Allegiance: Star Wars Legends

Timothy Zahn returns to the Star Wars universe with his eighth novel set in the galaxy far, far away. This time he has a new era to play around in: Allegiance is set right after the events of A New Hope. It features many familiar film characters as well as a prominent role for a teenage Mara Jade and an intriguing squad of rogue stormtroopers. Perspectives vary among fans of the Expanded Universe as to how fleshed out the three years between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back truly are. If you include the Marvel comic series, the newspaper strips, and various articles in journals and magazines as canon, this period is already quite busy. If you are incorporating novels only, it is considerably thinner. My personal view on canon is I don't spend much time dwelling on it: if it is Star Wars and I am entertained, I'm happy.In Allegiance, Zahn weaves a very complicated plotline that verges on being a mystery tale. Many new characters are introduced and then discarded quickly as events unfold, making the story a bit choppy. For this reason, it's likely to be a more satisfying read when digested in larger chunks than read piecemeal a chapter or two at a time (which is what I did).A few new characters do stand out, though, and they are the five Imperial troopers on the run that comprise the Hand of Judgment. Much like Karen Traviss and her beloved clone troopers featured in her Republic Commando novels, Zahn takes a group of helmeted anonymous soldiers and makes them dynamic individuals. Their attempts to reconcile their doubts in the Empire with their need to to serve the galaxy with honor and duty are quite interesting and continue the trend in Star Wars of placing shades of gray into what once seemed like straightforward good vs. evil yarns.Zahn is indisputably a big fan of his two most famous characters he has created, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade. Thrawn does not feature in this story, but Mara certainly does. While I very much enjoyed the role she has played in Zahn's books so far, I felt her characterization in this novel stretched credulity. She is a teenager (eighteen, I believe), and yet she possesses the poise, confidence, and skills of someone far older. She is depicted too favorably compared to Darth Vader for my tastes, and I would have liked to have seen a Mara who is making novice mistakes and desperately trying to claw her way up the Imperial ladder into Palpatine's good graces.What is more disturbing is comparing Mara in Allegiance to Luke. While their ages are similar, they couldn't be portrayed more differently. Luke is stumbling, uncertain of himself, and appears to have regressed to the farm boy we saw at the start of Episode IV, not the newly emboldened warrior at the Yavin ceremony who has just destroyed the Death Star and saved the Rebellion. Han and Leia behave largely as they did toward the end of A New Hope and fare a bit better.Timothy Zahn is an entertaining writer and I always enjoy his Star Wars stories, but I would classify this one as a more middle-of-the-road effort than his usual. I would be onboard for a sequel featuring the Hand of Judgment more prominently, possibly focusing on what seems the almost inevitable path that will lead them to joining the Rebellion.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it well written and very interesting. I am a Star Wars EU fan and have read a large portion of the books available. I have grown a bit board of the usual Han, Luke, and Leia adventures- yet this was quite refreshing. The stormtroopers were interesting new characters and the usual trio (Han, Luke, and Leia) come alive once again just like they did in the original trilogy. Han is once again his smuggler/scoundrel self, always arguing with Leia, "Princess, worshipfulness". Luke is a naive farmboy. I have always been a big fan of the character Mara Jade as well, so learning more about her is enjoyable.A few Cons:Mara Jade seems to be way to sure of herself and experienced for a young 18 year old- she seems more what you would expect from a highly experienced and older veteran.Ben Kenobi's voice in Luke's head is way over done, in my opinion. Rather then being a quick bit of guidance or instruction as from the movies (and other EU works that I recall), Luke literally is asking questions, hesitant to adhere, and even arguing back in forth with him. It is more like Luke has his dead mentor on comlink and I found it over done.All things considered, the con's were minor and did little to detract from what I found to be an excellent read. One of the better ones in my opinion. I really liked how the book follows the stormtroopers, the rebels, and Mara Jade and then ties it all in together. Often times when authors do this, I find myself being very interested in one group, but totally disinterested in the others- not the case this time. I would put it right up there with the best of Timothy Zahn.

