Scan barcode
acousticeq's review against another edition
Writing style and narration too diffuse
michaeldebonis's review against another edition
2.0
Someone sort of threw this book and the following two in my lap and I am reading them. I have only read the original DUNE before. This book is obviously of no comparison to the original. The writing here is average. When I read the original DUNE I remember being fascinated by this ancient war between man and machines so it is kind of neat to go back there. There are some great battles. I also think it is fun to see the universe without "spice" travel, etc. If you are capable of lowering your expectations, I think it is a fun beach read.
zare_i's review against another edition
4.0
This is more 3.5 stars but I am rounding it to four.
This was a book I had my eye on for a long, long time. Due to the very present critique of this series I was postponing actual start on it until few days back and I have to say, considering what the book is, it is not bad one. But does it match up with Herbert's original works? I have to say no, but then again Herbert, after Children of Dune in my opinion, could never match up with his own earlier works.
So what is this book about......
Book is about the beginning of the Dune society (as we know it from original Dune novel) - we are given world where lines are drawn between humans (League) and thinking machines (Synchronized Worlds). These two are in constant struggle with each other, humans fighting to survive and machines exercising their muscles to eradicate the humans using Cymeks, cybernetic organisms (basically various combat vehicles and armor to which [human] operator's brain is attached to so they can do switcheroo whenever required - Cyberpunk folks' wet dream) at the forefront of their legions. First amongst the Cymeks are Titans, group of humans who took control of old human empire (thousands of years before this story begins) but were such an a**hole group in general that AI they inadvertently created crossed them and took power itself, making Titans its servants, basically conquering generals.
One of the comments I usually hear is why would robots and AIs behave the way they behave? Well.... considering they were created by humans with all the biases but also very rational thought process (I mean this is why AI is created, right, not for discussing weather channel) is it surprising that machines would determine at some point that humans are just sort of a ballast for further progress? I mean, do we need to doubt that machines would think like that when even today you have so many anti-humanists amongst humans that are all very "rational" but ready to see couple of billion under ground for the betterment of all? So, no, I do not think that machines would be any better than their makers when it comes to coping with conflict with biological forms. Very soon they would develop equivalent of emotions and with it all nasty things like aggression and violence. I mean it is all part of the nature (and one reason I cannot figure out why are we speeding uncontrollably to create AI without any idea why (except why not)..... it is like breeding new biological species that can outsmart us, outpace us and generally wipe us out just to have us say hey, we did it! Wait, biological weapons are that something - right? Hmm....) and to expect that any living organism (biological or not) would act differently is wishful thinking.
So, to say that is a fantastic part here ...... nope, pretty normal and expected.
Then we get to Titans and Cymeks. These guys and gals are borderline psychopaths and few comments are there saying they are so off chart they seem like cackling bad guys from every cartoon or low budget SF. So lets put this into perspective - these are people that took over power from the old empire, subjugated everyone, for all means and purposes became immortal (went through the life longevity extension process), later found out they can extract themselves (brains) and basically use any combat vehicle- ground, air or space - to roam around and destroy things with impunity, become synonym with divinity and basically answer to no-one and start considering the ordinary humans as livestock? So, basically, minus the immortality and cybernetic bodies we are talking about all these Metuselah's that run the world politics nowadays? And treat the rest of us like unwashed masses?
This part of the story is very realistic, if not the most realistic part of the book. If it weren't for the last few years I would be wondering, but now.... oh, no, no doubt at all. And they do not even need to be Metuselah level old, just look at all the righteous amongst us (they would shame Inquisition). So, in short, very believable.
On the other hand you have Humanity, split across the League of Nobles and Unaligned worlds. Here we have a more nuanced view of this future society. While they no longer use highly capable machines (for reasons apparent) thy do have some technology available and can build ground mechanization and airplanes and space ships, armor etc. But at the core they are feudal - reason being that without machines they need to use biological machines (people) for same production results (I especially enjoyed the mathematical calculation pipeline). Because of this (and lets be honest no ruling body wants to pay if they do not need to) population is stratified into ruling class and worker class, but depending on the level of enlightenment mentioned worker classes can be wither actual worker classes or out of the box slaves (as they keep saying in the book, necessary evil). And although feudal, this society, interestingly, seems to be more or less without the large religious structure and influence (so unlike Dune as we know it). Nobody cites the equivalent of Orange Bible, even witches from Rossak are more practical psykers then religiously oriented people. Only ones with very strong religious feeling are people everybody is hunting down for the conceived act of treason and cowardice - Zensunni's and Zenshiite's.
