CH29:

Mara is standing on the roof of the palace, staring out at the skyline. Luke arrives for an answer. Mara hasn't really looked at the Coruscant skyline without an objective before. Luke has asked her to be the go between of the New Republic and Karrde's smugglers Also of note, his vornskyrs have recovered. That's nice.

They're transplanting the Noghri to their new world as well,which is interesting. Someone other than Pellaeon might have decided to destroy Honoghr in retaliation, but apparently he didn't.

Luke hands over his old lightsabre to Mara, the one Luuke was using. She wonders why, but her last link to the past was broken at Mount Tantiss.

Sweet and simple. Ends where it started, roof of Palace at night.

Overall:

So that's it, the end of the trilogy. They're very well written books overall.

Favourite new characters are Pellaeon and Karrde, I'd like to see Pellaeon when he doesn't have a superior contradicting every opinion. I'm not sure I want to see more of Karrde, I don't want to hear that he dies in a speeder crash three books down the line. I kept expecting a reveal that Karrde was a renegade imperial governor or something.

Also expected C'Baoth to be the final boss of book 1, and he ended up being much more than that. Still miss a true Thrawn /C'Baoth confrontation, though.

Noghri and smugglers were the most enjoyable arcs for me. Noghri homeworld was a difficult theme handled well.

The reason I started this was because I disliked everything I'd heard about Thrawn, and wanted to see what the truth was behind it. And he was both better and worse than I was expecting. His command decisions were mostly fine, but the book suffers from not allowing him to get through a scene without one upping someone, and every other character, from Wedge to Karrde to Leia to Pellaeon, constantly thinking about how awesome he is and taking shots at other commanders for not being Thrawn. It's the weakness of an otherwise good trilogy.

I might read other Thrawn books because Timothy Zahn can write well, but I won't ever be a 'yay, Thrawn's in it,' person. Newcanon Thrawn suffers from the same thing as far as I can tell.

Thanks for reading this far, everyone. What did you make of this? Too whiny? Let me know. What would you recommend reading from here?