Chaos Rising Part 2

[colls]

Welcome to our second of four check-in and discussion posts for our Book of the Month.

This month’s book is Chaos Rising by Timothy Zahn
Part 2: Memories V - Chapter 12

Chaos Rising Part 2

1. Why are Ar'alani and Ba'kif so willing to go to bat for Thrawn? Do they hold similar views as him on the importance of gathering intel and engaging/assisting other societies within the Chaos or is it more personal in nature?

2. What are your thoughts on Thalias, the former sky-walker turned caregiver (turned 'fake hostage')?

3. What do you make of General Yiv and Thrawn's interaction. What did they each learn about one another? What did we learn about them?

4. Is Thrawn aware that Qilori is in league with General Yiv?

5. Other thoughts?



FYI - There's no need to answer all (or any) of the questions above - they're just talking points to get us started. Informal chatter is more than welcome! In-person book clubs often veer off topic, it's okay if we do as well. :)
All I ask is that you try to avoid spoilers for things past Part II of the book.

Comments

[barbiejedi]

1. I haven't figured Ba'kif out yet-- if he showed up in any of the other books, I don't remember it. He's the one who identified Thrawn to get him adopted into the Mitth family in the first Memory section, but when we're introduced to him he's no longer part of any family himself-- I assume he was a Mitth before attaining a high enough military rank to be removed from his family like Ar'alani was? I wonder how he came across Thrawn in the first place, and what it was that made him see Thrawn as a valuable resource. He seems almost like he's treating Thrawn as a pet tactician, like he's a secret weapon being kept in reserve because he might give Ba'kif (or the whole Ascendancy? The military?) an edge at some future point.

Ar'alani, I think, because Thrawn has shown her what he can do with his own particular brand of analysis, and she's seen it play out often enough that she trusts his instincts even if they're inconvenient. After reading this week's section I'm low-key shipping them in a friendly kind of way? Which is weird af to me because my brain grew up with a pretty aromantic view of Thrawn in Legends. Maybe because in Legends we never got his POV in anything he appeared in, but in modern canon we get a lot more insight into his actual thinking, which lends itself to better understanding his interpersonal relationships? Something like that.

2. I really like her. It's clear that being a sky-walker traumatized her in some ways that she's still working through, but she tries to use that to be considerate of Che'ri and do her best in that job. (While also juggling her... attraction? to Thrawn? She keeps trying to get closer to him and as near as I can tell at the moment it's just "because he was nice to me when I was under a lot of stress as a kid." I wonder if she'll get to have the conversation about that later that she seems to really be pursuing.) I know Star Wars doesn't really do ~therapy~ but I really want all the sky-walkers and former sky-walkers to get a lot of it.

3. I really did not expect General Yiv to be as clever as he was, or to start verbally sparring with Thrawn, given what we'd seen of him so far... but if he's out here masterminding plans like the one to attack the Chiss homeworld to distract from his conquering of other parts of the Chaos, then I guess it's not unexpected? He seems almost like a proto-Grand Admiral Thrawn from the early 1990's Thrawn Trilogy-- I wonder if Zahn is going to crib any Grand Admiral Thrawn stuff from that era to stick in here, either as a callback or Easter egg or just for fun.

4. Absolutely, otherwise he wouldn't be feeding false information to him in order to make sure it gets back to Yiv. He may not know exactly how deep the relationship goes between Qilori and Yiv (is Qilori an asset or an agent? willing or unwilling?), but he absolutely knows one is there. In that particular scene, I was honestly more afraid that Yiv would suspect Qilori was working for/with Thrawn and knew the information he was passing along was false, and would then be killed for it. That was kind of the vibe I got when Qilori told him about the "hostage" thing, but then Yiv immediately dismissed it (I did not expect him to see through it that quickly) so maybe Yiv isn't worried about Qilori being a double agent? Yiv's whole vibe is weird to me, I don't have a good handle on him yet.

5. So far we have at least three different kinds of named navigator-- Void Guides, Pathfinders, and Vector One. Do all (or a significant portion of) space-faring nations in the Chaos have Force-sensitive navigators? All throughout the first half of the book I've been wondering if the Navigator's Guild has some kind of crime fraud exception for their confidentiality but it seems not-- and that the Navigator's Guild has no idea that Qilori (and presumably others, unless we find out he's the only one who's been doing this) is breaking that confidentiality for Yiv.

[colls]

1. I didn't think Ba'kif was of the same family, but it seems once someone is promoted high enough they lose their family name? IDK, I'm still wrapping my head around all the politics/family-ties.

I think Ar'alani makes sense for low-key shipping, I get a largely platonic vibe with just a small smidgen of affection. She seems drawn to him for his mind more than anything. He seems to respect her as far as I can tell.

2. I know Star Wars doesn't really do ~therapy~ but I really want all the sky-walkers and former sky-walkers to get a lot of it.
Me too!

3. I was impressed with how non-cardboard Yiv is becoming. So many times villains can just be generic bad guys and the "interesting" parts are just how twisted they are.

[brokenmnemonic]

5. It may be that unless a nation is very small and can move people/resources between its colonies using the jump-by-jump method, every interstellar polity in the Chaos region has to have some kind of force-sensitive navigator simply to be able to form a cohesive nation with a centralised government?