Here we have some very interesting element that is unfortunately present in our times again and again - dehumanization. You see, to have slaves you need to have reason for their existence. In this society reason is punishment of the above mentioned Zensunni's and Zenshiite's because they did not confront Titans when these took over control (because, you know peace loving is always dangerous). So, as it usually goes (hmmm, again those last few years) they went from cowards to slaves, because that is where they belong because they betrayed the humanity (man, again those last few years).
And when this happens, when one part of humanity is ostracized, new work positions open - for people to hunt them and sell them and unfortunately use them for some other sick purposes (enter the Tleilaxu).
All in all book does give a very interesting overview of human society with all its shortcomings. It is much more vivid and, well, interesting to read about. Parts about Arakis and nomads (Zensunni's) that will become a blood thirsty legions of Paul Atreides, are great, especially taking into account that they start as peace loving and violence avoiding people.
All taken into account, very interesting world building takes place.
But the Achilles' heel of the book is scope. It is humongous because author's try to put everything in, thinking machines, Titans, League of Nobles, initial creation of Benne Gesserit (witches from Rossak) initial dealings with the Arrakis' melange, initial development of Fremen movement, origins of Atreides, origins of Harkonnen, how Butlerian Jihad got triggered (Iblis is such a good character) with major battles in between, conflicts and insights into both thinking machine and human civilization (Erazmus the crazy robot, Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva) to name just the few.
There is materiel here for at least 10 books with average length of maybe 300 pages.
I guess author's decided that would be too long and too much so they compressed this and as a result we are given hundreds of pages of short, very to the point, chapters but no space to properly put everything into words. This is why everything ends up rather clumsy (especially when compared to Frank Herbert's books [again ending with Children of the Dune, those after it feel like reading a phone book]). Thankfully we do not end up with constant mumbo-jumbo that marked the Dune books after the Children of the Dune, but we end up with extreme, very short, almost news-reporter-like chapters where even epic scenes like battle of Earth are given in some weird what-ah?-ummmm-taddaaaa-done approach.
So for those looking for meaning of life and high philosophy from SF setting - look elsewhere. You will definitely not like this series.
For those who look for interesting story and characters and can handle a bit clumsy approach to the story telling I would recommend the book, it is fun and interesting ride.
This was a book I had my eye on for a long, long time. Due to the very present critique of this series I was postponing actual start on it until few days back and I have to say, considering what the book is, it is not bad one. But does it match up with Herbert's original works? I have to say no, but then again Herbert, after Children of Dune in my opinion, could never match up with his own earlier works.
So what is this book about......
Book is about the beginning of the Dune society (as we know it from original Dune novel) - we are given world where lines are drawn between humans (League) and thinking machines (Synchronized Worlds). These two are in constant struggle with each other, humans fighting to survive and machines exercising their muscles to eradicate the humans using Cymeks, cybernetic organisms (basically various combat vehicles and armor to which [human] operator's brain is attached to so they can do switcheroo whenever required - Cyberpunk folks' wet dream) at the forefront of their legions. First amongst the Cymeks are Titans, group of humans who took control of old human empire (thousands of years before this story begins) but were such an a**hole group in general that AI they inadvertently created crossed them and took power itself, making Titans its servants, basically conquering generals.
One of the comments I usually hear is why would robots and AIs behave the way they behave? Well.... considering they were created by humans with all the biases but also very rational thought process (I mean this is why AI is created, right, not for discussing weather channel) is it surprising that machines would determine at some point that humans are just sort of a ballast for further progress? I mean, do we need to doubt that machines would think like that when even today you have so many anti-humanists amongst humans that are all very "rational" but ready to see couple of billion under ground for the betterment of all? So, no, I do not think that machines would be any better than their makers when it comes to coping with conflict with biological forms. Very soon they would develop equivalent of emotions and with it all nasty things like aggression and violence. I mean it is all part of the nature (and one reason I cannot figure out why are we speeding uncontrollably to create AI without any idea why (except why not)..... it is like breeding new biological species that can outsmart us, outpace us and generally wipe us out just to have us say hey, we did it! Wait, biological weapons are that something - right? Hmm....) and to expect that any living organism (biological or not) would act differently is wishful thinking.
So, to say that is a fantastic part here ...... nope, pretty normal and expected.
