Subjectively, maybe because I am in general closer to the dark side, I prefer well developed, understandable, motivated villains to generic and somewhat unrealistic and irresponsible heroes, but each one is free to choose her/his side and live with the consequences. How flaw many of the Star wars protagonists have been written is especially obvious when contrasting it with Thrawn, although fangirls and boys will of course also enjoy the known stars of the show. Heck, one waits across the protagonists´ chapters to meet the bad one again, that´s truly a well developed character.

Thrawn just owns close to any Star Wars antagonist, because the has the calm, sociopathic mind of a master strategist and the reader is extremely motivated to continue to see what will happen next, how his plans might fail, if he has a hidden joker in the backhand, how he immediately reacts in even the most difficult situations, and in general any scene including him. It shows that the true power lies in the background, that the light dark contrast of good and evil is the all controlling entity, that the stereotypical action heroes are just puppets of the true masters in the background, kind of politicians and media in the real world, and that the good ones can never reach the coolness and badassery of evil. Switching into unknown and different antagonist perspectives has never been that much fun.

Timothy zahn dark force rising