"Average"
An entertaining book, but it could have been more. Some plot lines began promising but were put aside early and only finished as an afterthought at the end. Specifically I would have liked to have seen the topics of Sith politics and the struggle against the Exchange expanded upon.
"Bad Audio Conversion"
I read the first book in the Thrawn series and I thought I would give the audio a try. I was pretty disappointed. As great as Anthony Daniels is as C3P0, he does not have the ability to portray a wide range of voices which is necessary for a project such as this. Some of his character voices sound rather hokey and it is difficult to distinguish between between his female and male voices.
The other main draw back is the abridgement. While a book that is made into a movie is commonly abridged to 2 or 3 hours, this does not work well with audio. Although many of the Star Wars audio books use the 2 to 3 hour length, most other abridgments are considerably longer. It was difficult to follow the story line here since so much had been cut out. Hopefully the Star Wars franchise will take note of current trends and start making longer audio books.