Dune: The Battle of Corrin, Limited Edition

Rating:
Summary: 2nd trilogy goes downhill
Review: (This is basically a review of the entire 2nd trilogy.)

I didn't like this 2nd trilogy nearly as much as the first trilogy these 2 guys wrote. It wasn't just that the subject matter, now being displaced 1000 of years before the original Dune book, isn't connected nearly as intimately to the original books (there are none of the characters from the original books in these), but I also think the 2 writers just laxed up on the writing: parts of this seem more amateurish and stylized than the first trilogy, and some of the writing is just not good.
There are a lot of other problems, too, both big and small: 1)Just some things that were hard to buy, or didn't make sense, like: Why didn't the machines use atomics (they do give some non-persuasive reasons for this at one point)? Was it really possible that the machine could never get around their "gelcircuitry" -- was there no way else for them to construct an artificial brain? What exactly happened to Rayna in the 3rd book, or Raquella for that matter? Why did the Sorceresses have the powers that they did -- the Reverend Mothers of the later books didn't even have those powers? Omnius couldn't come up with a way to kill the humans better than an old fashioned plague with just a 40+% kill rate? 2) Some things were just stupid, and seemed to be put in just to add a "neat" factor (the little pirahna mites, for ex, are just silly). 3) The whole series was just too long, with too many characters and threads that didn't have to be followed at all, because they lead to nothing, or that were just followed in too much detail. These 1900 pages probably could have been cut to 1000 or so. It's suppose to be an epic, yes, but you don't make a good epic just by bloading it with boring and unnecessary content (the thread with the long-lost Titan Hecate could have been so good, but it led to almost nothing and was dull; and did we have to follow the sword fighters in the 3rd book at all?) 4) It didn't keep the same human characters thru the 3 books, and so it didn't have as strong of a thread as the first series.

The first book in this trilogy (The Butlerian Jihad) was enjoyable, but then everything just got old, and the 2nd and 3rd books got boring, and I even skimmed some story lines. But... you do get to see if how Mentats, the Guild navigators, the Bene Gesserit, the Atreides/Harkonnen fued, etc., all got started, even if a couple of their beginnings seem contrived.


Rating:
Summary: Please guys, give it up!!! Stop writing these!!!
Review: I grew up with the Dune series. I read the first book in the early seventies when I was in my early teens. This series is about as bad as watching George Lucas do his own prequels. The Star Wars universe should have been taken away from him long-long ago. Same here. Except in this case, Dune, something with even more depth and well written than even the original Star Wars, is taken on a long slow descent into pap and ruin. Like a few astute critics before me, you can see the descent of the prequels here. This is by far the worst of all. (The invention and overuse of the word "Electrafluid," is a crime I cannot even contemplate a punishment harsh enough to meet out to the writers!)
I'm sorry and I'm trying to be fair. You cannot compare the original series of Dune books to these. I'm trying not to compare the two different styles of two different writers just for the sake of fairness. But when you take an existing universe and try to write a prequel that builds up to Dune, this fan would hope for some sense of trueness to the original style of the creator of the Dune universe. This work doesn't even come close. I suppose it's like being a publisher who has to proof read new manuscripts submitted for the Star Trek series of books. You have to wade through tons (probably literaly) of garbage to find something useful. Well, to be harsh, this is what would have been discarded. Even for the Star Wars and Star Trek series of books. And I've read some of them. Not that I would have normally, but on a few trips across the country, that's all that's on the audio book rental racks in the truck stops. This was one of those audio books. I was literally gagging and saying "Oh God, give me a break!" at some of the dialog during the last battle of Corrin. The betrayal at the bridge was the worst kind of written for T.V. melodrama I could imagine. Somewhere there is a producer that would put it on prime time as high art!