Then we get to Titans and Cymeks. These guys and gals are borderline psychopaths and few comments are there saying they are so off chart they seem like cackling bad guys from every cartoon or low budget SF. So lets put this into perspective - these are people that took over power from the old empire, subjugated everyone, for all means and purposes became immortal (went through the life longevity extension process), later found out they can extract themselves (brains) and basically use any combat vehicle- ground, air or space - to roam around and destroy things with impunity, become synonym with divinity and basically answer to no-one and start considering the ordinary humans as livestock? So, basically, minus the immortality and cybernetic bodies we are talking about all these Metuselah's that run the world politics nowadays? And treat the rest of us like unwashed masses?
This part of the story is very realistic, if not the most realistic part of the book. If it weren't for the last few years I would be wondering, but now.... oh, no, no doubt at all. And they do not even need to be Metuselah level old, just look at all the righteous amongst us (they would shame Inquisition). So, in short, very believable.
On the other hand you have Humanity, split across the League of Nobles and Unaligned worlds. Here we have a more nuanced view of this future society. While they no longer use highly capable machines (for reasons apparent) thy do have some technology available and can build ground mechanization and airplanes and space ships, armor etc. But at the core they are feudal - reason being that without machines they need to use biological machines (people) for same production results (I especially enjoyed the mathematical calculation pipeline). Because of this (and lets be honest no ruling body wants to pay if they do not need to) population is stratified into ruling class and worker class, but depending on the level of enlightenment mentioned worker classes can be wither actual worker classes or out of the box slaves (as they keep saying in the book, necessary evil). And although feudal, this society, interestingly, seems to be more or less without the large religious structure and influence (so unlike Dune as we know it). Nobody cites the equivalent of Orange Bible, even witches from Rossak are more practical psykers then religiously oriented people. Only ones with very strong religious feeling are people everybody is hunting down for the conceived act of treason and cowardice - Zensunni's and Zenshiite's.
Here we have some very interesting element that is unfortunately present in our times again and again - dehumanization. You see, to have slaves you need to have reason for their existence. In this society reason is punishment of the above mentioned Zensunni's and Zenshiite's because they did not confront Titans when these took over control (because, you know peace loving is always dangerous). So, as it usually goes (hmmm, again those last few years) they went from cowards to slaves, because that is where they belong because they betrayed the humanity (man, again those last few years).
And when this happens, when one part of humanity is ostracized, new work positions open - for people to hunt them and sell them and unfortunately use them for some other sick purposes (enter the Tleilaxu).
All in all book does give a very interesting overview of human society with all its shortcomings. It is much more vivid and, well, interesting to read about. Parts about Arakis and nomads (Zensunni's) that will become a blood thirsty legions of Paul Atreides, are great, especially taking into account that they start as peace loving and violence avoiding people.
All taken into account, very interesting world building takes place.
But the Achilles' heel of the book is scope. It is humongous because author's try to put everything in, thinking machines, Titans, League of Nobles, initial creation of Benne Gesserit (witches from Rossak) initial dealings with the Arrakis' melange, initial development of Fremen movement, origins of Atreides, origins of Harkonnen, how Butlerian Jihad got triggered (Iblis is such a good character) with major battles in between, conflicts and insights into both thinking machine and human civilization (Erazmus the crazy robot, Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva) to name just the few.
There is materiel here for at least 10 books with average length of maybe 300 pages.
I guess author's decided that would be too long and too much so they compressed this and as a result we are given hundreds of pages of short, very to the point, chapters but no space to properly put everything into words. This is why everything ends up rather clumsy (especially when compared to Frank Herbert's books [again ending with Children of the Dune, those after it feel like reading a phone book]). Thankfully we do not end up with constant mumbo-jumbo that marked the Dune books after the Children of the Dune, but we end up with extreme, very short, almost news-reporter-like chapters where even epic scenes like battle of Earth are given in some weird what-ah?-ummmm-taddaaaa-done approach.
So for those looking for meaning of life and high philosophy from SF setting - look elsewhere. You will definitely not like this series.
