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A review by luke_td
Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
In the introductions to the most recent editions of the Frank Herbert Dune novels Brian Herbert has a habit of making grandiose statements about his father's works, which, personally speaking, tend to not comport with my experience with them.
Still, in that respect, I feel comfortable stating that no novel has ever deployed the word 'female' as calamitously as Hunters of Dune.
It is almost impressive how a novel about all female armies clashing against each other (one whose origins are based in rebelling against their own commodification) is never in danger of even accidentally making a feminist statement.
Which is kind of the guiding ethos here. No matter how complicated the politicking gets (mildly) there is no discernable depth.
I grew more and more skeptical with each passing book that Frank Herbert's plot supported his purported themes but there's no proof that someone has a point quite like seeing someone miss it.
Admittedly it's not all bad, there seems to be some desire to tell an actual story here, something that Herbert the elder seemed to largely abdicate from Messiah on, and occasionally Herbert and Anderson land on some sort of political maneuvering or act of space economics that is at least interesting, but again without depth it struggles to amount to much. It was prescient about reverence for source material leading to toothless and self defeating legacy sequels though, and contains the sort of storytelling that loses millions at the box office week after week these days.
I mean they bring back Thufir.
Thufir!
Dune has always been a series where the ideas had to drag along the empty vessels of the characters and here these names I recognize, with personalities I don't, have never had less to do.
I will say that if the writing was 20 percent better it would probably be unreadable, but as is there's at least messiness that proves entertaining when the narrative stagnates or what's more, dead ends.
Heretics and Charterhouse especially could feel like Herbert was caught in a loop, having characters go back and forth on how only libertarian ubermensches could save us from tyrants or whatever, but here the repetition is astounding.
One wonders how co-author duties were shared when page after page (and sometimes paragraph after paragraph) repeat information we just heard and will probably soon hear again.
There's also a weird amount of pages dedicated to wiki style recaps of the first 6 novels, as well as Anderson and Herbert's own prequels (which the introduction assures us were very necessary) sometimes shoehorned right next to each other as if we wouldn't notice.
What I'm getting at is there's a lot of versions of a posthumous Dune sequel that don't posit making a Ghola of Xavier Harkonen is of vital importance to Sheeana's plans and while that novel would probably be better for it we would be worse.
There's also one chapter that starts with a quote about even the strongest tower having a weak point and that proves to be thematically relevant to the text of the chapter where one army destroys a planet from space.
A+ stuff is what I'm getting at.
Still it's a shame there's only one truly great Dune novel (I guess Sandworms could technically prove me wrong), but maybe with the success of the movies the story can get passed on to more than one writer and we can have the first ever fun Dune novel.
At least all the sex stuff is as hilariously deranged and off base as it's ever been.
Still, in that respect, I feel comfortable stating that no novel has ever deployed the word 'female' as calamitously as Hunters of Dune.
It is almost impressive how a novel about all female armies clashing against each other (one whose origins are based in rebelling against their own commodification) is never in danger of even accidentally making a feminist statement.
Which is kind of the guiding ethos here. No matter how complicated the politicking gets (mildly) there is no discernable depth.
I grew more and more skeptical with each passing book that Frank Herbert's plot supported his purported themes but there's no proof that someone has a point quite like seeing someone miss it.
Admittedly it's not all bad, there seems to be some desire to tell an actual story here, something that Herbert the elder seemed to largely abdicate from Messiah on, and occasionally Herbert and Anderson land on some sort of political maneuvering or act of space economics that is at least interesting, but again without depth it struggles to amount to much. It was prescient about reverence for source material leading to toothless and self defeating legacy sequels though, and contains the sort of storytelling that loses millions at the box office week after week these days.
I mean they bring back Thufir.
Thufir!
Dune has always been a series where the ideas had to drag along the empty vessels of the characters and here these names I recognize, with personalities I don't, have never had less to do.
I will say that if the writing was 20 percent better it would probably be unreadable, but as is there's at least messiness that proves entertaining when the narrative stagnates or what's more, dead ends.
Heretics and Charterhouse especially could feel like Herbert was caught in a loop, having characters go back and forth on how only libertarian ubermensches could save us from tyrants or whatever, but here the repetition is astounding.
One wonders how co-author duties were shared when page after page (and sometimes paragraph after paragraph) repeat information we just heard and will probably soon hear again.
There's also a weird amount of pages dedicated to wiki style recaps of the first 6 novels, as well as Anderson and Herbert's own prequels (which the introduction assures us were very necessary) sometimes shoehorned right next to each other as if we wouldn't notice.
What I'm getting at is there's a lot of versions of a posthumous Dune sequel that don't posit making a Ghola of Xavier Harkonen is of vital importance to Sheeana's plans and while that novel would probably be better for it we would be worse.
There's also one chapter that starts with a quote about even the strongest tower having a weak point and that proves to be thematically relevant to the text of the chapter where one army destroys a planet from space.
A+ stuff is what I'm getting at.
Still it's a shame there's only one truly great Dune novel (I guess Sandworms could technically prove me wrong), but maybe with the success of the movies the story can get passed on to more than one writer and we can have the first ever fun Dune novel.
At least all the sex stuff is as hilariously deranged and off base as it's ever been.