It was a struggle for me to get through the last of this book, if it wasn't an audio rental on a long road trip, I would have stopped reading it. I'm just not that bloody minded to have read it through to the end, and I am a very determined person. If it wasn't a book that doesn't belong to me it would have gone in the trash. (Or Goodwill, hate to waste a tax deduction.) Like I said before, it was like watching an old beloved story from my younger days get butchered and abused. There's no more life left in this one, let it go. Give it a decent burial.
Unfortunately I know this won't happen. Thank God there was a very final end to "The Lord of the Rings." and may no more be written by ANY but the original author.

Rating:
Summary: Below Average Ending To Legends Of Dune
Review: I have to say I was somewhat disappointed with the whole book. Don't get me wrong, it was a huge effort to get the stories right and to take over Frank Herbert's Dune story, however, something was lacking. I felt like I was being led blindfolded through a maze of stitched up brainstormed ideas. Caution though, SPOILERS BELOW (sorry!).

1. The characters were too shallow and 2 dimensional with colorfully added titles like Supreme Bashar, Primero, Viceroy etc. Do we really need all that? It makes the whole book almost (God Forbid!) Star Wars-like! I could even start drawing parallels, Omnius is to Emperor Palpatine as Vorian Atreides is to Luke Skywalker?

2. The House Harkonnen/Atreides feud started like that? Gee, and I thought my cats and dogs had better fights! A minor military disagreement that ended up as a murderous feud between the bloodlines? This was the feud that I was actually looking forward to finding out how it started. It ended up as rumors, gossips, myths and fables handed down through generations. Romeo and Juliet anyone? A plague on both their houses literally!

3. The plague was only scratching the surface of the story. If Omnius wanted the humans wiped out, it would have been 100% mortality not just 43% +/-! I would have thought something more devious, like a gene-select bioweapon that targets selective genes like good eyesight, intelligence, body mass etc. Or something that targetted and killed off the females, so the males wouldn't have breeding partners and would die off naturally. But I guess the Dune universe had to survive somehow. The pirahna mites were a huge joke, I think they ran out of ideas.

4. 20 years and the machines couldn't find a way to destroy the Holtzmann satellites that imprisoned them? Come on! What about some new faster than fold space ships? Omnius couldn't even develop that? If the Ixians could build no-ships, and Omnius couldn't, then it isn't as smart a thinking machine as we think it is! No wonder humanity destroyed it!(or did they? hmm...)

5. Agamemnon was foolish enough to trust Vorian to remove his brain canister from his walker body? I really find that very, very hard to believe, seriously!

Well, I guess through all that, we find out the origins of the Spacing Guild. How the Mentats were founded, although it was too convenient! The beginnings of the Bene Gesserit. And how Corrinos and Harkonnens are actually the same bloodline!

Still, I'm looking forward to BH & KJA ending our eternal wait (torment) for Dune 7. I pray it will have more depth and surprises than these prequels.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the Dune prequels
Review: I liked this book best of any of the Brian Herbert prequels. There was a bit less grotesque torture. But I especially liked that the story went somewhere. Some of the others tended to drag a bit, or seem like they weren't really progressing, with just smalls parts of something actually happening. We finally get to find out why the Harkonnens & Artriedes feud, & all the other loose ends are also tied up. I found it quite enjoyable reading, & perhaps my favorite Dune book after the original Dune.

Rating:
Summary: Battle of Corrin Fades Away
Review: I've completed the Battle of Corrin and was pretty dissapointed. This really should have been two books. In fact, fundamental questions about the spacing guild, congress of royal houses, the benejeserit, really take a back seat what seems like a schedule of events that unfold. Character development is almost completely abandoned in the entire 2nd half of the book. Erasmus for example, a robot whose purpose is to provide an unimpeded methodical and amoral examination of human behavior begins to and does act in a radical and emotional way. However, no reflection is given to why this transformation takes place.

Two elements of the original Dune works stand out as missing in most all of the prequels. The first is the element of mysticism. Poisons, institutions, assumptions, and "plans within plans" are all a part of the Dune world created by Frank Herbert. Those unknows forced the reader to reflect on the situations created by the interactions of individuals confident in their own agendas and beliefs. A second element missing is the depth of character. In fact, what a person really believes in the prequels are summed up in the brief snipets from other works at the beginning of each chapter. This attempt at character development is more form than function. The entire origin of the conflict between the houses of Atraides and Harkonnen are relegated to an afterthought of a few pages and no sympathy is given to the position of Abulerd Harkonnen. It's like the whole reason for the original Dune series is based on just a misunderstanding.

