I love the original Dune series by Frank Herbert. L. O. V. E. them, all 6 books. The complexity of the plots, the subtlety of the writing and the wide range of issues addressed forces you, the reader, to think. The Dune series doesn’t dumb things down or spoon-feed you anything. As a result reading these books is an intensive and rewarding experience.
When Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson released the first book of their Dune prequels, “Dune: House Atreides” in 1999, I was skeptical. It is one thing for Christopher Tolkien to take his father’s extensive notes and compile them in “The Silmarillion”. It’s quite another for someone to take scant notes and materials and then team up with a writer as pedestrian as Kevin Anderson. The result sucked, bigtime.
Amazon reviewer Andrew Hartof the UK sums up my feelings quite well.
Frank Herbert managed to create a Universe populated by big people with grand schemes, sharp intellects, deep motivations, and competing philosophies, all locked in a deadly eons long battle for supremacy and survival.
This book is populated with dim wits with petty concerns, short term goals and shallow desires, all bouncing along fairly aimlessly and counting on luck and coincidence.
No gravitas. No substance. No imagination. This book is to Dune as lift music is to a Beethoven symphony.
I read the rest of the 3 book series in the foolish hope that somehow the writing would improve. Sadly, “House Harkonnen” and “House Corrino” sucked every bit as much as the first one. Since then I’ve been avoiding the continued desecration of Frank Herbert’s legacy like the plague.
That was until today, when I came across “Hunters of Dune“, the latest effort of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson. No longer content with just raping the back-story, they are taking up the story line of the original Dune series where it was left at the conclusion of “Chapterhouse Dune“. And how have they handled this material, from the greatest and most popular science fiction series of all time? Based on what I’m seeing in the amazon reviews, not so good. Here are a few.
A great example of damning with faint praise
Clearly, Hunters is written for a different generation of readers and aspires to a more “mass-market” than the elder Herbert’s original stories. The pacing is much faster, the prose more direct, and the plot threads easier to pick up and follow.
Good thing they improved the “mass-market” appeal, because the original Dune was only the highest seller SciFi book ever. This reviewer actually gave it 4 stars too, which doesn’t speak well of his intelligence.A few more to the point reviews
They shouldn’t have bothered!
Burn This Book!
Unbelievably Bad … Even by the standard of Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson
Brian Hebert, to steal a phrase from another SciFi epic I finished not too long ago, you have forgotten the face of your father.
Totally right. They try so hard to to come with surprising plot twists but it just comes across as pretentious at best. Pathetic is the word I find most apt. But the thing that I just cant stand is the corporate language bullshit that they come out with.
Example: http://www.dunenovels.com/FAQ.html
The sad thing is that they dismiss McNelly even though his book was much closer in spirit to the real Dune.
I just want them to publish the plain old notes, the selfish money grubbing bastards.
By: Joe on December 5, 2006
at 8:50 am
Joe, it’s the whole corporate thing that’s getting me here. Frank Herbert spent something like 5 years writting the original Dune. The whole series of 6 books was written and released over the course of some 20 years. They weren’t rush jobs. Time and care was taken to tell these stories with the depth and substance that has made them so popular.
Contrast that with Brian Herbert’s “contributions”. He’s been churning out these novels like they were widgets, 9 in 8 years. It shows in the final product. They’re indistiguishable from any other serial science fiction series on the shelf. That’s fine if you’re writting star wars novels for middle school kids, those are already a commodity. The Dune series wasn’t.
By: Kevin on December 7, 2006
at 10:34 am
I agree with you completely. The original 6 Dune novels blew me away. I have gone back over each of them and continue to find new and interesting plot point that I missed the first time around. I was so excited to hear that new novels were going to be produced in the Dune universe…..then I read them.
Saddened is how I would put my reaction to the whole situation. IMO they are milking it for all it is worth with the crap they keep spewing out based on the “notes” found in a safe deposit box. Yeaaaaah I bet you found special “notes” outlining all of the situations the books are based on. Hell i don’t think Brian even read his fathers works until his mid-twenties, he just doesn’t understand what they are to so many people.
