By far the best book that's come out of Star Wars novels- which have been notoriously abysmal in their cliche and the poor quality of story line. Timothy Zahn isn't like that. He creates a brand new character for the series in this book (Mara Jade), that, over the years, has been the largest fan base of all the characters not in the Star Wars movies by leaps and bounds- and for good reason. Her character is awash with a secret past, a lust for vengeance, is cool and calculating, abrasive, pragmatic, and a whole series of mental contradictions that pull her motivations to move in different directions. This one is getting 5 stars for the sheer fact that it's the best Star Wars book to come out of Star Wars till it was published, and was amazing and gripping.

If you like Science Fiction, he is an amazing author- he has quite a bit of command of functional knowledge of physics which the reader can see he uses throughout the series, most notably in book 3.

This one is a must grab you those Sci-Fan fans, and if you were as gripped by the stories and plots of Grand Admiral Thrawn (another of Zahns Creations, more below), Mara Jade, Talon Karrde (another of Zahn's creations/addition to the series that has added much to other authors), and what Luke/Leia/Han/Chewie/Lando have been up to since the end of the last first Trilogly, otherwise known as Episode 6 (the one those of us call 'Star War's, the old fuddy-duddies that were around before the prequels, when Return of the Jedi was episode 3, not 6).

By far, break out favorite of Zahn's character creations is Grand Admiral Thrawn- imagine if Sherlock Holmes meets Alexander the Great and fuse them into a personality. Now make him a villain, and not a cheesy villain either, one you can relate to, understand and sometimes cheer for. The logical consistency Zahn's uses with Thrawn is amazing. He seems all but omniscient to his foes, always a set ahead and knowing what they are doing. It isn't purely a hack attempt of making a foil a foil- he walks you through how he knows these things and has placed the seemingly irrelevant information together to guess correctly more often then not, and sometimes the heroes move past him without him knowing if they are sufficently smart and lucky enough to evade detection of odd information. I can't stress how much this character is so well put together. READ IT!