REVIEW: Star Wars: Choices of One by Timothy Zahn
Once again, Tim Zahn delivers a fun Star Wars adventure in the best tradition of the Original Trilogy films and the Expanded Universe stories featuring those characters and EU favorites from the same era. If you’re looking for something dark and gritty, or heavy on the Force philosophy, or with deranged Sith, then this isn’t the book for you. If you’re looking for a novel that puts the space opera back in Star Wars, then Choices of One should be right up your alley.
Without getting into the plot, what can you expect from Choices of One? The flow of the book is classic Zahn: introduce a bunch of elements separately and spend the first half of the book drawing them all together to the same place, followed by a second half of the book that’s nonstop mayhem. As with his prior entries – such as Survivor’s Quest, which has a similar overall structure – this story design is executed flawlessly. There’s a reason, after all, that Zahn has been able to sustain his place as one of the fan favorite EU authors for so long. He knows how to design a really great Star Wars yarn, and he always carries it off well.
I say a lot more in my full review, but here’s the bottom line: Choices of One has Luke, Han, and Leia with the Rebel Alliance, Mara Jade, Thrawn, Pellaeon Vader, and the Emperor with the Empire, plus a dangerous warlord, mysterious aliens, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the end. How can you argue with that?
9 / 10
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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So excited about this one! I just plunged back into the EU and while I didn’t find Survivor’s Quest to be very impressive, Choices of One looks very enticing indeed. May have to interrupt my NJO read-through to check it out. Thanks for the review!