Sisterhood of Dune [Hardcover]

All of the works that Anderson and Herbert have done seemed like filler to me. They are Sci-Fi side dishes to the main course that was Frank Herbert's Dune legacy. Now they give us Sisterhood and it doesn't even make side dish status. It feels more like the odd Jell-o salad with stuff floating in it that some crazy aunt brings to Christmas dinner and no one eats. Strained metaphor aside, I tried to like this book. I was looking forward to learning more about the sisterhood and was disappointed. They tried so hard to neatly tie all of the left over threads together into something cohesive and all they did was make a mess. Also, the whole sub-plot with Vorian on Arakis felt tacked on. Almost like they said, "We can't have a dune book without Dune." "Oh yea, and we like Vorian, he is such a macho mans man." Thus a very bland sub plot was born. It felt like the old resse's commercial, You got your Vorian on in my Arakis.....

The Sisterhood of Dune is the latest installment by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson in the add-ons to Frank Herbert's classic Dune series. To be honest, it's a series I gave up on after the The Battle of Corrin--the third book in the opening Legends of Dune group--after it continued a downward spiral from a solid if not inspiring book one (The Butlerian Jihad). It's several years and books later, and I wish I could say Sisterhood recaptured my interest, but unfortunately I found many of the same problems that caused me to give up the earlier series.

The human race has won against the machines, but the Butlerians, led by Manford Torondo, are trying to force the complete rejection of nearly all technology (while blind or self-rationalizing about their own uses of said tech of course). Meanwhile, the Bene Gesserit is in its embryonic stages as the very first Reverend Mother, Raquella Berto-Anirul, continues to try to find a way to create others in her Sisterhood, even as they explore the possibilities of a human breeding program, aided by "thinking machines" that would bring the wrath of the Butlerians down on them. As these two groups grow in power, the Corinno Emperor is having a hard time solidifying his own and standing up against the Butlerians especially, even as other groups and schools and factions rise and fall--the Suk school, the Swordmaster school, the Mentat school led by Gilbertus Albans--who has his own dangerous secret, the Venport Space Fleet, which is the Navigators Guild in its nascent stage, and so on. Along with all the galactic politics, more personal motives arise as two young Harkonnen heirs seek vengeance on the disappeared Vorian Atreides who enters back on stage after long absence. And it's a Dune book, so we'll make a stop off in Arrakis and see some sand worms.

There's are always several potential pitfalls in prequels. One is that the big picture suspense is a bit lacking as we know where much of the story ends up. The other is that the books become too much of a connect-the-dots kind of mechanical adding up of the steps required to get us to where we know we're going. I can't say the book avoids either of these problems. The stop-off on Arrakis, for instance, feels especially detached and perfunctory.

As with the earlier books, characterization tends to be flat and simply presented; none of them really comes fully alive or feel uniquely themselves. The underlying pattern of ideals and principles walking the precipice (and sometimes falling over it) of fanaticism and hypocrisy is interesting, but its expression is a bit too simply and flatly presented in terms of plot, character, and prose. The structure, a lot of short little chapters is a common one I know, but it's one I've never warmed up to and I can't say it does much to enhance the reading experience here. If anything, it probably hurts characterization as we spin off so quickly from one character to another.

If you've liked the earlier books, my guess is Sisterhood of Dune is not going to feel much different and so you'll probably enjoy its plot-driven story despite the flat characterization and style and the somewhat mechanical collection of the necessary pieces to put together the original Dune story. If you've tried the earlier ones and didn't care for them, Sisterhood isn't going to be an improvement. And if you've never dipped into the Dune world at all, then grab the original which is a true must-read classic that more than earns its status. Sometimes we should leave well enough alone.

Before all these McDune books came out, Brian and Kevin claimed that they had found Frank Herbert's notes and outlines for Dune 7 on some floppies or something like that. They however have offered no evidence of said notes and/or floppies, which throws the entire matter of if there really were notes into question. The fact that Brian and Kevin's handling of Dune 7 in 'Hunters' and 'Sandworms of Dune', primarily evinced by their complete tossing out of the message of Leto's Golden Path as established by Frank Herbert, their retconning of the fact that Daniel and Marty were Face Dancers (again, established by Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse Dune) and changing them to Omnius and Erasmus (among so many of the other things they did WRONG) show us that if there really were ever notes, they did not use them.

This was exacerbated by the fact that rather than starting Dune 7 as their first project, they instead did two prequel trilogies, the House trilogy and the Butlerian Jihad trilogy (with more bad writing and retcons) before they FINALLY got around to Dune 7.

They butchered Frank Herbert's legacy with Hunters and Sandworms of Dune.

As if this was not enough, they had to do some stupid inbetween-quels, further insulting the memory of Frank Herbert with even more retcons, including an 'ultimate' retcon which basically said that anything that happened in the real Dune books were just historical inaccuracies and 'facts' that were made up by Irulan and other historians.

So basically what Brian and Kevin told us was that Frank's Dune was no longer canon, and that we are supposed to accept Brian and Kevin's poorly-written fanfiction as canon.

Not going to happen, folks. Nothing will ever top Frank Herbert's Dune, no matter how many books Brian and Kevin churn out, and I will never accept their McDune books as canon, either.

So now, after prequels, sequels, and inbetweenquels, we have a pre-sequel, a sequel to a prequel trilogy. This makes me wonder if after finishing this series as well as the Heroes of Dune series, they'll do a sequel for Hunters/Sandworms, what basically is a se-sequel. Oy very. But that's something for another day.

This book is another desperate attempt to milk a cash cow. Frank Herbert only wrote six books for Dune, and it is too bad that he died before he could do the seventh Dune book. So far, Brian and Kevin have written eleven McDune books, including this one. It's one thing to write one or two books to finish for someone who died before they could finish writing, but eleven books is just overkill (and they have more planned!!!)

While this book was actually better than most of the other McDune books they wrote (particularly the inbetweenquels and Dune 7), it still suffers much of the same problems that are rife in all of the McDune books. I found myself impatiently reading through parts just to get to the next scene because much of the story felt unneccessary or repetitive, something I found in all of the other McDune books. Frank Herbert could have handled the founding of three Schools in one book, he had a flair for painting the big picture and making us think. The other negative reviewers for this book already explain in detail what is wrong with this book, so I shan't go into it further as my review has already gotten long enough, lol.

This whole McDune debacle is actually making me think of the Star Wars franchise. At first there was just the original trilogy and a couple of other things. Now you have an seemingly endless number of novels, graphic novels, TV shows, films, and etc etc which just milk the Star Wars universe and drag it out for seemingly forever (such as resurrecting/cloning the Emperor) and now I see the same thing happening to Dune. As far as I'm concerned, only Frank Herbert's books and the Dune Encyclopedia (which was approved by Frank himself) are canon. The rest is just bad fanfiction.

I found the Dune Encyclopedia entry on the Bene Gesserit far more interesting than the story of the Sisterhood presented here. If you're dying to read this book out of curiosity, I don't see why you shouldn't - but for heaven's sakes, go to the library and borrow this so that Brian and Kevin don't get a single penny from you. The surest way to make the publishers/Brian/Kevin stop churning these out is to stop giving them money.

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