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Review: Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy Series

I recently finished listening to the Star Wars: Thrawn Trilogy audiobook series, and I really liked it. At times I didn‘t do anything but sit and listen to it, that‘s how captivated I was with it.

Going into it I didn‘t know much about Thrawn except that he was a tactical genius and that he was the "bad guy". Now, having completed the series, I find him to be quite likable. He‘s still the "bad guy", but he’s the lovable bad guy. Also, yes, he is a tactical genius. His ability to piece together the big picture out of bread crumbs is amazing.

The series also introduced Talon Karrde, whom I already liked, but didn‘t know much about either. He‘s Thrawn‘s "good guy" counterpart in my opinion, even though he resists fully committing to being that.

Mara Jade is also introduced, but she‘s kind of mean, although that‘s because she was still under the influence of Palpatine. I‘m glad she finally breaks out of it, although I have a feeling that Palpatine‘s influence was to undermine Joruus C‘baoth‘s plan to claim the Empire as his own.

Overall I really enjoyed the series and I highly recommend it to any Star Wars fan.

Review: Star Wars - X-Wing Series

Since I recently posted a review of the Michael Vey book series, I decided to write a short review of the Star Wars: X-Wing book series since I finished it first. This was the book series that I used to start listening to audiobooks when driving to and from work. I really like Star Wars and specifically Legends (because new cannon is weak, to say the least...) so I started out with the X-Wing series.

To be more precise, I used Wookiepedia's Timeline of Legends books page to look up where to start. I started with the New Republic era.

I quite enjoyed the series and learned about the campaigns to capture Coruscant, against Ysanne Isard and the capture of the Lusankya SSD, and the defeat of Warlord Zsinj, amongst other events. Having subscribed to EckhartsLadder YouTube channel and watched his videos on those events I had a rough idea of what happened, but I still liked going through the books. Sadly, the audiobooks were abridged, so I probably missed on quite a bit of detail. Maybe one day I'll actually read through the books and see, but that requires spare time...

As I was getting the list of the book titles for this post, I saw that there is a book that I haven't listened to yet. X-Wing: Mercy Kill, listed as a side novel to the Fate of the Jedi series, which I haven't gone through yet, so I'll wait until then.

Anyway, if you like Star Wars and Legends, then I highly recommend reading the books or listening to the audiobooks.

Review: Michael Vey Book Series

I've been wanting to add non-programming content to my blog a little while now, and now I have something to do so with. It's a little late since I finished the series a few weeks ago, but I wanted to do a short review of the Michael Vey series of books by Richard Paul Evans.

I originally learned about the series when Mr. Evans did an interview with Glenn Beck years ago when he was releasing the first book, Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25. I purchased the book, read a few of the beginning parts, and then I put it on my bookshelf. I didn't dislike the book, but it was a little slow in the beginning and I just had quite a bit going on at the time in real life and couldn't dedicate the time to read it.

Then in January of this year (2019 as I'm writing this), I decided to start listening to audio books while I'm driving since I spend an hour each way to and from work. I actually started out with a different series, which I might review as well, but when I finished it I decided to start the Michael Vey series again.

Like the first time when I was reading the physical book, the beginning was a little slow, but eventually, it picked up the pace and never slowed down. I'm not going to spoil anything from the books because I really enjoyed the story and would like you to as well.

There are many emotions throughout the story from anger to happiness, sadness, and sorrow to satisfaction. A sad moment occurred around the middle of the series and I got quite teary eyed. Other times I wanted to slap the main character for falling into the psychological traps of the villain.

I did learn quite a bit from the books though and have found myself using that knowledge in day-to-day conversations. There's a very satisfying feeling when that happens.

Overall, I consider this one of my favorite book series and my only sadness is that it's over. I highly recommend reading the books or listening to the audiobooks. The audiobooks themselves were very well done. I would be very happy if this was made into a TV series since there's too much to fit into a movie series.

You can purchase the books from Amazon or the audiobooks from Audible (of course, from other retailers as well).