I actually surprised myself with this book, because while I've been so looking forward to the upcoming Thrawn: Treason, I first has the thought to relisten to the first two in that series, but decided against it, and started with the shorter in time Star Wars audiobooks that I still had to listen to, this one being first. I remembered the basic premise that was listed for this story - a ship with some Jedi going to the far, unknown reaches of the galaxy around the Clone Wars. But then as I started listening, and Thrawn showed up, heck, talk about a pleasant surprise.

And because of that, I really didn't care about the actual Outbound Flight part of the story most of the time. The idea was interesting by itself, with a less than stable Jedi Master leading it, but once I realized I was getting a look at the Legacy version of Thrawn, I just kept wanting to go back to that. He isn't all that different from the Canon Thrawn of today, with obviously some differences here and there. He is still basically the brilliant tactician who can see a million moves ahead of everyone else; still has a thing for investigating art, though we don't see a whole lot of that in this one book. Here he even has an Eli Vanto character teaching him and the like. The voice doesn't match what we now know Thrawn sounds like from the Rebels show, but this was done some years back before all that, of course.

However, I don't know if it's because this was an abridged audiobook or not, but the story just kind of ends. There were still a couple of points to wrap up, but it didn't. So, even with those issues, it's an interesting look at Thrawn pre-new-Canon days where he is familiar, but yet, not 100% so.
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12/2021 - I'm still on a Thrawn kick, but I didn't want to relisten (yet again LOL) to the other books, so I thought let me revisit this, but unabridged this time. And since this the legends prequel version of Thrawn, figured I could compare how this compares to the now complete Ascendancy trilogy. So, skipping most of the Jedi/Outbound Flight stuff (at least until they met up with Thrawn), it was interesting. There definitely are similarities to the newer trilogy, some things the three books delved into far more since there was more time (especially surprised with Ar'alani and Thrass), but still plenty of differences. And of course, since I'm far more familiar with the new version, I definitely prefer the new Thrawn and Chiss. But still an interesting look at early Thrawn!