For those who look for interesting story and characters and can handle a bit clumsy approach to the story telling I would recommend the book, it is fun and interesting ride.
ultimatumman's review against another edition
5.0
Pretty fun read for the Dune fan. Long book, but it kept my interest the whole time. I only have one small complaint. The various organizations and peoples are already too much like what they are in the original Dune book, which takes place 10 or 15 thousand years later. I was hoping to see a little more of their origins and how they started progressing to what they are later.
jimmacsyr's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent. Very clever job of weaving the the various technological peculiarities of the Dune novel into the story.
suzemo's review against another edition
2.0
So it looks like I initially read this book a long, long time ago and liked it quite a bit more than I did on the second reread, however, I'm not the same person I was 13 years ago, so that's not unexpected.
I love, love, love Herbert's Dune series, and I remember being excited over the prospect of prequels and started reading/listening to them as soon as I could (multiple formats). I believe I read the House (Harkonnen, Corrino, Atreides) before getting into these books. If I recall correctly (and I may re-read them, too), the three House series books were a bit better, but I had always been curious about what happened to create the O.C. Bible and the ban on thinking machines.
I found this particular trilogy (or the first two, anyway) on audio-tapes (back in the day), with the 20 (or whatever number) cassettes that I played in the F250 I was driving around at the time. Oh, the days.
I was also, let's say, less enlightened/younger/whatever back then and on this reread, I have to drop the rating to two stars (from four). The reason it is not getting just one star (which is what it deserves, probably), is that it's a bit of a guilty pleasure (even if a bad one), and for really shitty pulp sci-fi, it's not the worst, even if it's an awful "Dune" book (Herbert is probably still spinning in his grave, nearly a decade and a half after this came out). And it's a good book to listen to while doing projects. If you zone out on something else for a few minutes, you don't have to back up.
It's the first of the trilogy so it of course does not cover the entire Jihad, just the beginnings of the Jihad. It info-dumps most of the previous backstory: that there were geek-geniuses that found a way to create better and better robots & computers (also turning themselves into a kind of cyborg with a human brain canister) and how they inadvertently let the machines take over (the formation of Omnius, the big bad master machine mind), and the enslavement of the human race. It also covers the free human race and a bit of their government and sphere of influence. It ultimately ends with the battles between the two and the enslavement of Serena Butler and the eventual war/defeat of the Machine World of Earth and how the war/Jihad gets started (hint: nukes). I am mightily baffled at how the machines kill billions of humans, but they happen to kill one baby and the entire Jihad erupts, but I think they were going for a fortuitous blending of multiple events; it just fell flat and forced to me.
So that was good: Back story (again, iirc, supposedly from notes left behind by Herbert?); though not the backstory that I inferred from the novels.
Here's the bad:
‣ Hack writing. It's just straight up bad writing. Cheeseball sentences and conflicting descriptors are just the beginning. Add in a jumpy third-person omniscient view point that's just irritating to keep track of at times - the viewpoints jump mid-paragraph, it's not consistent at all. Lots of cliches and just flat out terrible writing. I listened to this in audiobook (narrated by the fantastic Scott Brick) while working on home improvement projects and I straight up started laughing at how terrible some of it is.
‣ There's a complete lack of imagination. While I understand they're (theoretically) somewhat constrained by some of the world building presented in the original Dune books, they've defaulted to the boring patriarchal society you expect out of mediocre space operas written by all of the other mediocre authors out there. The only interesting things (like the different Buddislamic sects) actually came from the original Dune novels. Which is also to say: there is very little worldbuilding at all, and this would have been a great opportunity to continue to flesh out the Dune universe, and as far flung (10k years!!!) prequels, they can do nearly whatever they want, but they don't. There is no sophistication, there is no artistry. Just badness.
‣ There is no subtlety in this book. Herbert (and Anderson) are not great writers; they write anvils dropping all around. A veritable hurricane of friggin' anvils. Everything is exposition, infodump, or just stated. There is no showing, just telling. In fact, some of the characters tell you what they're going to do and then do it. FFS, really?
‣ Along with the lack of subtlety, the same plot points/background is explained repeatedly, and sometimes by the same character. While this is a long book, it's certainly not so long that you've forgotten what happened a hundred pages ago (unless, I suppose, you've put it down for years, which I could see) or who someone is. This book is far, far longer than necessary. Along with repetitive infodumps/backstory, they also write out the full name of the character nearly every time we are re-introduced to the character. I did not forget who Xavier Harkonnen is. If you call him Xavier *or* Harkonnen (he's an orphan) at a different point, I'm not going to mix the character up with someone else.
