Choices of One (Star Wars)

So I really wanted to listen to more Thrawn stuff, but wanted to give the newer books a rest, so I looked to see exactly how many books Timothy Zahn actually wrote with the character over the years - and discovered this one! And it's Thrawn with Vader! So maybe a legends Thrawn: Alliances-type book!

Well, all true, but not a whole lot of Thrawn, and Vader, so definitely not an Alliances type book. But still interesting. While something like Outbound Flight and Mist Encounter had some stuff that he pulled almost exactly to the newer Thrawn books, this one didn't... but I'm thinking the whole warlord Nuso Esva that was playing all these pieces together and turning them on each other is where Zahn got the idea for the Grisks in the Ascendancy books - Nuso Esva is totally different, but just has that air of a new and unknown threat from outside the empire hit the Chiss first and is trying to move through Empire space, is a Grisk thing.

In any case, whatever inspired the new books doesn't matter for this one specificially - how he kept these parts together without seemingly missing any beats at all is pretty amazing. (Though, admittedly, still preferring Thrawn in the new canon books, however...)