Dune: House Atreides
Acclaimed SF novelist Brian Herbert is the son of Dune author Frank Herbert. With his father,
Brian wrote Man of Two Worlds and later edited The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune. Kevin J.
Anderson has written many bestsellers, alternating original SF with novels set in the X-Files
and Star Wars universes. Together they bring personal commitment and a lifelong knowledge of
the Dune Chronicles to this ambitious expansion of a series that transformed SF itself. Dune:
House Atreides chronicles the early life of Leto Atreides, prince of a minor House in the
galactic Imperium. Leto comes to confront the realities of power when House Vernius is betrayed
in an imperial plot involving a quest for an artificial substitute to melange, a substance vital
to interstellar trade that is found only on the planet Dune. Meanwhile, House Harkonnen schemes
to bring Leto into conflict with the Tleilax, and the Bene Gesserit manipulate Baron Harkonnen
as part of a plan stretching back 100 generations. In the Imperial palace, treason is afoot,
and on Dune itself, planetologist Pardot Kynes embarks on a secret project to transform
the desert world into a paradise.
Dune: House Harkonnen
Don't even think about reading House Harkonnen without reading its predecessor Dune: House
Atreides; anyone who does so risks sinking in the sands between Frank Herbert's original Dune
and this prequel trilogy by Herbert's son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson. The purist argument
that had Frank Herbert wanted to go backwards he would have done so is, at least in part,
negated by the sheer narrative verve, and by the fact that Anderson and Brian Herbert manage
to pull some genuine surprises out of this long-running space-opera. House Harkonnen is
a massive book, and there are places where it becomes plot heavy, but in following the story
of Duke Leto Atreides and the conflicts with House Harkonnen, the authors succeed in spinning
a gripping adventure while going off in some unexpected directions. Anderson, who has written
many successful Star Wars novels, has noted his particular admiration for The Empire Strikes
Back, and his desire to emulate that film's dark take on the genre. In House Harkonnen,
the conflict encompasses the tragedy of nuclear war, marked by grief and horror, vengeance
and torment, and all while the complex intrigues continue to unfold. As one character puts it:
Everything has its cost. We pay to create our future, we pay for the mistakes of the past.
We pay for every change we make--and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to change.
Ultimately this is the theme of a compelling game of consequences, choices, and responsibility,
a study of Leto's growth into power and the price of politics and love.
Dune: House Corrino
In this fully satisfying conclusion (after Dune: House Atreides and Dune: House Harkonnen) to
the authors' "House" trilogy, Emperor Shaddam Corrino tries to grasp greater power than any
emperor before him and to rule the Million Worlds solely according to his whims. On the captured
planet Ix, the research Shaddam directs into the creation of a synthetic spice, amal, that will
make him all-powerful spirals out of control, putting the entire civilization at risk. Meanwhile,
the enslavers of Ix must contend with threats from exiled Prince Rhombur Vernius, who wishes to
rule the planet instead. Tumultuous times are also in store for the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood,
whose breeding plan has been thrown off course one generation shy of its end. Tension between
the houses Atreides and Harkonnen builds to a dramatic showdown. While the intricacy of the
first prequel is absent here, so is the filler of the second. Because Herbert and Anderson are
extrapolating from someone else's ideas and characters, they tend to overuse catch phrases (like
"the Golden Lion throne") from Dune and its sequels with a resulting flatness of language. The
inevitable derivative features aside, this is a good, steady, enjoyable tale, and readers who
haven't read the first two books can easily follow the plot. A bold, red-and-gold dust jacket,
with illustration by Stephen Youll, is a real eye-catcher. Fans who will be sorry to see the end
of this series will be heartened by the hint that the Dune saga is far from over.
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