Dune - Battle of Corrin - Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson

Overall Rating : B- .

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A sequel in a prequel to Frank Herbert's "Dune" Trilogy. Written by his son Brian, and Kevin Anderson. Tell me, how do two authors write one story? Does one of them write the nouns, and the other one the verbs? Methinks Brian Herbert is here mostly so the family name is on the cover.

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As in any prequel, the main raison d'etre for this book is to line up everything for the original Dune episode. But the basic plot is the overused "humans versus machines" line. Gee, where have we seen that before? Terminator, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and so on. Is it now politically incorrect to slay any living beings? Can't anyone come up with a storyline that doesn't involve the evils of Artificial Intelligence?

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Literature-wise, this is "Dune Lite". Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The original Dune was an awesome book, but Dune Messiah and Children Of Dune were each a new level of tediousness and obscurity compared to their predecessors. Reading CoD was (for me at least) more of a labor than a pleasure.

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This decline in quality seems to be inherent in Trilogies. Clan of the Cave Bear is a masterpiece, interweaving a captivating storyline with a bunch of great archaeology. But its sequels go downhill quickly. Valley of Horses slowed to a crawl, and The Mammoth Hunters is nothing more than a 600-page Harlequin Romance set in caveman times. Pee-Yoo!

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And don't even get me started about Robert Jordan's Dragon Reborn series. We're on what, Book 11 now? And the plot hasn't progressed one bit since about Book 5. But I will still buy and read the newest one - out just in time for Christmas.

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But back to Dune Battle of Corrin. Overall, it keeps one's interest despite the trite storyline. Papa Herbert's chapter-beginning quotes are better (and of course, more esoteric), but at least there's less mysticism and more action in DBoC. And none of the characters (including the Bots) are the essence of pure evil and/or pure good. So we'll give it a B-, and go dust-off and re-read Dune.