Posts
Paul of Dune
If you remember, I read through all fourteen then-existing Dune novels last year, plus Dreamer of Dune and The Road to Dune
Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert
There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to a biography written by a close family member. On the one hand, Brian Herbert has detailed, personal knowledge of Frank Herbert's life. On the other hand, Brian Herbert has detailed, personal knowledge of Frank Herbert's life. Sometimes way, way too much detail. It's interesting, but not terribly objective.
Sandworms of Dune
Well, ok.
First, I should congratulate myself for reading all fourteen Dune novels in less than a year. I don't know how many pages that was, but it was a lot. Of course, this is coming from someone who has read War and Peace
So Sandworms was good. It had a plot that moved along. It tied up loose ends and answered questions. I was a little disappointed in the ending - not how it ended, but how the ending was written. Sometimes, I get to the end of a book and get the distinct feeling that the author was just tired of writing it and wanted to finish it up. Or had a deadline. Some of John Grisham's later novels are like that - exciting plot, with the wrap-up coming as almost an afterthought. At the end of Sandworms, we learn the identity of the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach. I was a bit surprised, but so be it. But do you remember the scene in Dune when Paul drank the water of life and could see the paths of the future, and accessed his other memories? Or when Leto II took the sandtrout as his second skin and began his transformation into the worm? This scene, when Duncan Idaho becomes both man and machine, gave me no such feeling of awe. The writing gives me no idea what that must have been like, what impact it had on him or on others. We get facts, but no vision, no gravitas to the most important single moment in the Dune universe.
So I liked it. But it could have been better.
Hunters of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
I read this book last year when it came out, but it had been years since I had read the original Dune series. Now, reading it immediately after Chapterhouse: Dune, I am impressed by how well the two books flow together. My library has ordered Sandworms of Dune and I am anxiously awaiting it. Although, I do agree wholeheartedly with one Amazon.com reviewer who wrote: "The biggest gap between father and son is subtlety. What Frank Herbert implied with a sentence, B. Herbert and Anderson drag out into a paragraph-long explanation."
Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Chapterhouse: Dune 
I am eagerly awaiting Sandworms of Dune
Heretics of Dune
This week I stumbled across Bryan Terry's review of the audiobook of Dune. Bryan's Book Blog (which I found through his wife's blog, which I found where?) seems to be taking off, in the sense that real authors are visiting his site and commenting on his posts. By comparison, would you believe that this blog gets, on average, one hit a day? Me neither.
God Emperor of Dune
Are Dune novels like Star Trek movies? You know, odd ones good, even ones bad? It would seem so. Although the concept of Leto II's transformation into the giant sand worm and his thousands-year reign is fascinating, this book is a bit plodding.
I'm also confused by the fact that the Duncan ghola says that he remembers Leto as a child, when actually the original Duncan died way before Leto was even conceived. Is Herbert insinuating that the Duncan gholas are not copies of the original but of a later ghola/clone? Or did he just get confused when writing this book. If you have a theory, let me know.
Children of Dune
Although I have read this book many times, I still enjoy it. Much better than the disappointing Dune Messiah.
Dune Messiah
Personally, I thought this book was a bit of a dud. It's a bridge between Dune and Children of Dune but doesn't really stand on it's own.
Dune: House Atreides
Dune: House Harkonnen
Dune: House Corrino
Dune
(took a break here, before plunging into the rest of the original Dune series, and read:)
The Road to Dune
The Butlerian Jihad (Legends of Dune, Book 1)
The Machine Crusade (Legends of Dune, Book 2)
The Battle of Corrin (Legends of Dune Series, Book 3), by by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
These are some of the longest, most tedious, over-written books I have ever read. If it hadn't been for the fact that I wanted to read the whole Dune series, in order, I would have stopped a quarter of the way through the first book. I actually caught myself looking at how much of the first book I had left to read and being surprised at how much more I was going to have to slog through. Surprising, since I thought that Brian and Kevin did a great job with Hunters of Dune.
This is an amazing story.
No, not Hunters of Dune
Frank Herbert is ranked with the greatest Science Fiction writers. He penned the award-winning Dune in the mid-1960s and, before his death in 1986 wrote five sequels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune). He also co-wrote Man of Two Worlds with his son, Brian Herbert, and The Road to Dune with Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Before his death, Frank Herbert discussed with his son his plans for a seventh Dune novel. As Herbert and Anderson explain in the Author's Note to Hunters of Dune:
In 1997, more than a decade after the death of his father, Brian began to discuss with Kevin J. Anderson the possibility of completing the project, of writing the fabled Dune 7. But apparently Frank Herbert had left no notes, and we thought we would have to do the project based solely on our own imaginations. After further discussions, we realized that a great deal of preliminary work needed to be completed before we could tackle Dune 7 - not just laying groundwork for the story itself, but also reintroducing the book-buying audience and a whole new generation of readers to the incredible, highly imaginative Dune universe.
More than twenty years have passed since the publication of Chapterhouse: Dune. while many readers loved the original classic Dune or even the first three books in the series, a significant portion of the audience had not continued all the way through to that last book. We needed to reawaken interest and get those readers prepared.
We decided to write a trilogy of prequels first... When we began to dig through all of Frank Herbert's stored papers in preparation for writing House Atreides, Brian was surprised to learn of two safe-deposit boxes that his father had taken out before his death. Inside the boxes, Brian and an estate attorney discovered a dot-matrix printout and two old-style computer disks labeled "Dune 7 Outline" and "Dune 7 Notes" - pages describing exactly where the creator of Dune had intended to take his story.