A review by dmcke013
Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn

3.0

If I was asked which author is most associuated with kick-starting the whole Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU), I would have to choose Timothy Zahn, with his 'Heir to the Empire' trilogy. From that trilogy, two of his main protaganists would have to be the Jedi Master Joruus C'Baoth (a clone of the dead Jedi Jorus C'Baoth), and Grand Admiral Thrawn.

In this particular novel in that universe - set between the events of Episode I and Episode II - Zahn returns to those two particular characters, as well as to the fate of the eponymous 'Outbound Flight'. Slightly misleadingly, I felt, the main story does not detail how Thrawn joined the Empire (although there is a short story in the back of my edition that does just that), but instead fleshes out a previously hinted at backstory from his Heir to the Empire series. Set in an earlier peirod, I found it also interesting that it also foreshadows some of the event of the later New Jedi Order series of books - a series that, if I'm honest, I never really took to, preferring instead to primarily remain in or around the Rebellion era.