Greater Good 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 Greater Good (Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy #2) by Timothy Zahn
Chapters 6-12

Greater Good Part 2

1. What are your thoughts about Captain Lakinda from Grayshrike?

2. How are you liking the developments we've had in this section surrounding Haplif and the rancher family?

3. Any 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 like Lakinda. She seems like she's got a head on her shoulders, and internal motivations, and I like seeing more about the internal House struggles, and the maneuvers and machinations.

2. I love suspicious Rancher Xodlak Dad. The more suspicious he is the more I love him. I feel like if anyone's got a chance at seeing through Haplif it's him.

3. in Chapter 10, we see the kind of moment I was warned about when I started reading the EU again after quitting in my 20s-- we learn that the Chiss don't have Geneva Conventions because Thrawn just up and commits a whole-ass crime against humanity by sedating and kidnapping the freely recognized leader of a whole-ass society that he is not responsible for or accountable to, and who, most importantly, did not ask. If I'd read this chapter twenty years ago I'd have breezed by with a "oh yeah, of course he couldn't let the magys go through with it, he needs her information for etc etc etc" but now as a grown adult I'm like "Oh. Oh. He just. He just literally violated her whole-ass everything right there. Fuck. I hope he gets his shit wrecked over this." (Note: I ranted about it a lot at my journal when I first read the chapter, but I won't go into as much detail/wall of text here unless someone else wants to discuss.) At least we get some of those concerns addressed in-text by Thalias not too long after, but I also don't like that they're focusing on sedating the magys as being her suggestion, because she's not in the chain of command, she's a civilian! this isn't something she should be able to do either!!

But now this moves Thrawn from Blorbo status firmly into Poor Little Meow Meow territory for me, because he has committed atrocities. (I have a lot of thoughts about Thrawn being a Bad Chiss because he keeps making decisions above his pay grade because he's so in love with his little logic puzzles that he never stops to see if he should be doing literally any of this. He did it in Chaos Rising too, when he went against the Chiss' No Interference Policy to help that one species fend off a "pirate attack" that we later learned was a flare-up of hostilities between two nations with a history he didn't know about. Ugh, I hate that I'm starting to take Thurfian's side.)


OH! I really liked Yomie being a Bird Girl-- I want it to be the Chiss equivalent of being a Horse Girl. The more we see of her the more I like her and the smarter she seems and I hope hope hope she up and leaves her boyfriend because honestly she deserves better.

[astromech1138]

Your point about the Magys is a really good one, and I couldn't help but think as I read it if Thrawn is stopping something GOOD from happening. If they could kill themselves without using anything, and they believe that doing so will heal their planet, maybe they have a different understanding of life/the Force/the Beyond. It will be interesting to see when/if/how this backfires for him. I can't imagine the Magys will be too happy when she wakes up; what kind of information would she volunteer then?

[barbiejedi]

if Thrawn is stopping something GOOD from happening... maybe they have a different understanding of life/the Force/the Beyond

Yes!!! I love that the Chaos leaves all the different little nations in a state of just enough isolation that their cultures can have hugely different traditions around a thing like The Force that is seen as almost universal in the more mainstream GFFA, especially since there aren't any Jedi to... I don't want to say "taint" it, but I guess to serve as the baseline from which the other traditions are assumed to deviate. I like wholly alien approaches to the same phenomena, and I would trade my entire kingdom for just a ton of short stories/worldbuilding out in the Chaos.

[astromech1138]

Same!! Honestly this book is doing what I wish the movies/TV shows would do--expanding the universe, making it stranger/different, not shrinking it down. TBH I think there's room even in Lesser Space for interpretations of the Force beyond the Jedi, and there's a weird tension of the omnipresence of Jedi theology with other characters who have no idea who the Jedi are and yet have no belief system of their own.

[astromech1138]

1. What are your thoughts about Captain Lakinda from Grayshrike?

I like her! She reminds me of Ar'alani but without the history to actually like Thrawn. I think Zahn does a good job of creating intelligent, careful characters as a foil for Thrawn, who would otherwise seem too perfect. I hope we see more of her. Understanding Chiss motivations on starships is somehow easier than the political maneuverings planetside lol

2. How are you liking the developments we've had in this section surrounding Haplif and the rancher family?

These sections were so ominous, especially when bracketed by Thrawn's trip to Sunrise. Clearly, the freighter came from the battleship that attacked Grayshrike and Springhawk. I'm not sure what's going to happen--will the Chiss erupt into civil war over the precious metal in the brooches? Seems unlikely--but allowing Haplif's Navigator onboard a Chiss vessel is a terrible idea. (And I bet that Navigator is the one we know from the last book--Qilori?) It's interesting that these Chiss are going to suffer because of their arrogance--who would ever infiltrate a Chiss homeworld? Clearly they are more powerful than any alien that shows up--while Thrawn, who might at first blush seem arrogant, doesn't allow that part of himself to take over and remains, in a strange way, humble. (Which is why he'll come out on top.)

3. Any other thoughts?

This section was so good! There's so much tension.

[barbiejedi]

I think Zahn does a good job of creating intelligent, careful characters as a foil for Thrawn, who would otherwise seem too perfect.

Same. It's funny to me that before this trilogy, we really only had Thrawn as The Token Chiss in most of his appearances, and it was hard to tell if the things he thought/did were a him-thing or a species-thing, so I love seeing more Chiss politicians, officers, and civilians fleshed out to give us some context.

[brokenmnemonic]

1. I'm wondering to what extent we're supposed to make comparisons between Thrawn and Lakinda. Seeing things from Lakinda's viewpoint, we can see to what extent her behaviour is affected by the needs of her house influences her decisions, but we also get to see that she's a confident and capable officer. Given Thrawn's apparent lack of concern over the houses and the politics between them, it feels a little like we're supposed to see the system of houses as something that limits capable military personnel, while also seeing that Thrawn himself is creating problems because others are reacting on operations in response to his reputation.

2. I'm a little intrigued to find out if Haplif knows that one of the metals in the jewellery is vitally important to the Chiss defence industries, or if that's intended to be a slip in the cultivated disguise. The fact that Haplif's pseudo-daughter has PTSD about artillery explosions is interesting, but thre's definitely a whole hosting-the-serial-killer vibe going on where the farm is concerned. The fact that Lakinda is related to one of the two houses involved with the planet Haplif is on seems like buildup for something to me. I do like that the curmudgeonly rancher is being set up as actually being the person who's clued-in somehow to the fact that Haplif and the others aren't legitimate.

3. On the one hand, Thrawn stuffing the Magys into a stasis tube feels like a very Thrawn thing to do. On the other hand, I'm curious to find out his motivations for doing it - is any of it out of concern for the Magys and her people, or is it more about trying to prevent the Chiss from losing an opportunity to gain information on an enemy and possibly another allied world in the Chaos?

I was hoping for a bit more Thalais in this section if I'm honest. After the setup in the first 5 chapters which gave her more responsibilities and a chance to actually do more, it felt like these 7 chapters have rather sidelined her.