metromachine t1_is6evf4 wrote
The source material is “Sisterhood of Dune” written by the original Dune author’s son. Can any dune fans attest if it’s as good as the original books?
sgthombre t1_is6ht2h wrote
Brain Herbert and Kevin J Anderson together are basically public enemy #1 of the Dune book fandom, but I'll at least say that that I can't recall anyone specifically calling this book out as especially bad. Never read it myself though.
We should just all be thankful that HBO is not using their work to make a show about the Butlerian Jihad.
drupoxy t1_is6m2sn wrote
The problem is that it's written in the same cookie cutter style as the rest. Every chapter follows a different character and ends right as it's getting interesting. It means that you're constantly given cliffhangers to keep you reading and by the time you finish it has become apparent that you've just been strung along without almost any payoff.
Their books are about 3 times as big as they need to be and pack way too much plot that ends up being largely irrelevant, with the end result being that it's hard to even remember what happened. Like one of those Netflix Marvel shows that stretched a great 2 hour movie into a middling 10 hour season of TV.
And finally, their books don't actually exist to tell standalone stories and rather exist to write plots that are justified by their eventual relevance to his father's much better books. This means they'll have half a dozen or more completely independent plots that never meet. The Butlerian Jihad books are the worst about this and would be improved by taking that different non-intersecting plots and giving each their own book that spans the full time range. As it stands, the reader gets 100 lb of mediocre plot dumped across half a dozen or more completely different plot lines with no indication that it will ever converge into some actual coherence.
>We should just all be thankful that HBO is not using their work to make a show about the Butlerian Jihad.
Yeah, as written by these guys, those books would be expensive as hell to film and absolutely not worth it.
MrGulo-gulo t1_is7k09y wrote
Why are they enemy number 1? Cause they're shitty writers?
DrSpacemanSpliff t1_is7si64 wrote
They are shitty writers, yes. But the most awful thing they did was “complete” Frank Herbert’s original series (he died before writing the last book). They shoved their own original prequel characters as the big bad, and changed other parts that were set up with the cliffhanger of Chapterhouse: Dune. Then they claimed that it was based off of some discovered “Dune 7” notes that they claim to have found among Frank’s things. The book so so clearly has nothing from Frank (maybe one specific thing), and so he basically exploited his father’s name and the goodwill of the fans with a complete lie.
The fact that he writes shitty EU books doesn’t bother me, but it’s the fact that he claims to have completed the story the way his father wanted, when in reality it is used to advertise his prequel series by reviving characters from thousands of years before with no other reason.
It’s a slap in the face.
book1245 t1_is7zn3q wrote
I've read Frank's original ending for Chapterhouse in his notes (No joke, there's a college library near LA that has a bunch of his papers and drafts). Daniel and Marty were exactly who we thought they were, and certainly NOT Thinking Machines.
DrSpacemanSpliff t1_is840vo wrote
It even says in the book that they are advanced Facedancers. It’s clear that they were an extension of the idea of a FD not having a “core” or base personality, and would take on their copied personas. That in the scattering, they had absorbed so many memories that some new “self” had emerged. They maybe even had copied someone with prescience and even with deep other memory, seeing as they were expressing ancient earth customs.
IMO they were meant to be the ultimate Abomination, where another soul (other memory) didn’t take over someone’s body because there was no one “home” in the first place.
I think there was going to be a significant time jump as well.
drupoxy t1_is7uhv3 wrote
I think I laid it out pretty extensively there but the other reply to your comment sums it up. I’d also add that not only do they pretend to complete Frank’s books but they retcon the events of his first Dune book or two in order to shoehorn their characters into their in-betweenquels
FlaveC t1_is8xgjx wrote
They're both very shitty writers but Anderson is in a league of his own. The man is probably the worst scifi writer I have ever read -- he knows nothing about science, he makes no effort to do any research, and he delivers book after book of pathetic schlock scifi just for the paycheck. He's the scifi equivalent of those nameless authors who churn out an endless stream of bland romance novels.
FexMab t1_is6infd wrote
I should probably thank you for saving my time. I'm currently working my way through the first books and on the fence about looking into the rest of the expanded series.
militantcookie t1_is6kx9o wrote
They are not entirely garbage but a very different type of story telling. More mainstream, more predictable and... Plot holes.
Major_Pomegranate t1_is7evfj wrote
Not to mention retconning parts of frank's works that don't line up with the story brian wants to tell and making the whole story a shitty battlestar galactica rip off when the original series had nothing to do with that in the slightest
MrGulo-gulo t1_is7g62f wrote
Get to God Emperor at least.
