Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Hunters of Dune

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Hunters of Dune
Began: 1/10/2007
End: 01/12/07
Quality: Five Out of Ten.
Reason: It’s Dune!!!
Genre: Science Fiction.
Number: First.
Thoughts:

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I have been waiting to find out what happened to these characters and the dune universe for over five years, when I first finished Chapterhouse: Dune.

When Brian Herbert first starting releasing his “prequels” I picked them up and found them to be pretty horrible. Well, maybe horrible is too strong a term. I just found them to be standard science fiction and I am an elitist snob so that equals crap in my mind. Yet, I still pick them up from the library and hate every minute of it because it’s all I am going to get from the Dune Universe since Frank passed away.

Nevertheless, I was hoping that this would be different. Brian said that they found Frank’s outline for the final Dune book. I was really wishing that somehow, despite what I had previously seen from their writing, that this would be more in tune with the Frank’s original novels. And I am not trying to make it sound like Brian and Anderson are these completely horrible authors. It’s just that they are not up to par with Frank Herbert. He was a giant.

Be that as it may, I still found the novel enjoyable. I just kept thinking of it as fan fiction. I do not believe that the story they have given us is the story that Frank Herbert envisioned. I could probably take everything but Omnius. I am not even going to get into their warping of Marty and Daniel into computers instead of independent Face Dancers.

There isn’t even anything really to discuss. There are really three different stories running along here. We have the fate of the Ithaca as it travels around the universe trying to avoid Marty and Daniel. We have the fate of the New Sisterhood now headed by Mother Commander Murbella. And then we have the Face Dancer Khrone as he half works for Marty and Daniel and half does his own scheme.

I found some aspects of it to be workable in the dune universe, but it is such a pale shadow of the world that Frank Herbert created and I just cannot get over that fact.