While fans continue the countdown towards the next highly-anticipated Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, fans are also looking forward to perhaps one of the most highly-anticipated Star Wars books, entitled Thrawn: Alliances. The first details about this Star Wars novel were unveiled last month, where it was confirmed that Thrawn: Alliances will unite two of the Star Wars canon's most iconic villains, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Darth Vader, and now LucasFilm has revealed the cover for the book, featuring both of these iconic characters. Here's a description of the novel below, from the official Star Wars website.

"The Star Wars Show revealed the cover of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn: Alliances, the highly-anticipated follow-up to this year's bestselling Thrawn novel. It's a striking image featuring both Darth Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire's deadliest enforcer and perhaps its most gifted strategist. The book finds Thrawn on a secret mission for the Emperor and joining forces with Vader himself; good for us readers and fans, not so much for anyone else."

The book is slated to debut in the summer of 2018, coming just over a year after the April 2017 debut of Timothy Zahn's best-selling Thrawn novel. The character was first introduced in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, also known as the Heir to the Empire trilogy that included the novels Heir to the Empire (1991), Dark Force Rising (1992) and The Last Command (1993), which were incredibly popular and helped revitalize interest in the Star Wars franchise as a whole. Heir to the Empire reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and the entire trilogy sold a whopping 15 million copies worldwide. The series has been rumored to be one of the major factors in George Lucas putting together the prequel trilogy, since interest in the franchise was soaring due to these books.

It was revealed in 2014, however, that these books, and every other book in what was known as the Expanded Universe, was not considered part of the official Star Wars canon, with the Expanded Universe now being rebranded as Star Wars Legends. Thrawn fans were overjoyed when, during Star Wars Celebration 2016 in London, it was confirmed that Grand Admiral Thrawn would now be part of the Star Wars canon, appearing in Star Wars: Rebels Season 3, while Timothy Zahn was returning to write Star Wars: Thrawn, which this new book will be a sequel to.

This Thrawn novel news comes just weeks after it was confirmed that Thrawn survived Rogue One, which could mean that, at some point, we could see Thrawn featured in future Star Wars movies. Disney and LucasFilm have been bringing other Legends characters into the Star Wars canon, like last month when Solo: A Star Wars Story director Ron Howard confirmed that he has brought Legends characters Tag and Bink into the movie, played by writer Jon Kasdan and Toby Hefferman. While we wait for more details on this Thrawn novel, take a look at the Thrawn: Alliances cover, courtesy of StarWars.com, along with the full episode of this week's The Star Wars Show.