sgthombre t1_is6ht2h wrote
Reply to comment by metromachine in ‘Dune: The Sisterhood’: ‘Game Of Thrones’ Star Indira Varma Joins HBO Max Prequel Series As Empress Natalya by MarvelsGrantMan136
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.
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