The Last Command by Timothy Zahn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Entertaining book, although towards the end it became clear that Zahn had developed all he needed to do. The mechanisations of the middle book, through an almost mathematical reformulation of characters becomes a simple twist of the characters attempting to eek out an agential goal of some sort. What I mean is that once we know who’s side who is on, it becomes a race to see who can effect the proper technological change. This is an interesting presentation of the power of technology and the motions of politics as a modeled on material agency. In many ways this parrots Tom Clancy novels in which characters become little more than quirky personality surfaces upon which technical ability is wrapped around.
So for that reason the book, is not very surprising, and as amazing as the first two books. I did enjoy reading it however. Zahn is very easy to read. His language is clear. His dialogue is both telling and personal although by this point much of the exercise felt uninspired, as he simply had to go through the motions.
As characteristic of books with a black and white view of who we are supposed to root for, the good guys always seem to meld into an impossible level of trust. In a way, the flatness of the Leia and Luke characters from the movies comes through here in the book as a poverty of characterization. Nonetheless, his imaginative craft in writing shows via his twist in resolving the Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker episode. I saw this as both an inspired resolution AND an empty cop-out. I can’t make up my mind. In a way though, unlike the second book which really said something more than a simple character regurgitation, this volume only went through the motions to finish the story. And as such, the smuggler character felt a little tacked on, despite his prominent role in the first and second volumes. But I guess if you’ve read the first two, Zahn doesn’t need to work too hard to get you to read this one as well.
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