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A review by nightshade_novels
House Atreides by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
4.0
I absolutely loved the original Dune series by Frank Herbert, but was unsure how I felt about picking up any of the expanded universe books by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson. I'm often wary about series that have been continued by other people following the author's death. In the end I decided to give them a shot, after all I love this universe so much and wanted to spend more time here. I started with this one purely because it was what my library had available.
It is clear from the outset that this book is written by different authors to the original series. The writing style is completely different. Gone is the deep philosophical writing that makes up most of Frank Herbert's style. This book is much more plot and action based. But you can clearly see the amount of time and research they have put in to recreating this universe as Frank designed it.
Reading this book was a different experience to reading the original series, but it wasn't any worse for it. I really enjoyed the story and, as someone who loves a backstory, it was really fun to see the younger years of a lot of characters that you recognise from Dune. In particular it was great to see Idaho as a child (for the first time) and how he came to work for the Atreides. I also liked seeing Leto and Duke Harkonnen and even Kynes story was interesting.
The world building has been expanded in a way that feels like a natural extension to what was already established. Similarly the characters are well developed, both those that already existed and the new ones.
I'm interested to see where this story is going, even though ultimately it will end up in the position where Dune begins, and so am excited for the next book.
It is clear from the outset that this book is written by different authors to the original series. The writing style is completely different. Gone is the deep philosophical writing that makes up most of Frank Herbert's style. This book is much more plot and action based. But you can clearly see the amount of time and research they have put in to recreating this universe as Frank designed it.
Reading this book was a different experience to reading the original series, but it wasn't any worse for it. I really enjoyed the story and, as someone who loves a backstory, it was really fun to see the younger years of a lot of characters that you recognise from Dune. In particular it was great to see Idaho as a child (for the first time) and how he came to work for the Atreides. I also liked seeing Leto and Duke Harkonnen and even Kynes story was interesting.
The world building has been expanded in a way that feels like a natural extension to what was already established. Similarly the characters are well developed, both those that already existed and the new ones.
I'm interested to see where this story is going, even though ultimately it will end up in the position where Dune begins, and so am excited for the next book.