-Sargatanas- t1_is7n3ta wrote
Only read book 1 and 2, and imo they’re some of the best books ever written, but I can understand if they’re not for everyone
moocowincog t1_is6xt2p wrote
Wasn't there some subplot in one of those books about this kick-ass society of super swordsmen who trained their whole life.. and the book followed that story for half the book, and then a comet came and blew them all up the end.
drupoxy t1_is6g5sl wrote
Like trying to compare erotic Spongebob fan fiction to The Brothers Karamazov. They were barely even written by Brian Herbert. A vast majority of the writing was done by Kevin J Anderson, who is a complete hack. He does his writing by taking long walks and just freestyling the prose into a microphone, which he then transcribes when he gets home with only a bit of tweaking. Everything about them is terrible, there is not a single redeeming quality.
sgthombre t1_is6hy28 wrote
> done by Kevin J Anderson, who is a complete hack
It's lowkey inspiring that Kevin J Anderson has had a writing career as long and as successful as he has when his best work is a few mediocre Star Wars novels in the 90's. If he can get published, you can too!
Delicious-Tachyons t1_is6v29h wrote
He's a nice guy. I've met him.
Is he a complete hack? No. That's not a nice thing to say considering writing novels and having them coherent and interesting enough to read through is pretty fucking difficult. How do I know? I'm still struggling on book #1.
Are his books just kinda OK? Yeah. But the man has written hundreds of novels. HUNDREDS. He's the guy when you want a novel tie-in to your TV/movie/game.
He can crank something out in a week or two. I'm not kidding. It just flies out of his fingers.
Schmilsson1 t1_isapzai wrote
you're struggling because you're not a novelist.
>He can crank something out in a week or two.
No shit. that's what hacks do. they don't spend years fussing over work.
Delicious-Tachyons t1_isatxss wrote
> you're struggling because you're not a novelist.
always saying such nice things
metromachine t1_is6hqjr wrote
Damn, well hopefully they do their own thing then. I was very skeptical when I searched the book and saw it was written in 2012.
Paulofthedesert t1_is746k7 wrote
> Can any dune fans attest if it’s as good as the original books?
Brian Herbert & his writing partner are absolutely awful. Like horrific. It's all 100% a cash grab
bravesgeek t1_is6n22p wrote
They'll have the take the name and a few key plot points only. There's far too many storylines to cover that don't have anything to do with the Sisterhood.
PloppyTheSpaceship t1_is74tvp wrote
This seems to be based around it, though I don't believe this character was in it.
Brian and Kevin's books are passable, so long as you don't compare them to Frank's. The original Dune, for instance, was self-contained and a good little adventure with lots of other stuff, but it seldom flitted from the main adventures of Paul - and when it did so, it did so with purpose.
By comparison, Brian and Kevin's are all "trilogies" and try to tell a multitude of branching storylines, taking place in a myriad of differing locations. It can be quite disjointed - in one chapter you can be in a space battle, and in the next a princess wonders what to wear to the ball. The tease is that storylines will come together but that rarely happens, and is rarely satisfactory.
Although their latest trilogy, the Caladan trilogy, does reduce this significantly. It does, however, have a fair few bits of bad "wtf" writing, as in one instance Hawat hypnotised Paul in the middle of the street to believe the Baron is about to kill everyone, for shits and giggles obvs.
Frank Herbert's books are left untouched by Brian and Kevin's, if only because it is impossible to confuse the two. Brian and Kevin just don't have the plots and are a very different style of writing. You can read the six core Dune books perfectly well without reading Brian and Kevin's - they add nothing - and whenever anyone nee to the Dune series suggests reading in "chronological" order - so 12 Brian and Kevin books before getting to Dune - we will advise them to rethink and go publication order.
So if you can accept them for being "stories in the same universe as Dune", rather than any sort of continuation, then you can get some enjoyment out of them. There is some bad writing in them - and I've reviewed the three most recent - but if you can plot through it, and the endless recounting of motivation (that really annoys me, and I begin to wonder if it was done just got padding, as each chapter the characters seem to want to recount the story so far a lot of the time), then they're entertaining brain fodder.
militantcookie t1_is6kqf0 wrote
Read originals and books by son and Co. It's not great but not that bad for TV material either. We've seen a lot worse stories the past few years even on high budget TV productions. I have serious doubts though how you can drop an audience in this story which requires you to know the events of 3 more books for the character motivations to make sense.
Papatheosis t1_is746lq wrote
I think the only part I remember about this book was one of the woman discovering the space folding math, or whatever it is they use to navigate.
If I recall correctly she used a bunch of spice, which had only recently been discovered, and becomes the first space navigator. The fish people who live in spice tanks.
YouJabroni44 t1_is8ktqo wrote
Can't say that the fandom is fond of Brian Herbert's work.
Autisthrowaway304 t1_is8z2k6 wrote
Nothing the son has done has ever been good, read the original author books and avoid the rest.
Magnacor8 t1_is6rfkc wrote
Have you read the original books? The original Dune books aren't exactly the stuff exciting TV is made of in the first place, especially after the first book. They are very philosophical and reflective with a Lovecraftian horror for a protagonist. It's more like Ayn Rand than Star Wars or Game of Thrones. Deviation from the original storyline is probably for the best, just because you don't have to follow the script since fans won't really have the same level of expectations. They can aim for something a bit different and capture a different aspect of the Duniverse than what the movies focus on.
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