One disappointment of Dune chronicles.

It really is a shame. I believe the intent was to have them be evolved/advanced facedancers.

I'm not sure if Herbert wanted the Machines to be the threat the Honored Matres were fleeing. If that was his idea, I doubt it would've been those two clowns Omnius and Erasmus.

I've always questioned Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson's claim that they miraculously found Frank Herbert's notes one day. And that these notes laid the groundwork to basically undo everything that Dune had set up in the previous 6 novels.

quote:

---

I'm not sure if Herbert wanted the Machines to be the threat the Honored Matres were fleeing. If that was his idea, I doubt it would've been those two clowns Omnius and Erasmus.

I've always questioned Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson's claim that they miraculously found Frank Herbert's notes one day. And that these notes laid the groundwork to basically undo everything that Dune had set up in the previous 6 novels.

---

I've always been of the opinion that if the prequels/sequels were based on Frank's notes that they were a very early draft of the way the series was going to go. That's say that initially he envisioned the machines coming back and attacking humanity. However, as he started writing the series that morphed into the Honored Matres being the attacking force instead of the machines because the adaptability or and difference within humanity is much more interesting than unchanging machines.

That said, Daniel and Marty are advanced facedancers.

Frank was writing philosophy into his novels. There was real character development.


These guys are just writing shallow, page turning action novels, designed to sell for a quick buck, nothing remotely approaching serious literature. The chapters and sentences are shorter, choppy, and characters are rarely any different at the end than at the beginning.

quote:

---

I've never read any of the post-Frank Dune stuff. Some of it is worth the time?

---

To answer this, I'm gonna be a little spoilery here.

Its hard to say. I read the prequels (The "House" books) and I liked them. Though not on the level of the original Frank novels, they did a good job of fleshing out and expanding on the Dune universe. Its just hard to know if these books reflect ideas that Frank had in his notes.

Then came the Machine Crusade books. I read the first one, and I was like "yikes, this is delving into silly territory." But I wanted to finish the series because I knew that they were planning on writing the ending of the original series, and that the ending would be based on what's in the Machine Crusade books. The books had numerous problems with established canon, and also took some serious liberties with the origins of the Bene Gesserit order as well as the Mentats.

The two books they wrote to finish the original series were bad. They almost completely ignored what was established in Frank's original six novels. As purple stated above, there was no tension to them; everyone is the same at the end of the novels as they are at the beginning. No decisions made have any sort of serious ramifications.

Also, it is strongly hinted in the OG novels that Marty and Daniel are Facedancers. The new novels retconned them to instead be the machine bad guys from the Machine Crusade novels. It was jarring, self-serving, and silly.

There were other issues with them too. One storyline that completely pissed me off was when they make water sandworms. Sandworms. In the water.

So, TL;DR version: is it worth the time? I'd read the House books first. See how you like them. Then read the machine crusade books. If they suck, don't continue.

quote:

---

Then there is Norma.

---

Jesus Christ, Norma. The Guild Navigator deity who is never mentioned in the OG novels that is now the crux of defeating the thinking machines.

Hell, she was friggin pure energy. Why would she NEED to be a guild navigator?