this entire book on Nirauan in the Unknown Regions. In terms of plot, they’re on this cave-laden planet to find out what the Hand of Thrawn is, but what makes the story memorable is the Luke-Mara romance.
Reading the Thrawn trilogy and “Specter of the Past,” one might assume Zahn is not a good romance writer, because he doesn’t bother with it beyond picking up the Han-Leia chemistry from the films. But he believably brings Luke and Mara together, despite the fact that Luke has been focused on his Jedi Academy for 10 years and Mara on the Smugglers’ Alliance. And the fact that they’re both commitment-phobes. Essentially analyzing the stories in the gap between “The Last Command” and “The Hand of Thrawn,” Zahn (and Mara) determines that Luke’s brushes with darkness — first in the “Dark Empire” comics, which Zahn finally mentions (very cool) — may have played into why things didn’t work out with Gaeriel and Callista, his brief love interests.
Whereas Zahn once invented ysalamiri to take away the Jedis’ Force abilities, and thus the superhero abilities that can sometimes make things too easy for the protagonists, in this romance he uses Luke and Mara’s Force sensitivities to bring them together. (Speaking of Force sensitivity, Luke is able to communicate with the small flying creatures on Nirauan via the Force; in that way, they remind me a bit of the telepathic Hoojibs from the Marvel comics.)
Luke and Mara’s pairing (the actual wedding is in the comic book “Union,” but the proposal is in “Vision”) and the peace treaty between the New Republic and the Empire are the most important wider plot points in “Vision.” But it functions as a page-turner because Zahn teases out a few threads effectively: The search for the Caamas Document, the mystery of what exactly the Hand of Thrawn is, the mystery (not to us as readers, but somehow it still works through the eyes and minds of various characters) of whether Thrawn has returned, and — best of all — Karrde’s impending visit to the ominous Jorj Car’das, Karrde’s former boss.
The highlight is when Car’das tells of his clash with Yoda on Dagobah when he was a young, foolish and ambitious Force-user. It ties in with Luke’s discovery of a beckon call in the Dagobah cave in “Heir to the Empire,” but more so, it’s just very cool to get a new tale about Yoda, even if it is in a flashback.
And even though Shada is largely a replacement for Mara in Karrde’s world, I like her, too. Part of it is because she was, strictly speaking, in the movies (she’s one of the “Tonnika Sisters” in “A New Hope”). And also, you can’t really go wrong with a “woman without a home planet” yarn in “Star Wars”: So much of the saga is about men and women who seemingly lose their home, yet somehow find a new one in the big galaxy.
“Vision” ends on an unambiguously happy note, which is rare for “Star Wars” books, even those that wrap up a storyline. This was the last Bantam Spectra hardcover, yet it includes vague allusions to threats in the Unknown Regions — this would eventually coalesce into the Yuuzhan Vong invasion in Del Rey’s 19-book “New Jedi Order” series, and I imagine the folks at Lucas Books asked Zahn to plant some of those seeds.
Bantam released some great and some merely good “Star Wars” books from 1991-99 (and I’ll examine more of these in future entries). And it certainly went out on a high note.
What are your thoughts on “Vision of the Future” and the “Hand of Thrawn” duology as a whole? Share your comments below.