Chaos Rising Part 3

[colls]

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

This month’s book is Chaos Rising by Timothy Zahn
Part 3: Chapter 13 - Chapter 18

Chaos Rising Part 3

1. Outside the Chaos, the Clone Wars are raging. How are they going to tie the Galactic Republic happenings in the Chiss Ascendancy?

2. What are your thoughts about Thalia's meeting with the family patriarch?

3. The author is being pretty clear that Thrawn isn't politically savvy, despite being tactically intelligent. Do you think we will see his political missteps come to a head this book or over will it unravel over the course of the trilogy?

4. Any predictions for how the book will end?



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 III of the book.

Comments

[barbiejedi]

1. This part of the book stopped me cold and I had to go back to the second book of the first modern canon Thrawn trilogy, Thrawn: Alliances to double-check-- this conversation is a retelling of a scene from that book, but from Thrawn's perspective this time. (In the previous book, it was from Anakin's.) It felt a bit weird to be reminded that there was a whole other book happening in the time that Thrawn and Che'ri were gone. I also had to refresh my memory of what Thrawn got up to via Wookieepedia, because I didn't have the time to reread the whole thing. XD

2. I'm glad that Thalias got to get out from under the merit adoptive thing and establish herself as trial born, to remove that bit of leverage over her. It was interesting to see that it was actually the Patriarch, rather than General Ba'kif, who identified Thrawn as someone to be pulled in as a merit adoptive-- and then I got all confused again, because I was certain that General Ba'kif would have been a former Mitth family member, but the Patriarch calls him Labaki and THAT is definitely not a Mitth name. I don't have the faintest idea which family he'd have come from and why he'd be doing so much work on behalf of the Mitth, and I hope it comes up later in the trilogy.

3. Much as I'd love it to get him in trouble in this book, I'm betting it doesn't properly play out until the climax of the 3rd book, just because it seems like it's being signposted pretty obviously but not urgently, and we've only seen a few minor ways that it's affected his career.


It's still driving me a little bananas that Thrawn is referred to as Mitth'raw'nuru in all the Memories sections and Mitth'raw'nuruodo in the Chapters. In Legends, I don't think there was ever any systematic explanation of Chiss naming conventions, and now that Zahn's the only one doing Ascendancy stuff he gets to lay it out however he likes without having to worry about what other writers have done. I really want to know what the -odo is about, and I'm guessing it's going to happen in one of the last Memories sections before they catch up to the Chapters in time.

I suppose we can also assume that Thrawn never gets promoted high enough in the military that he's removed from his family, otherwise we'd be calling him... Raw'nuru at some point? Just doesn't sit right. :P