The Battle of Corrin definitely follows an action genre type of formula in that introspective examination is almost null. The condition of humanity is never examined. There are no mantras, no internal conflicts, and no characters undergo personal revelations or growth. Each character tends to follow their own roles and therefore, the book is somewhat predictible.

Overall I gave it a 2.

Rating:
Summary: series continues downward spiral
Review: One steps into this series not expecting the achievement of Dune, an unfairly high standard, but a good read with maybe some flashes of Dune's complexity of character, plot, and philosophy. The first book of this trilogy, the Butlerian Jihad, failed in the latter two areas but the plot was a good enough read to overcome those flaws. The second book was a step backward, with the same weak characterization, but this time not balanced by a strongly told story. The Battle of Corrin, unfortunately, continues the downward trend. As in the other books, characterization is almost uniformly shallow, which is tough to do since some of these characters we've seen over the course of several long books now. Those characters we've seen in prior books don't seem to have developed much and the new characters are mostly two-dimensional. The plot is weak, mostly an episodic narrative of battles among the three major groups at war (the humans, the cymeks, the robots). The weakness of the plot is exacerbated by the "been there, done that" sense of repetition. It seems the three books could easily have been combined into two, making for a more streamlined, less repetitive narrative. Not everything needs to be a trilogy (Tolkien be damned). Another flaw affecting involving both plot and character is that too many actions seem arbitrary or contrived, done more for a plotline than developing out of character. Some, in fact, seem wholly out of character or simply unbelievable. Finally, whereas the first book mostly avoided the prequel problem of rote action meant to connect the dots of later books, this one is rolling in it, filled with awkwardly introduced or clumsily handled events/phrases written in so the reader can go "ahh, so that's why they call them xxxxxxxx in Dune". Admittedly, it's a tough problem to overcome for any prequel, but seldom have I seen it so poorly handled.
If this were book one I'd definitely recommend against starting the trilogy. But chances are, if you've reached Battle of Corrin, you're going to read it no matter what just to finish the series and see those connections to later Dune books. So all I can say is don't expect much, don't feel bad about skimming, and have a good book set aside to dive into when you're done; you're going to want to recapture a good read quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Milking it BIGTIME...
Review: The franchi...I mean, SAGA continues!

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I should have known better after reading "Jihad", but a moment of weakness in the airport...(sigh) NEVER again!

Tried reading this one as a bedtimer, too, but was too distracted: I still kept hearing Juliette Lewis screaming inside my head: "BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD!" So I ended up reading it in the bathroom, where it remains.

I figure the paper might come in handy someday.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad if you are a couple middle schoolers
Review: The long slide of this series into the literary toilet finally ended in a splash. I mostly enjoyed the first prequels, shortly before the time of "Dune". But these super-early prequels, thousands of years before "Dune", have started poorly and ended dreadfully.

The dialogue is dreadful. Compare it - and the writing in general - to the dense, subtle prose of Frank Herbert. No comparison. This is the kind of writing you expect from wannabe's, not established authors.

The plot developments are simply unbelievable. Almost every aspect of the later "Dune" mythology is the result of a stupid accident? Oh please. The different story lines do not all mesh well, except insofar as they represent lame attempts to establish "what comes later". Many story develops "just happen" with almost no logic or slow development.

Characterization - with a few exceptions, such as Vorian Atreides and Erasmus - is atrocious. Completely incredible is how/why Abulurd Harkonnen changes heart at the Battle of Corrin, resulting in the infamous "betrayal at the bridge" we hear so much about later. We can nuke billions but at the last critical moment we refuse to sacrifice 2 million humans? Not believable at all, given how the characters had hitherto developed. People make decisions that are almost random and completely incomprehensible.

