not today or tomorrow

Finally, 12 years after I read the first book, I finished Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, a Star Wars story covering the years following the death of the Imperator and Darth Vader.
Back then, I read the first book and liked it a lot. Only, with my tabletop RPG group we were playing Star Wars (Edge of the Empire, is the name of the rpg system): a campaign modeled on the Thrawn trilogy, in which we played a group of Imperials trying to hold the Empire together and build our own faction in it. We slotted into the story as an additional support/commando group for Thrawn, and I didn't want to know the plot of the original story. It was fun to play the bad guys for once, we certainly managed to make things more difficult for our original trilogy characters... Anyway, we played for a few years and I didn't want to read the trilogy immediately afterwards, so it slipped my mind for a few more years.

Maybe it's because I haven't read many multi-POV books in the last few years, so there's not much to compare it with. If anything, the Expanse books come close in that regard. But what struck me was how interestingly the narrative was woven from a logistics viewpoint, how the characters and ships end up in the place where something happens, almost at the same time. How it's partly the circumstances and partly their own decisions that bring them there, some of which are based on correct, and others on faulty assumptions. Things like the part in which Thrawn is on Honogr at the same time as Leia, but he's not looking for her there (much), he thinks she's somewhere else. Or how the feint Wedge does with Aves to make him believe they're on a wholly different planet ends up the thing that brings Karrde's group to the right place at the right time, which again is what gives the Republic the decisive edge over Thrawn's forces.
It's a really interesting exercise in plotting.

Also I like Thrawn as a villain - he's just actually good enough to make it believable to the readers and his subordinates that he can pull off the impossible, but that also masks his weak spots that end up becoming his demise.

I'm not convinced of the whole "art from the enemy's culture determines their actions" approach for real - it makes a fun literary device, it gives a face to his ability to predict his opponent's actions.
If taken at face value, it says that "culture" is the most determining factor of personality which is an ... interesting ... take because it needs strong regional cultures that then need to stay as they are. Art reaches back decades and centuries and of course you can see cultural trends if you look at all that, but it won't tell you the course of action another person is going to take. And the galaxy of Star Wars in that time does have some strong and isolated local cultures, but also, there's a recent Republic and Empire that spanned wide enough to have some degree of (let's call it) globalization, which may flatten these cultural identities. For example, I'm not convinced that a character like Bel Iblis would still be predominantly "Corellian" just because he once grew up there, when he hasn't lived surrounded by this culture for decades, and had lots of other influences. Sure, your cultural background says a lot about how you see the world, how you relate to it. But to actually predict the actions of an individual based on that seems a bit reductive. But seeing it as a plot device, I can suspend my disbelief well enough to enjoy Thrawn as a character a lot.

I don't know much about combat tactics, but the battle descriptions were interesting. It seems I have to read more space operas and military scifi - I just don't know how to find that in a way that isn't actually pro-military because I'm not sure I want to read that.

It was nice to see an idea of who Luke, Leia, Hand, Chewie & co could become in the future. Leia's Jedi training was especially interesting. She is a quite forceful personality and it was very engaging to see her engage with her inner fury, and redirect it. She is a very different Jedi to Luke, and it was nice to see that.

I liked seeing Lando being drawn into co-saving the fate of the galaxy once more, even though all he wants is to take care of his company/town/people.

The most interesting character was Mara Jade, especially in ... no, in all character constellations I saw her. With Talon Karrde, I like the growing loyalty between them, especially from Karrde towards Mara. With Luke, of course, the whole "getting to know your enemy and recognizing he's not actually your enemy" thing. With Leia, the careful allies they become over Luke. And of course her own journey of becoming her own person, free from the chains that kept her - ha, without even using passion, strength, power and victory to break them.

That was a very enjoyable read, and even though I had a lot of fun playing an Imperial secret agent turned Sith apprentice in an Empire lead first by Thrawn and then, after his death, by Imperator Mara Jade, back in the day, I do like the actual story of all the characters a lot more.