A review by frootlupo
Chaos Rising by Timothy Zahn

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’m a fairly casual Star Wars fan - enjoyed the movies well enough, but never really ventured much further than that. My wife, on the other hand, is quite an avid fan, and deeply enjoyed Chaos Rising. She suffers through enough of my niche interests that I decided to reciprocate and jump in to this first book of the Thrawn story, and I was pleasantly surprised. 

 

The book is the origin story of a beloved villain - one that I knew VERY little about - so I was half expecting the book to be a series of payoffs and references that go way over my head. Instead, Chaos Rising is fairly fresh and feels like I’m activley being introduced to a new character, rather than just being given a backstory to a pre-established character. Truthfully there seems to be very little that is villainous at all with our titular character, and I’m excited to see how our hero turns into a dastardly foe. 
 
 The pacing felt stop and go at times. The first 60% felt like it had a lot of momentum and was very enjoyable - but then the book slowed down fairly heavily to give us a lot of exposition and setup that felt completely designed to set up future instalments and had no payoff in this story besides a blatant fan-service cameo. The ending was fine, but that lurch to a stop in the middle was a bit off-putting. 

 

Another quibble is just the classic sci-fi bombardment of weird names that I have to keep track of. At a certain point I just stop paying attention to names and let side characters blur together. 

 

Overall, I enjoyed Chaos Rising way more than I thought I would, but it is far from a perfect read.