COPYRIGHT: 2007
SERIES: The Hand of Judgment
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- between ANH and ESB
Another day, another Timothy Zahn Star Wars novel. The main thrust of Allegiance is a story of five stormtroopers who desert their posts and strike out as individual Robin Hood figures, essentially. The book questions the nature of allegiance. It also suggests a difference now between clone troopers and volunteers. The troopers who come to call themselves the Hand of Judgment are volunteers. They believe in their oath to serve the Empire and its people, but when ordered to murder aliens without cause, they find themselves in moral crisis. Events transpire that lead them to desert, and it's a wonderful character exploration. I find many Star Wars stories set in this period deal with issues of loyalty and what makes people continue to side with the Empire or join the Rebellion, or exist somewhere in the middle.
Meanwhile, there's some plot involving pirates or something that gets a lot of various characters involved. This seems to be something Zahn is fond of: taking a lot of disparate characters and getting them muddled in the same events from different perspectives, with lots of surprise reveals and confusions about who's on whose side. It wore thin with me a little this time around though.
And as we also might expect, Zahn spends a significant portion of this book with his creation Mara Jade. At this point, she is working directly for the Emperor as "the Emperor's Hand". What I like about how he writes her is she never seems to be a "dark Jedi" or using the Dark Side of the Force. But she does have skill and use it to her advantage. At this point she's sort of the anti-Skywalkwer (which I'm sure is the intention).
Zahn also attempts to help connect the dots between episodes IV and V here with little character moments. Han Solo essentially decides to stick with the Rebellion in this book. Han and Leia's feelings for each other continue to slowly bubble. We see Vader's personal searches for Luke and Leia, which helps explain later events in Empire Strikes Back. These little touches are nice.
And yet, I found that for the most part, when the book shifted to the series' main heroes I got less interested. There isn't much for Luke, Han and Leia to do in this story and I kept wanting to get back to the Hand of Judgment and watch them use their know-how to save more citizens. There is an amusing portion where Leia is undercover as a waitress, but that only goes so far.
Allegiance is a pretty good story that tries a little too hard for me to be a novel. But when the new characters are more interesting than the series' protagonists, that is both high praise and a little troubling. Still, it's hard to be too bothered by another Star Wars book by Zahn, and the book does have a point with its themes of loyalty. The fragility of the Rebellion at this point is really brought out. And yet I felt like there was something missing for me. A good read, though for me not Zahn's best.
GRADE: B
