Spoiler warning, read at your own risk!
I recently read Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn. This book reconciled me with the Star Wars universe: I was a bit disappointed about the anti-climactic end of the Dark Nest trilogy, and I don't like the direction of the Legacy comics at all.
But a Timothy Zahn book is usually something else entirely. So is Outbound Flight. The book gives us an interesting insight into the mind of the Chiss who will become known and feared as "Thrawn". He appears much warmer and less cynical than in the Thrawn trilogy. The short story at the end of the paperback edition goes some way to explain his latter attitude which may be viewed in light of this story as bitterness rather than coldness.
Thrawn isn't out to conquer the galaxy and rule it. He's out to conquer the galaxy and unite it against the untold horrors lurking in the Unknown Regions, including the Far Outsiders, who are better known as the Yuuzhang Vong.
So how is it that a cultivated and honorable man ends up killing six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi and fifty thousand civilians who may very well help to fight against the Far Outsiders? He plays them out against the Vagaari, and in the ensuing confusion a fatal mistake causes the destruction of Outbound Flight.
What I liked about the book (apart from Zahn's unique grasp of Star Wars) is the way he limits the story to the essentials. The cloning of Jorus C'Baoth is alluded to in a single sentence (when he mentions a medical check with blood and tissue samples). When Darth Sidious arranges for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to leave Outbound Flight, we read about the duo leaving on a shuttle and that is the end of their role in the book.
Outbound Flight lived up to my expectations, and that is no mean feat indeed, because the bar for a Star Wars book by Timothy Zahn is always that much higher than for a "normal" Star Wars book.