This is the second book of the third Thrawn trilogy.

I really liked it. It was a great next step. I see a lot of really interesting attempts at explaining the background that allowed him to accomplish his later feats which featured in earlier stories.

It was cool to see the way that other characters viewed the asymmetric advantages conferred by cultural blind spots. This is the first time I’ve seen a character other than Thrawn do this in Star Wars.

It’s interesting to see the way Thrawn vs Haplif played out.

I liked the character of Jixtus. I was sort of bored by past individuals from his species so this was cool to see a better developed character from them.

It was also interesting to see the way Haplif pitted the families against each other, and how Thrawn circumvented that whole gambit by playing the fool. I thought that was a nice bit of poetry.

I thought the idea of the three families just pretending nothing happened was kind of a lazy way to tie those threads off.

Very excited for the next book!