A Review of Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye

Recently, I read somewhere that Amazon.com was getting a new wave of many Star Wars books for the Kindle that were not available electronically before. Among those titles was Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye (SotME), by Alan Dean Foster. I had never read that book before, so I bought it.

An interesting thing to note about SotME is that it was written before the release of the movie, The Empire Strikes Back. That is significant because as the author was writing the book, he did not know that Leia is Luke Skywalker's twin sister and a force user (revealed in Return of the Jedi), and most importantly, that Darth Vader is Luke's father. This lack of knowledge gave this book a very unique feel to it, even awkward at times given the way the Star Wars story played out in episodes 5 and 6 of the movies. For instance, the interactions between Luke and Leia at times are like those of two people discovering the romantic feelings they may have for each other. Sometimes, it's a little too much, but it works for this book given the fact that the author was building upon what little information he had concerning the Star Wars universe.

SotME follows a single plot line, which is contrast to nearly all other Star Wars books I have read. The only exception that I know of is I, Jedi. Typically, when you read a Star Wars book, you follow two or three different plot lines that eventually come together or provide a segue to a sequel book. This book almost exclusively follows Luke and Leia from start to finish. I wasn't too fond of the single plot line in I, Jedi, but it worked out pretty well in SotME.

If I could provide any criticism for SotME, I would point out that the story progression is a little slow and drawn out. The book spans 12 chapters, but doesn't get to the main point to the plot until the 12th chapter. Then, the book quickly winds down to the resolution. This does give the book an adventure feel, where the heroes are put in a tough situation that gets worse and they must work their way to overcome their dilemma, but the story could have had more substance. For instance, the story could have had a parallel plot line that showed how Darth Vader was made aware of the events going on in the story, rather than just have him show up at the end with only Luke and Leia's speculation as to how he knew where they were going. Perhaps if the story followed Darth Vader, it would have provided a little more suspense in the race to the main object of the story's conflict.

The author of SotME certainly had his challenges with the lack of a Star Wars expanded universe from which to form the story of this book. However, I do feel that he did a relatively decent job because there is some good storytelling in this book. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's at least worth a check-out at the library, if it's available. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate it a 3. It's an interesting take on the Star Wars universe, but I probably won't read it again anytime soon because it just seems a little too disconnected from the entire Star Wars story line.