The whole Buterlian series destroyed any hope I hope for redemption of the authors after the preludes. Utter crap, suitable for pre-teens. I will not read the Dune seven novels, I am sticking to the ending put forth by Frank Herbert,.
For anyone interested the same feelings are felt by many readers, you can even find a majority of posts on the official Dune discussion board are negative towards the new novels.
And thats the end of my little rant……
By: Charles on January 11, 2007
at 9:53 pm
I tried to read the first of the “new” Dune books. I was extremely excited that their might be more Dune. I LOVE DUNE… I love it for it’s complexity about the meaning of human life, and about the greater questions of consciousness in the universe.
I threw the book across the room. The only other time I have been so infuriated by an adaptation or spin-off, was in seeing the Sci-Fi Channel’s “adaptation” (rape) of Usula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy.
I went looking for reviews that share my point of view on Google, and so much marketing stuff came up first that I was dismayed. And that they’re quoting reviews of the father to promote the books of the son is pretty sleazy. I think I’ll go back to the beginning. The good news is that the originals can be read over and over for one’s lifetime, with things still to learn.
John
By: John on June 9, 2007
at 4:11 pm
My thoughts on the Herbert and Anderspn books are mixed. On the one hand, I absolutely lo-o-o-o-ove the original series. Nothing else in literature ever compares, not even the pretentious Tolkien crap so many fantasy fanboys rave about. I don’t think Tolkien gets anywhere near as deep as Herbert, and I mean it.
I semi-enjoyed the Herbert/Anderson books… more as just adventure-ish Sci-Fi books. definitely nowhere near the level of Frank Herbert himself. No bleeping way. I do believe Brian Herbert when he says it is based off of notes from Frank Herbert found in a safe deposit box. However, I think these books demonstrate only one thing: How far only notes can take you. Now, the Brian/Anderson books might have been REALLY something if they found a damn rough draft instead, something with more substance. And of course if Brian Herbert never brought failed Sci-Fi writer Kevin J. Anderson in on it. As far as I know, Anderson only really suceeded with the Star Wars book series… and we all know that Star War, while good, is nowhere near the par of things like Dune. I don’t even think the Ender series has anything on Dune.
My verdict is a little more friendly: Herbert/Anderson works from an adventure, no-substance quick-read sci-fi story, but they won’t get anywhere close to the mettle of Frank Herbert. I’ll read the Dune 7 books and the interquel Heroes of Dune series purely for completeness-sake. But I’ll never say “Boy… Paul of Dune is just as good as Dune: Messiah or Dune itself.” because it isn’t. I can say that without even reading those books.
By: Anonymous on February 9, 2009
at 12:57 am
Yeah well Paul of Dune is one of the most boring in the failures that Brian spewed out with Kevin. Even from a ‘sci-fi adventure’ point, they are pretty bad and boring. It’s like reading ‘General Hospital’ in space but written by morons instead of semi-competent writers. General hospital is far more entertaining and profound than the new dunes series AND it is more believable with all its miraculous cure and people coming back from the dead…
By: stef on February 8, 2010
at 2:49 pm
Ugh! The “Dune” books written by Brian Herbert are such trash…His father has died so many times now, with each new offering his son constructs. Pure offal.
Shame.
By: Barry on December 15, 2010
at 7:27 am
I tortured myself through the House series and then the legends series and then I picked up Hunters and I put it down 3 chapters in. The cause was now the fact that they had shat all over FH’s world since I had put up with the raping of that very world for 3 consecutive books filled with junk but i put it down because I could not longer deal with the bad writing.
There was a chapter explaining something and then the very next chapter restated it the same thing so I could not forget… I read a little farther and then it happened… they wrote a sentence and the follow up sentence refereed back to the sentence I had just read so i would not “forget” what was just said in it.
And that was it. As far as I’m concerned Dune ended when FH died.
I think the reason the writing is so damn bad is because KJA speaks into a tape player and someone else writes it out and then they both trade the chapters back and forth and in order to not forget what each one of them is doing they constantly write restatement chapters to remind themselves. This however makes it almost impossible for a sane reader to read. They truly are VERY bad writers. The Bourne series is currently going through the same thing which is a shame because the original Bourne books were really good too.
By: codecrackx15 on May 9, 2011
at 1:44 pm