The Last Command

Bantam, May 1993, 467 pp.
ISBN: 0-553-56492-7

Genre: Science Fiction
Subgenre: Movie Tie-In
Reviewed: 2/25/2001

Reviewed by: Conan Tigard

Book Cover

Read Part of the Book

"The Emperor had a private storehouse," Mara said, the words coming out with difficulty. His wizened face seemed to hover before her, those yellow eyes gazing at her in silent and bitter accusation. "It was beneath a mountain on a world he called Wayland--I don't know if it even had an official name. It was where he kept all of his private mementos and souvenirs and odd bits of technology he thought might be useful someday. One of the artificial caverns held a complete cloning facility he'd apparently appropriated from one of the clonemasters."

"How complete was it?"

"Very," Mara said with a shiver. "It had a full nutrient delivery system in place, plus a flash-teaching setup for personality imprinting and tech training on the clones while they developed."

"How many cylinders were there?"

Mara shook her head. "I don't know for sure. It was arranged in concentric tiers, sort of like a sport arena, and it filled the whole cavern."

"Were there a thousand cylinders?" Organa Solo persisted. "Two thousand? Ten?"

"I'd say at least twenty thousand," Mara told her. "Maybe more."

"Twenty thousand," Organa Solo said, her face carved from ice. "And he can turn a clone from each one every twenty days."

Mara stared at her. "Twenty days?" she echoed. "That's impossible."

"I know. Thrawn's doing it any way."

Review

After obtaining most of the Katana Fleet, Grand Admiral Thrawn needs men to man the controls. He has found a way to create massive amounts of clones that are ready to battle in as little as twenty days. C'baoth has become even more unstable and insists that he is the true leader of the Empire. Karrde gathers together other smugglers and tries to get them to form a coalition with the Rebel Alliance. Thrawn attacks Coruscant, the heart of the Rebel Alliance, and leaves a little surprise orbiting the planet. Mara Jade is also on Coruscant, recovering from injuries that she received a month ago, and prevents a kidnapping of Leia and Hans' twins. After hearing of the intensified cloning that Thrawn is doing, she decided to make her peace with the Rebel Alliance and aid them in finding Wayland. Together with Luke, Hans, Chewbacca and Lando, they travel to Wayland to destroy the cloning facility. But Leia learns that C'baoth is waiting for them there to turn them to the dark side of the force and to become his apprentices. She teams up with Karrde to warn them. Her only worry is...will she make it in time?

This is a Star Wars book. It is the third and final book in The Thrawn Trilogy. The book is well-written and Timothy Zahn has nailed the characters perfectly. This story takes place a month after the conclusion of the second book and about five years after Return of the Jedi. You really should read the other two books in this series before attempting this one. The first is Heir to the Empire and the second is Dark Force Rising.

A workmate had informed me before I started reading this book that he loved this series, but was highly disappointed with the ending. Maybe this affected me some in the reading of this story, for I was always looking for that issue that he had. And to tell the truth, I did not have a problem with the way the story ended. In fact, I was quite happy with it. This story starts off a little slow, but the action slowly builds until its climax. I would have preferred a little more action throughout the entire story, not just at the end, but that is just my opinion. I did enjoy the story and thought it was a proper ending to this wonderful Star Wars Trilogy. If you are a Star Wars fan, you should not miss this book, or this trilogy. Pick it up and prepare to be swept into a story that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

I rated this book an 7½ out of 10.