There is an odd preoccupation with body parts and fluids and such along with the oddly overdrawn descriptions of people dying horribly and violently. The result is a cartoonish caricature that distracts more than it helps move the story.

Finally - notice how the story moves almost too quickly, a frantic pace, short stocatto conversations without emotion so that *suddenly* this happens, *suddenly* that decision is made - the final conquest of Corrin really only takes up a handful of pages. Wow. Wonder how it happened? These guys barely take the time to tell us.

I can't believe I spent good money on the hardback edition. What a waste. Should have waited for the library copy.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven, only for Dune addicts
Review: This book is only for the hard core addicts. It's a series book so it only works if you have read the previous books. As with the others this book is a prequel to the original books. The thrust of the series is to provide back story on the various factions in the original book; Fremen, Bene Gesserit, Guild, Mentats, Corrino, Atriedes, Harkonnen, etc. This book does not fail there. I found the Guild the most interesting, but that's just my own opinion.

The stories are woven into a fairly uneven story about the destruction of the machine worlds. It's divided into to parts, each with an independent climax that, in both cases, neglects some of the characters almost completely.

It's easy to see how this book is drawing parallels to our present situation. In particular the Bush administrations war in Iraq. That's an interesting, if simplistic, side of the book.

The entire series of Brian Herbert Dune books is written very different from the original Dune masterpiece. The language is less sharp, the characters less cleanly drawn and more two-dimensional.

These are fun light reads though, particularly for those Dune addicts out there who can't get enough of seeing the names of their favorite houses n print.

Rating:
Summary: It answered the questions but in a very unsatisfactory way
Review: This is the final installament of the Legends of Dune prequels?

I was not too impressed with the House Trilogy Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert did that ends about 15 years before the original Dune. I liked the first 2 books well enough, but the third book just really disappointed me. The inconsistancies with Frank Herberts Dune were glaring for me. For example, Gurney Halleck owes his loyalty to Duke Leto Atreides because Leto saves his life in the Harkonnen slave mines/pits-in the House Trilogy Gurney hides in a shipment of glass that inadvertently ends up on Caladan. Gurney did not even know who Leto was nor did Leto know who Gurney was. They actually meet through a mutual friend. Which is fine, but kills the relationship for the first 3 original Dune novels. Stupid little slips like that made me dislike the House Trilogy novels.

In the Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert novels much detail is given, but no suspense is built, everything is spelled out for you-no thinking required. It is the spirit of how Frank Herbert wrote and it is unfair to expect K.J.A and B.H. to be able to copy that-but I am disappointed none the less. It is difficult to write in a well known world and not make errors-especially when it is not the world you created.

When I heard that Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert were doing Dune novels set during the time of the Butlerian Jihad I was very excited. I figured with them going so far into the past it would not matter that much if the story had alot of inconsistancies-many records were lost from that time period anyway. I figured I would be able to enjoy novels set in the Dune universe and, since I am not attached to any of the characters in the novel, who cares how K.J.A. and B.H. portray them. Plus many questions could be answered:
How did the feud begin between House Atreides and House Harrkonen?
How did the Spacing Guild get its beginning?
How did the Bene Gesserit begin?
How was the first Mentat developed?

The ground work for all of those questions to be answered was laid out splendidly in the first book-The Butlerian Jihad. The groundwork was being laid for the answers to the questions I had about the Spacing Guild, the Butlerian Jihad, The Fremen, the Bene Gesserit, the strict ban on thinking machines. Sadly, the second and third book focused mostly on wars and fighting. It did answer the questions but in a very unsatisfactory way-I was hoping for brie and wine followed by prime rib and chocolate mousse and instead got cheese whiz on ritz crackers with Boones Farm followed by salisbury steak and instant jello pudding.

All in all I highly reccomend reading it for any fan of the Dune novels. I am still looking forward to book 7 which they will supposedly start now. I am sure they will botch the attempt but supposedly Frank Herbert left a rough draft and perhaps they will gently change that.