Sisterhood of Dune (Spoilers Allowed)

[Admiral_Young]

It's sad that they just keep on milking this great franchise. They should have ended things with the Dune finale...oh yeah that reminds me who returned in that? Our old buddy Erasmus and his pal Omnious. Surprise Surprise. I actually didn't mind Paul of Dune and Jessica of Dune. It just seems totally pointless to go back into a period of time in the franchise which they've already established. I'm really not interested in the early years of the Great Schools. Also...I noticed they have the Landsraad called the Lansdsraad League. What? Since when has it been referred to as anything but the Landsraad?

 

[Klaus]

I didn't hate the Butlerian Jihad books as much as some, but never went any further... sounds like it was a good choice lol.

 

[JD]

Do you know the most disgusting thing about Anderson and lil' Herbert's books? There's a lot of bad shit, but this is the utmost worst: they actually attempt to invalidate the first Dune novel by saying that it's not the true story, that it's supposedly an inaccurate history that was penned by Irulan. Just read about Paul of Dune. I'm not making this shit up.

Wow, I haven't read any of the Dune stuff yet, but that seems pretty gutsy. I mean it's one thing if the original creator does that, but to come in as the replacements, and then to try to invalidate the original work. Damn!

 

[Admiral_Young]

Not to mention the fact when one of the co-authors is the original creator's son. As I mentioned above, I would really love to learn one day what exactly was unearthed from this supposed box they found in Seattle and what they just came up with on their own. I have long had a suspicion that it'd be drastically different from each other.

Herbert and Anderson have spoken in the past about compiling a "Dune Compendium" that contains all of their notes and serves as their series bible. It's supposed to be around 700 pages or something like that, unfortunately they'v also stated that it will most likely never be published despite being asked by fans. I'd love to see that though as well.

 

[milo bloom]

Indeed, I suspect that most of their material is only superficially related to Frank's old notes. IIRC the original description of the Thinking Machines taking paints a picture of an increasingly soft and stagnant society only gradually becoming enslaved by machines over many generations. That sounds much more like Herbert than having some brain-in-a-jar moron let loose a bunch of killer robots to "enslave all humans" but forgetting to tell them "except us brains in jars of course." I mean really? That's the best they could do?

I never even gave it much thought, but this is where my brain went too. Not "robots" per se, but more like "ghosts or gods in the machines that started wreaking havoc. Maybe even something like that old Trek episode where they find a planet having a war that's fought in simulations and the calculated losses are then herded into killing chambers.
But not AI's in giant robot shells. If it were an original scifi book series, it might be better, but for Dune, it just seemed so pedestrian.


I've read and bought all the new books, but always bought them used so I'm not encouraging KJA and BH *too* much. If I were forced to downsize my book collection I could easily lose them all except Frank's original six (plus Road to Dune cause that has some interesting stuff in it).

 

[Starbreaker]

Erasmus to me comes across as a poor man's Data.

I don't remember Data ever living for centuries and keeping and torturing slaves.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Erasmus is a robot who takes human form and wishes to understand emotion emotions. Perhaps Lore is a better example if you're going to point out the sadistic side of Erasmus.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well, I just finished reading this. My grade: average. It's better than I was expecting it to be, though the story sure takes it time to get going. The first half was mostly padding, but once the story gets going in the second half, it builds momentum and by the end is reasonably entertaining story.

This is by no means perfect. It at times is rather predictable and suffers from "we know how this has to turn out because it's a prequel" syndrome. Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson have their own set of tropes, most of which show up in this book.

But still, it's entertaining enough, and I have no regrets about reading it, and would recommend it to any Dune fans.

Spoiler: Saving this for the end, since it is spoilery.

Although, I have to say, I found the sub-plot about Agamemnon's revived twins hunting Vorian Atreides unsatisfactory. All they do is brutally kill everyone in their path, taunt and threaten Vorian until getting eaten by a sandworm. By no means the most compelling subplot of this novel.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I've decided that I'm not going to read this. Have no interest or desire. That being said, I'm still intrigued with what the two of them are going to do with the Dune comics later this summer. That should be interesting.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I read the preview on my iPad a few days ago and have had no desire to actually purchase it. Maybe one day when I become really board.

 

[Distorted Humor]

I love Dune, but these dune books are not Dune.