Vaderisnothayden said:

The eu past about 1986 isn't worth paying much attention to anyway. Some of that later stuff is good, but it gets farther and farther away from the spirit of Star Wars. The Zahn books were a revisionist take and Dark Empire was bull and the rest of it followed on from there.

I've always thought the Zahn books suffered from a couple major flaws. Not that they were revisionist, but that they neglected the Star Wars heroes.

Look at Thrawn. Cold, brilliant, a real threat. But Zahn clearly liked him more than he liked the heroes. So on top of that, Thrawn is fairminded, egalitarian, and only brought down due to treachery over an atrocious crime he didn't commit. If Thrawn had been a brilliant, cold, sadistic psycopath, then he would have been a great villain. Adding three or four more books of Thrawn worship later didn't help.

Han and Luke and company seem to be there so they can observe how fascinating, moral, and brilliant Thrawn, Jade, and Carde are.

Who takes out the villains? Mara Jade kills the clone of Luke, Jade kills Cboath, some Nogrhi kills Thrawn from behind while Thrawn is winning. I found that irksome.