Book fills gap between Star Wars films

By Mike Snider
USA Today

Alan Dean Foster needed more than a typical offshoot novel to be enticed back into the Star Wars universe. He was the ghostwriter (as George Lucas) of the Star Wars novelization and 1978's "Splinter of the Mind's Eye," the well-regarded first original "Star Wars" novel featuring Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Darth Vader.

More than 30 years later, Lucas offered Foster the chance to write a bridge novel called "The Approaching Storm" (Del Rey Hardcover, $26). The book takes place between "Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace "and "Episode II: The Attack of the Clones," arriving in theaters May 16.

As a starting point, Foster, a frequent name on the best-seller lists, was asked to build on the fact that as "Clones" begins, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have just returned to the Galactic Republic's capital of Coruscant after resolving a border dispute on the planet Ansion.

At the end of "Menace," Obi-Wan Kenobi had helped prevent the Trade Federation's takeover of the planet Naboo. But the Republic will eventually erode to be replaced by the Empire.

"(Lucas) wanted something that would deal with the politics of the Republic," Foster says. "When I turned in the manuscript, one of the changes they wanted was even more of the political situation delineated, which makes sense because that's what you cannot spend a lot of time on in a movie."

He credits Lucas for attempting to finish the Star Wars saga. "Writing prequels or filming prequels is absolutely the hardest kind of work an artist can do, because everybody knows everything that is supposed to happen. We know Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, so you have to give people something else to chew on, because the end of the story is a given."

In "The Approaching Storm," Foster delves into the internal conflict of Anakin Skywalker and the psyche of the Jedi.

"Originally, nobody had time for what a Jedi was all about. That's one of the most enjoyable things, whether it's novels or spinoffs, that you get to expand upon the characters and get into what they're thinking about." He also introduces a new character, Luminara Unduli, a Jedi master.

"She does appear in the film. I'm not sure if she has any lines, but I had fun with her." Kenyan actress Mary Oyaya plays Unduli.

An exotic tattooed Jedi, Unduli is "kind of a young earth mother with a sword. More down to earth and a little bit less uptight than Obi-Wan."