‣ The characters are two dimensional (see: lack of subtlety). Because they are so poorly written, I really don't care what happens to them. I'm here for the plot, which is rather plodding thanks to the previously mentioned repeating of things, which is a damn shame, because compelling characters would have made this book far more enjoyable, even with the other faults. The lack of dimensionality runs through both the "good" guys (the League/scientists/whatever), neutrals (cogitors, zensunni and zenshiite refugees/slaves), and the bad (cymeks, Omnius, Erasmus, robots).
‣ At no point did I forget that this is written by white, male (dude-bros?), heterosexual authors. Thank you for telling me that some dude has a long braid or brown or grey hair, but going on and on about the ethereal beauty (in detail) or ugliness (again, in painful detail) of every female character (again, repeatedly, oy) for paragraphs. Add to that: there was very little diversity of characters, in any sense.
So that about covers it. Pulpy, unimaginative book which is good to listen to while working on other stuff, but if I was actually spending time reading this book, I would have never finished. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll make it through the rest of the trilogy (I can't remember reading the last in the trilogy, though Goodreads says I have.. huh... good thing I have a lot of house projects for the next few weeks!) and report in.
I love, love, love Herbert's Dune series, and I remember being excited over the prospect of prequels and started reading/listening to them as soon as I could (multiple formats). I believe I read the House (Harkonnen, Corrino, Atreides) before getting into these books. If I recall correctly (and I may re-read them, too), the three House series books were a bit better, but I had always been curious about what happened to create the O.C. Bible and the ban on thinking machines.
I found this particular trilogy (or the first two, anyway) on audio-tapes (back in the day), with the 20 (or whatever number) cassettes that I played in the F250 I was driving around at the time. Oh, the days.
I was also, let's say, less enlightened/younger/whatever back then and on this reread, I have to drop the rating to two stars (from four). The reason it is not getting just one star (which is what it deserves, probably), is that it's a bit of a guilty pleasure (even if a bad one), and for really shitty pulp sci-fi, it's not the worst, even if it's an awful "Dune" book (Herbert is probably still spinning in his grave, nearly a decade and a half after this came out). And it's a good book to listen to while doing projects. If you zone out on something else for a few minutes, you don't have to back up.
It's the first of the trilogy so it of course does not cover the entire Jihad, just the beginnings of the Jihad. It info-dumps most of the previous backstory: that there were geek-geniuses that found a way to create better and better robots & computers (also turning themselves into a kind of cyborg with a human brain canister) and how they inadvertently let the machines take over (the formation of Omnius, the big bad master machine mind), and the enslavement of the human race. It also covers the free human race and a bit of their government and sphere of influence. It ultimately ends with the battles between the two and the enslavement of Serena Butler and the eventual war/defeat of the Machine World of Earth and how the war/Jihad gets started (hint: nukes). I am mightily baffled at how the machines kill billions of humans, but they happen to kill one baby and the entire Jihad erupts, but I think they were going for a fortuitous blending of multiple events; it just fell flat and forced to me.
So that was good: Back story (again, iirc, supposedly from notes left behind by Herbert?); though not the backstory that I inferred from the novels.
Here's the bad:
‣ Hack writing. It's just straight up bad writing. Cheeseball sentences and conflicting descriptors are just the beginning. Add in a jumpy third-person omniscient view point that's just irritating to keep track of at times - the viewpoints jump mid-paragraph, it's not consistent at all. Lots of cliches and just flat out terrible writing. I listened to this in audiobook (narrated by the fantastic Scott Brick) while working on home improvement projects and I straight up started laughing at how terrible some of it is.
‣ There's a complete lack of imagination. While I understand they're (theoretically) somewhat constrained by some of the world building presented in the original Dune books, they've defaulted to the boring patriarchal society you expect out of mediocre space operas written by all of the other mediocre authors out there. The only interesting things (like the different Buddislamic sects) actually came from the original Dune novels. Which is also to say: there is very little worldbuilding at all, and this would have been a great opportunity to continue to flesh out the Dune universe, and as far flung (10k years!!!) prequels, they can do nearly whatever they want, but they don't. There is no sophistication, there is no artistry. Just badness.
‣ There is no subtlety in this book. Herbert (and Anderson) are not great writers; they write anvils dropping all around. A veritable hurricane of friggin' anvils. Everything is exposition, infodump, or just stated. There is no showing, just telling. In fact, some of the characters tell you what they're going to do and then do it. FFS, really?
