Star Wars: Allegiance

The primary cause of my losing all respect for George Lucas has to be how, in his "anything you can do, I can do better" screenplays for episodes 1-3, he gave Timothy Zahn a big fat finger by ignoring Zahn's established (and officially sanctioned) additions to the Old Republic and clone wars portions of the SW canon by thinking he could make a better story...and, in the parlance of our times, resulting in a hot mess. Star Wars: Allegiance is Hugo-winner Zahn's seventh SW novel, this one set between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.

With a healthy time span to play with (how did the Rebels get from Yavin to Hoth, anyways?), Allegiance juggles three plots: the violent act of mutiny that leads a stormtrooper squad to defect and take on a superhero complex of defending the innocent, a Rebel diplomatic/trade mission starring Han, Luke, and Leia, and finding out just what the heck Mara Jade did anyways as the Emperor's Hand. If it sounds like a bit of a handful, that's because it is.

Zahn's greatest skill, as I see it, is in intimate character interactions. His famous (and great) "Hand of Thrawn" trilogy soars on the strength of weaving many plots by focusing on very few people within each plot: Leia, dealing with the stresses of bickering diplomats and submission to the whims of the New Republic while trying to prevent it from suffering a coup - all while being heavily pregnant - mostly interacts only with Han, Mon Mothma, and the councilor at the head of the potential coup. She spends her frantic flight in the second book almost solely in Chewie's company. In the smuggler plot, he focuses on the relationship between Talon Karrde and Mara, with other members of Karrde's crew making very minor appearances. On the villainous side, the tightly knit tensions between Captain Pellaeon, the Grand Admiral, and Joruus C'baoth quickly turn into a game of cat and mouse between Thrawn and C'baoth while Pellaeon helplessly watches from the sidelines. There's a lot going on in these books, but the glut of action is kept tempered and engaging by creating intimacy with very few characters mattering in each tale. Not only that, but by focusing on no more than three people per plot, he gave plenty of time for those characters to individually matter to the reader.

This crucial element of Zahn's storytelling is largely absent in Allegiance, which is why it was so disappointing to me. He's an excellent writer, and if I wasn't familiar with his work, I probably would have enjoyed the book at the literary version of a summer blockbuster that is most Star Wars novels. Allegiance is largely bogged down by the rogue stormtroopers - there are five of them, and since they're all new (read: unfamiliar) characters that's too many to deal with and still be engaged. Also to the poor trooper's detriment, the superhero/Robin Hood story that they follow is so overdone - I expect something not quite so tired from a brilliant mind like Zahn. And most of their noble dialogue comes off as awkward and contrived - also something I'd never have expected from this author. Han, Luke, and Leia's plot is the strongest of the lot, as Zahn covers Han's painfully hilarious road of getting sucked in to the Rebellion - after Yavin, he's still made no commitment to it, and doesn't intend to, but the problem is that the Rebel leadership starts assuming that he's part of The Cause, and giving him jobs that reflect that belief. Zahn treats us to watching Han's intense discomfort at this discovery, conflicted by the fact that he has a soft spot for young Luke as a friend, not to mention the hots for Her Worship. Speaking of Luke, Zahn does a great job of reminding us that, at this point in the story, he was still a fresh-faced, untrained, rather naive kid, not the significantly wiser and jaded Jedi Master of the future. I wouldn't have minded the whole book following these three. They're familiar characters to all SW fans, and yet Zahn takes old knowledge and sneakily makes it new. Very enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the bad continues to outweigh the good in Allegiance, as painfully emphasized by Mara's story - which is particularly bizarre, as she's Zahn's character, created for Heir to the Empire and continued in Spectre of the Past and Vision of the Future. It seems that even the best Star Wars writers - and Zahn is the best - fall prey to the trap of painting Imperial characters who will later be redeemed as having been not so bad, even whey they served the Emperor. This is especially strange in regards to Mara, as the Thrawn trilogy introduced her as a cold, calculating person boiling with rage. Granted, most of this rage was in regards to Palpatine's death, but in that case, shouldn't it stand to reason that, when he was alive, she agreed with his views? Zahn throws us that bone in the last two pages of the book, mentioning Mara's love and adoration for the Emperor, but that doesn't hide the fact that her plot in this book is built on a foundation of her seeking to prevent an injustice. This is almost, I'm scared to say it about a Tim Zahn book, inconsistent - Zahn established when he first introduced Mara that she was Palpatine's apprentice, that she worshiped him and hung on his every teaching...and justice was never Palpatine's concern, power was. That's why, even though she's Zahn's character, I couldn't buy the idea that this 18 year-old girl, apprenticed to the most evil man in the galaxy, spends her time doing good. Like in the other plots, Zahn shows us what this books could have been - in Mara's case, he takes a bits-and-pieces look at her feud with Darth Vader. Zahn reasons that Vader would have hated Mara, not only viewing her as a threat, but as a replacement, perhaps even as a betrayal, watching the master who had taken Vader under his wing when he (Vader) was the same age as Mara take on a new apprentice. Vader's anger, suspicion, and jealousy play perfectly not only to old canon about Vader, but to what we've seen of Anakin's character from Revenge of the Sith. I would likely have been quite content with a whole book on the subject - it would have made for a fascinating character study, which is what Zahn does best.

It seems to me that, with Allegiance, Zahn tried something different than his usual. And I can't fault him for that - with the number of books this man has under his belt, what author wouldn't want to give themselves the challenge of trying something they never had before? In that, then, perhaps I am being to hard on him, because it's not uncommon to fail a first attempt. But I just can't shake what I already know about Zahn's traits and abilities as a writer, both from Star Wars and some of his other work. For people unfamiliar with Zahn's work in general, and the Thrawn trilogy in particular, I can see this being a very satisfactory, light and fun popcorn read. For people who know what he's done and what he's capable of, I predict no small disappointment.