Zahn's latest effort is a mixed-bag. As with his excellent Outbound Flight/Survivor's Quest duology and the ever-popular "Thrawn Trilogy," readers can look forward to a tightly plotted story that deftly weaves several seemingly disparate narrative strands into one exciting finale. This time, his signature trademark storytelling style takes place in the period known as the Era of Rebellion (which designates the time frame during which the Classic Trilogy occurs) and stars the film's main protagonists (minus the droids whom Zahn admits he couldn't find a place for) six months after the Battle of Yavin (seen in Episode IV: A New Hope)
Fans of Zahn's prior novels will be thrilled to find eighteen year old Mara Jade in her role as Emperor's Hand. She is smart, principled, quick on her toes and tough as nails. It's a pleasure to revisit this character during her youth while she still naively believed the Empire stood for justice and Palpatine was a good man.
On page 129, we get this paragraph: "Stormtroopers. Luke shivered. He'd grown up tangling with Sand People and had some idea how to deal with them. But Imperial stormtroopers were something else entirely. He and the others had survived a couple of brief encounters with them aboard the Death Star, but even at the time he'd had the feeling the Imperials had been taken by surprise and weren't operating at full efficiency... Their next encounter with the Empire's elite, Luke suspected, would be very different."
Luke is googly-eyed towards Leia, as is Han, which is fine at this point. But after six-months of hair-raising adventures, they're also good friends. One of the best things about stories set in this period is the relationship between all of them. Yet you won't find that here. The reader is given no sense that these guys have been risking their lives for one another on one harrowing mission after another. In the hands of an author who knew and incorporated the history of these characters, a bout of acrimony amongst them could have been pulled off successfully as a sudden rift in their relationship would have proved interesting. But because Zahn chose to ignore all of the stories that take place in this time-frame, his versions of Han, Luke and Leia are veritable strangers who's only connection to one another is the events depicted in A New Hope (which is constantly referred back to) six months prior. The entire time I read their sections I was left wondering 'Who are these people and where are the real Luke, Han and Leia?!' Clearly, not in this book.
In fairness, Leia is written well. Zahn has a good ear for her and her dialogue is natural and fitting with the character at this stage of the game. She's not with the rest of the group, however, choosing to go off on her own for reasons we're not exactly sure of and that are less than satisfying (other than as a plot device.) We're likewise never clued in as to why Han's suddenly acting like a stone mite crawled up his butt. At the end of the book, Leia utters a magic sentence or two to him basically saying that since Chewie wants to join the Rebellion Han should just relax and join the Rebels for Chewie's sake. And just like that he's all better. (And they said Leia's Force powers were undeveloped!) At any rate, it might have been nice to know what triggered his bad mood in the first place.
The story itself is well-conceived and enjoyable in it's own right, but where it misses it misses big, and the mis-characterizations left a sour taste in my mouth. Allegiance is ultimately a missed opportunity. Traviss, Denning, Allston, Luceno, Stewart, and a half-dozen others would've researched this area thoroughly and crafted a fine story, giving readers not only the appropriate characterizations and relationships for the film's heroes, but nods and ties to the history presented in the older comics and tales that came before. Zahn instead chooses to give us Stacey, the Valley-Girl pilot from the fan-film parody Pink Five. This reader fails to be amused. Rather than cute references to non-canon sources, I suggest it's time Tim Zahn learns the Star Wars Expanded Universe beyond his own works, or simply stops writing books that take place in eras he chooses to know nothing about.
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