‣ Along with the lack of subtlety, the same plot points/background is explained repeatedly, and sometimes by the same character. While this is a long book, it's certainly not so long that you've forgotten what happened a hundred pages ago (unless, I suppose, you've put it down for years, which I could see) or who someone is. This book is far, far longer than necessary. Along with repetitive infodumps/backstory, they also write out the full name of the character nearly every time we are re-introduced to the character. I did not forget who Xavier Harkonnen is. If you call him Xavier *or* Harkonnen (he's an orphan) at a different point, I'm not going to mix the character up with someone else.
‣ The characters are two dimensional (see: lack of subtlety). Because they are so poorly written, I really don't care what happens to them. I'm here for the plot, which is rather plodding thanks to the previously mentioned repeating of things, which is a damn shame, because compelling characters would have made this book far more enjoyable, even with the other faults. The lack of dimensionality runs through both the "good" guys (the League/scientists/whatever), neutrals (cogitors, zensunni and zenshiite refugees/slaves), and the bad (cymeks, Omnius, Erasmus, robots).
‣ At no point did I forget that this is written by white, male (dude-bros?), heterosexual authors. Thank you for telling me that some dude has a long braid or brown or grey hair, but going on and on about the ethereal beauty (in detail) or ugliness (again, in painful detail) of every female character (again, repeatedly, oy) for paragraphs. Add to that: there was very little diversity of characters, in any sense.
So that about covers it. Pulpy, unimaginative book which is good to listen to while working on other stuff, but if I was actually spending time reading this book, I would have never finished. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll make it through the rest of the trilogy (I can't remember reading the last in the trilogy, though Goodreads says I have.. huh... good thing I have a lot of house projects for the next few weeks!) and report in.
exile's review against another edition
2.0
I re-read this one the other day. I have no idea why I did that, but it's still as bad as I remember it. Maybe the shine has come off the universe since I read Chapterhouse, or maybe this book just isn't written in a style I enjoy.
jtwalraven's review against another edition
2.0
A somewhat pleasing discovery and dive into the Dune universe thousands of years before the events of Paul Atreides. Unfortunately lacks some of the vision and attention to detail that Frank Herbert shows. Many of the details are either skipped, repeats of Frank's writings, or use broad stroke "science" like terminology to explain the mechanics (e.g. gel-circuitry does everything). Also, the book has the unfortunate habit of repeating itself which is absolutely not necessary at this reading level and just feels like filler content. Characters do not have much depth and descriptions are not interesting. Hoping the next books in the series go into better depth as they are much longer.
laileanah's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Dec 2023 Reread:
2.5 stars Rounded Up
I'm rereading to prepare for the upcoming Sisterhood based TV ahow as well as for the 2nd part of the movie based on the first Dune novel by Frank Herbert.
I enjoyed this reread and am looking forward to the rest of the novels.
2021 Reread:
2.5 stars rounded down
I like this book less the more I reread it. I call myself trying to reread the entire Dune Universe series in anticipation of the coming Dune movie.
At the same time the expansion books written by BH & KJA are simply substandard and while I guess I appreciate the expansion of the Dune Universe I still find myself frustrated.
I HATE that they made their clumsy expansion book attempts cannon and the original books and world non-cannon.
Sigh not sure I'll continue my reread with the rest of this particular expansion trilogy.
Original review:
Brian Herbert does not have his father's writing skill. Kevin J Anderson helps but their books are wildly different in tone and texture to the original series. Still I enjoy the prequels for the glimpse into the expanded Dune Universe.
2.5 stars Rounded Up
I'm rereading to prepare for the upcoming Sisterhood based TV ahow as well as for the 2nd part of the movie based on the first Dune novel by Frank Herbert.
I enjoyed this reread and am looking forward to the rest of the novels.
2021 Reread:
2.5 stars rounded down
I like this book less the more I reread it. I call myself trying to reread the entire Dune Universe series in anticipation of the coming Dune movie.
At the same time the expansion books written by BH & KJA are simply substandard and while I guess I appreciate the expansion of the Dune Universe I still find myself frustrated.
I HATE that they made their clumsy expansion book attempts cannon and the original books and world non-cannon.
Sigh not sure I'll continue my reread with the rest of this particular expansion trilogy.
Original review:
Brian Herbert does not have his father's writing skill. Kevin J Anderson helps but their books are wildly different in tone and texture to the original series. Still I enjoy the prequels for the glimpse into the expanded Dune Universe.