I first read this book in 1978 just a few months after the first Star Wars movie and rereading it now, I'm very surprised at how none of it is familiar. It's really just entirely forgettable. According to the story, Luke and Leia are on their way to a diplomatic meeting to recruit more rebels or something. They crash on a jungle planet and it turns out the Empire has secret bases there to help them get off planet. An old lady with force powers recruits them to help her find an ancient gem out in the jungle and Darth Vader shows up. It's the most generic story you could replace the characters with anybody or anything. It really doesn't make much difference. And honestly, it reads like bad fan fiction written by a teenager. Luke and Leia are secretly moaning over each other constantly. They're getting red faced when they stand too close to each other. And the reason they get arrested, the reason the Imperial troops even noticed them is because they're fighting in the street. They're literally rolling around in the mud hitting each other like 10-year-olds. There's a scene where Luke slaps Leia across the face and when she's threatened with interrogation, like she had that one time on the Death Star she faints, just thinking about it. The book has the obvious feel of something that was written very quickly for a buck. And being the first Star Wars novel, the characters have none of the traits or the history that we all know and feel when we think about Star Wars. After finishing the book, I did some reading about it and it has a lot more history than I could have imagined. Apparently, it was written before the first movie was even in theaters, simultaneously with the novelization of the film. Already in the 1970s, Alendine Foster had a reputation for writing quick, dirty novelizations of movies and George Luke has hired him to do the novelization and also to write a possible sequel. And that's what became Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The phrase Mind's Eye, by the way, never appears in the book. The jewel is called the Kyber Crystal. I don't know. The one thing about this book that impressed me on page 165 at the bottom, the ancient temple where they find the jewel. There's a gigantic statue, a humanoid figure with leathery wings and tentacles for a face. Yes, Kathulu was written into the Star Wars universe even before the first movie was in theaters. Thanks to Alendine Foster. You can support 32nd sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below. And visit the 32nd sci-fi Tumblr. That's my headquarters. In addition to my videos, I publish links and updates there every day.