Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Sandworms of Dune
Book Review: Engaging
Summary: 4 Stars
I was very hesitant when I picked up the first Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson Dune book, as I thought "here we go, why not let a great epic stay great, albeit incomplete?".
Curiosity made me pick up the book, to read more about the Dune world that I had enjoyed so much in the past. To my surprise, I found the new books as engaging as the old ones.
To those who compare the new books to those written by FH I suggest read the cover. It is not the same writers! Very different styles, but the new books are great reads as well.
I found Sandworms of Dune, as well as all other "new" Dune books to go at a much faster pace, keeping up with the overall plot line while enriching it too. Shorter chapters, but action packed. Also, while I did not see the "need" to tie everything neatly with a bow, this bow is quite dignified, even meritorious.
Book Review: Entertaining but not too deep
Summary: 3 Stars
Some of the negative reviews made me hesitant to pick up the book and finish off the story, but I'm glad I did. I certainly wouldn't call this a great work of literature on its own, but I did find myself engrossed for the couple of days it took to read the book. It's a fast-paced action-adventure built into a mythological masterpiece universe. But it doesn't add much to the original work other than finishing up the loose ends of the story line, even if the conclusions were a bit too "happy ever after"...
I think in retrospect the big flaw in Brian and Kevin's work is that they decided to tell the story of the machine wars through the prequels. It could have been much more intriguing and mysterious to have used the Butlerian Jihad as a slowly developing back story to what Duncan and the Sisterhood were facing in figuring out how to deal with "the Enemy"...I suspect that is how Frank would have handled that information. The sisters had "other memory" after all. And Brian and Kevin REALLY missed an opportunity to give the rest of the characters a huge Ah HAA!! in understanding what Leto II was trying to do as the Tyrant.
So though I found the book to be entertaining and worthwhile, I do agree with one thing some of the more negative commenters suggest: The series should end with this book. It has all been said and played out...
Book Review: Entertaining, but lacking
Summary: 3 Stars
I was looking forward to a better "Dune" book . It's been over twenty five years since I first read Frank Herbert's "Dune" back in high school back in the 1980s. Every other Frank Herbert work in the "Dune" series was also quite good.
Brian Herbert has taken his father's place in developing the final "trilogy". Like his prior book ("Hunters of Dune"), I still have the same complaints: a more tightly-written work could have been made, but he's busy weaving his own ideas from his prequels into this finale.
As I said before, the "Dune" legacy deserves a conclusion that rates better than "okay". It's good reading, it's just not as entrancing as his father's writing.
Book Review: Excellent continuation of a classic story
Summary: 5 Stars
It must be very difficult to write a continuation to a well-loved sci-fi classic even if your Father did write the original. Brian Herbert has succeeded, along with co-writer Kevin Anderson, to build on the original in an almost seamless manner. I have a few nagging doubts about certain developments but all in all this is the culmination of an excellent series of books. Brian and Kevin - well done!Book Review: Extremely Dissapointing Conclusion
Summary: 1 Stars
If you like to see everything you care about (i.e. the millenium-long human cause against the machines and the heros and billions of people that died to combat them) mean nothing and the whole series of Dune heros that are brought back have meanlingness roles, then you will love this novel. What the heck were Anderson and Herbert thinking when they plotted this dismal conclusion? And why did we need to read hundreds of pages on the internal wars on the Honored Matres in these two final books when they didn't even play a role in the conclusion? The characters you want to suceed, and the long awaited final victory of man over machine do not happen in this novel. And not only that, it makes most of the previous Dune works inconsequental, as those plots and characters don't impact the ridiculous ending that H&A came up with. What a sad conclusion given that the 4 novels preceding this by H&A seemed to be building towards a spectactular conclusion. Maybe some day they will go back to the drawing board on completely redo the Dune Conlcusion novel(s) -- they could treat Sandworms of Dune as a dream that Idaho has while in the shower akin to that really bad season on Dallas in the 80's where we learned later that is was just Bobby's bad shower dream. This novel is the book equivalent to the sf movie, Highlander 2 - The Quickening -- i.e. a movie that wanted to make you throw up and forget about it, but that nevertheless was so inept and depressing to your senses that you kept getting irrated about it for years afterwards.