Brian Herbert vs. Frank Herbert
Has anyone read any of the "Dune" books that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have published? The three "House" novels (Atriedes, Harkonnen and Corrino) were, I thought, pretty poor reflections of Frank Herbert's work. I recently went back and read Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune and they were as complex, nuanced and incredible as I remember. I also waded through God Emporer of Dune again, which was a bit of a mess but still a damn sight better than the Herbert/Anderson books. And then there's The Butlerian Jihad, which takes five steps backwards from even the House series. With a storyline that is downright silly and dialogue that makes Lucas' "Attack of the Clones" sound like Shakespeare (or at least Elmore Leonard), it's a totally unreadable piece of crap. I managed to skim through the second half to see if I could find a reason, like if the dialogue was actually being used as some kind of literary device, but it ain't there. Feels like it was written by a not-too-bright 11 year old. If anyone out there has read the latest one (The Machine Crusade), let me know if it's as bad (or worse) 'cause I'm going to have to really be convinced to even check it out from the library.
1 Comments:
it is painful to try to finished the series with brain herbert's last two books. They could have easily been just one book if he had stopped repeating and re-explaining himself constantly. It is sad when I as a reader can guess the next three plot points before the supposedly genius mentat characters can calculate the next step.
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