The Robot Chronicles

I recently started reading the Cobra Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Cobra, the first book in the series, starts off just after the beginning of the Troft war with the Dominion of Man. At the beginning of the novel, the Trofts have already conquered a two key worlds in the outer systems. The military, in a desperate move, created the Cobra program to train an elite force of enhanced soldiers. One of the first things that came to mind when I came across this series was Starship Troopers, the BOOK, not the movie. I immensely enjoyed the first few chapters of Starship Troopers with the cap troopers in the Mobile Infantry. The main difference is that instead of troopers inside of huge external mech hardware, the Cobras’ enhancements are essentially hidden, yet very deadly. On the outside they look like a normal human, which is one of their advantages.
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“HeirToTheEmpire” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

When I heard about production of Star Wars Episode VII and the ensuing controversy about the Expanded Universe vs canon, I started thinking about reading Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy again. I first read the books almost 25 years ago! I decided that I didn’t really care if the new movies conflicted with the books. I remembered being blown away, so figured they were worth reading again. These books were a very important to me at the time because it was my first real taste of Star Wars outside of the theatrical films. There were other books released before this, but the Thrawn Trilogy marked the resurgence of my interest in Star Wars.

I’ll admit that I’ve been a bad reviewer and powered through the series without stopping to write my reviews. I normally read on my lunch breaks at work and have not had hardly any time outside of work and family life to devote to reviews as I did just a few years ago.

After reading just a few chapters of Heir to the Empire, I realized that there was quite a bit that I didn’t remember, including a rather large plot line that ran through the last two books (Dark Force Rising and The Last Command). Toward the end of The Last Command, I came across a huge plot twist that I had absolutely no memory of until just before it was revealed. I’m simply amazed at how much of this series I couldn’t remember. In a way, it was a blessing because I almost experienced the book for the first time again. This was kind of weird for me as I always thought I had an excellent memory when it came to books. I gave my wife a hard time about not remembering some fairly important stuff in the Wheel of Time series, despite her reading it at least 3 times through from beginning to end as new books came out. At the time I had only read the series once through. (more…)