First off, happy birthday! Secondly, I started reading the Canon Thrawn novels last year, but only got about a fifth of the way through the first book before I got too busy to read. Finally picked it up again a couple weeks ago after seeing how much you talk about it and have been loving it. Zahn still gets Thrawn better than anyone else. I did have one question about the book I was curious if you knew an answer to though. How old are Thrawn and Vance supposed to be in the first book, and how long before Rebels S3 does it take place? Only bit of definitive mention of time I've come across so far is Eli mentioning he's been working with Thawn for 4 years so far. Thanks!
hi! thank you! and i am so glad you asked. please picture me rubbing my little hands together like a very round, gleeful raccoon.
let me link you to two amazing posts by @mayhaps-a-blog, one about thrawn's age and one about the thrawn novel timeline. and here have another post i found through google about eli's age.
tldr; it's a little complicated, since the novel takes place over, like, ten years? at the beginning of the novel eli should be no older than 22 (he's probably a bit younger, though) and thrawn should be no younger than 39....... if i did my math correctly. add ~10 years to that and you've got their ages at the end of the novel.
edit: another great post by @/mayhaps-a-blog about eliโs age here!
regarding rebels s3, the last few chapters take place shortly before thrawn is introduced in rebels. he mentions his "victory at batonn" in 3.01 when konstantine asks him about his promotion, right? zahn writes about what actually happened at batonn, and the scene in which palps promotes thrawn to grand admiral is in the last chapter of the novel, so it's basically a "smooth transition" between book and tv show.
i hope that clears things up a bit! ๐