This was another great book by Timothy Zahn. Set earlier in the timeline than the fabulous original Thrawn trilogy, we join Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie shortly after the events of a New Hope. Besides them, we also meet a younger Mara Jade in her guise as the Emperor 's Hand. I also love the stormtrooper squad known as the Hand of Judgement. Vader makes appearances as well. This one took a bit before it found its stride, chasing pirates wasn't as fun to me. I loved Talon Karrde and his smuggling crew. I read this book using immersion reading while listening to the audiobook, brilliantly narrated by the wonderful Marc Thompson. It's a shame that the follow up, Choices of One isn't on audio. On to that one now.

This was a mixed bag. I am an adult and to my mind jedi are silly. An 18 year old sith assassin girl is really dumb. Girls don't want to have a fist fight, swing a sword, threaten people, kill people, or be in danger, or climb walls, or fly airplanes. The whole Mara Jade thing is extremely silly. If you like Darth Vader as a ruthless violent ill tempered bad guy, this book seems to take that away from you. It gives an explanation for why Adm. Ozil needed to die. It sort of justifies Vader's methods. This book civilized him. But it also provides some solid links to the ESB, if that is the type of thing you go for. And why are jedi powers unavailable until called for by the plot? It is annoying. Jedi are always annoying. But it is a good book. You feel part of the story and you can empathize with the characters. The books reads well. My favorite characters are all there and the book is true to their character. It plays a nice balance, not too romanticized. Not especially pro empire or anti empire. And lots of fun. Plenty of explosions and blasterfire.

I didn't know too much about Mara Jade or what Emperor's Hand exactly entailed. This book helped give me some insight into that, as well as a young Mara Highly recommend if you enjoy reading about the lore of SW.

Reading

A horrible book and certainly the worst Zahn has ever written. Not only is he ripping off scene's from his previous books and simply copy and pasting them in here, Leia gets a job as a waitress, Luke acts like a shallow fool with Obi-wan on ghost speed dial, before being left locked in a cupboard by Han and Darth Vader web-surfs on Google and pretty much acts out of character and get's pawned by an 18 year old girl. Yes all those things actually happened and are as bad I make them sound.As for his own character well Mara despite being the best-est Imperial agent ever still seems just only go after pirates and for some reason have other Imperial officers try to kill her for absolutely no reason, except the author feeling he needs to try and introduce some excitement in an otherwise boring book. Long gone are the days when Zahn made this character really interesting with great development, now she is nothing more than a computer game cut out.As for the Storm-trooper A-Team (who are wanted for a crime they did not commit !), well they do not act like Storm-troopers but then these are Zahn-troopers since they seem to be able to shoot straight and are able to survive multiple blaster shots. They also incredibly generic and you could switch the names around and still not tell the difference between any of them as characters.As for the plot its a big mystery that starts off with pirates and leads too.... more pirates seriously that's it, all in all it's a terrible book and I am struggling to see how anyone could rate it so high especially when compared too Zahn's original trilogy which was great that great

I liked this, the story of the Stormtrooper squad deserting whilst still holding their sense of duty to the people and their oath to serve makes a very interesting read. The lines between good and bad blur and you sense the grey areas all military conflict throw up. Mara Jade's presence and her sense of morals despite being the Emperors Hand lays the foundation for her later growth, excellent stuff!I like that these novels, along with the Republic Commando series take you out of the somewhat false Good guys/bad guys clean lines and immerse you in the humanity and moral issues that are there in real life.

I've read all but one of Timothy Zahns books and I can't help but feel he put in a lack lustre shift with this book. The plot is improbably intertwined and some of the main enemies lack a real depth of character. This coupled with the liberal exploitation of the force (see Luke's interaction with Ben and Mara's Yoda like control) just makes the book lack a sense of realism (in the sense of realism in the Star Wars universe). For years I have longed for a good book to be written from a stormtroopers perspective, and this fulfilled this a little - I liked the characters from the Hand of Judgement, but I'd like to see more from them while they were inside the Empire. I only persisted in reading this book out of loyalty to Zahns other books. If it had been written by anyone else I would have given up after about 5 chapters

Timothy Zhan produces some of the best stories in the Star Wars Universe, if your a Star Wars fan he'll nkt disappoint

Another birthday present he really enjoyed it