well due to having a newborn around ive got to find different ways to contribute to the guild so im going to start going thru the expanded universe novels and giving a quick review on them one by one
rather than a traditional review however im going to comment on the significance of each novel to the expanded universe and star wars lore in general, im going to try to get one or two done each week, ill also for easy access to people wanting to find these books list an ISBN number (essentially a fingerprint for the book) as well as a link to it on amazon and chapters.indigo.ca so you guys can find it and read it yourself if it seems interesting to you
The first book ive chosen, as mentioned by the title of this post is 1979's "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Alan Dean Foster
The biggest reason splinter is hugely important to star wars, is that it is essentially the first expanded universe novel. Foster wrote a book entitled "Star Wars: The adventures of Luke Skywalker" while episode 4 was in production, based off of Lucas' first screenplay. Splinter, is however the first book containing events that take place outside the actual star wars movies. Though it was years before the novels really took off, without this one book, it would be unlikely that so much of the star wars literature that exists today would have been written.
What the book gives us is a few things, firstly it takes place obviously between episodes 4 and 5, giving us a bit of insight as to what Luke and Leia were doing between the movies, remmember its nearly 5 years between those two movies.
Secondly, it shows us that Leia is not completely useless early in the series, she doesnt do much more than coordinate battles in the first movie, occassionally stealing a blaster from one of the boys, but hey its star wars, everyone should know how to handle a blaster. This is our first glimpse that leia is actually a competent pilot. As in the beginning of the novel she is actually flying a Y-Wing starfighter. So it shows she has at least a passing knowledge of astronavigation, and even though it was cut out of the book, she can actually pilot it in a dogfight if need be. Think about it this way, if she wasnt competant enough to do so, they would have taken the falcon or some other sort of transport where she wouldnt have to worry about it. Granted her force of will likely would have scared han and luke into letting her try to pilot a fighter even if she couldnt.
Another point of interest in the book, is that we are introduced to the Circarpous system. Located in the expansion regions. Circarpous IV was a big player in the clone wars, helping back the strength of the republic credit, the sepratists actually attacked it numerous times during the wars in an attempt to depreciate the strength of the credit. Think Goldfinger in the james bond movie, its sort of the same idea. GF wanted to irradiate the USA's supply of gold, removing it from the world market for a few decades, thus increasing the worth of his own gold. If the sepratists had actually succeded in levelling circ4, the strength of the republic's credits would have plummeted, indirectly increasing teh currency used by the sepratists. If you have ever played the original Xwing game on pc you get to play a training mission that is a recreation of a very early galactic civil war battle where a recon flight of rebel Xwings defeats a superior force of TIE fighters. This creates sympathy for the alliance, making Circ4 one of the earliest systems to support the alliance.
(though there are many sources listing circarpous 4 in the expansion regions, i cannot find it on the map of the ER that i found. Most likely because of its financial strength allowing it to back the republic in the clone wars, it is most likely along the Corellian Trade Spine or the Rimma Trade Route granting it easy access to the deep core, and thus coruscant)
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090923055003/starwars/images/4/41/TheExpansionRegion-TEA.jpg
Luke's first duel with Darth Vader. That's right, they locked blades before the Empire Strikes Back, granted it isnt much of a duel as Luke at this point is still not much more than a novice, but hey, he had to start somewhere right?
Leia again, wonderful point about her here. Just before Luke's duel with vader, he is actually pinned under a support column that he cut down himself. Leia actually takes up luke's lightsaber and duels vader herself. Granted she looses horribly, but still its Leia's first lightsaber battle, and her last for nearly 15-20 years (as far as i can remmember, she doesnt actually start using her lightsaber on a regular basis until her encounters with the Noghri while she is pregnant with anakin, i could be wrong but as far as i can remmember thats really when she started using it)
In terms of an actual good read, i found the book to be too short compared to what authors are putting out now for expanded universe, and despite being one of the earliest minds to influence star wars, other than george lucas himself, i found foster's dialogue a bit weak at times. I do reccomend reading it at some point though if you are interested in picking up things from the expanded universe simply because as i stated earlier, it really was the FIRSt expanded universe novel, not chronologically in the star wars time line, but in terms of publication date.
I was fortunate enough to have a hardcover first printing of this book that my father gave me when i was about 12 years old, just after he showed me the original star wars trilogy for the very first time, so despite not being great literature, or being anywhere near what i expect from a book now, it still has that wonderful nostalga feeling for me, like the Hobbit, or CS Lewis do for so many other people.
ISBN:9780345320230
Average Price: $8.99 - 10.99
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Star-Wars-Splinter-Minds-Eye-Alan-Dean-Foster/9780345320230-item.html?ref=Search+Books%3a+%2527splinter+of+the+mind%2527s+eye%2527
http://www.amazon.com/Splinter-Minds-Alan-Dean-Foster/dp/0345320239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276240960&sr=8-1
Hope you guys enjoyed the bit of errata insight into Splinter, look for more posts soon, and feel free to send me messages on reccomendations of books you would like to see me posting about (anything by timothy zahn is already on my to do list so dont bother with those, lol or I, Jedi)
Subject: Book Review: Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster 
Fri Jun 11, 2010 3:26 am
