On 2010-03-07 Patrick J. Callahan, La Crosse, WI USA wrote: It has been many years since I read any of the volumes in Frank Herbert´s original Dune series. The first of these was published in 1965, over 40 years ago. As best I recall, I read three or four of these releases shortly after they came out. I am now a senior citizen -- I would have probably been a university student at that remote date. Consequently, I find it mystifying that many hostile reviewers are pillorying this book with comparisons to first volumes half a century in the past. Bear in mind -- the Sandworms of Dune was published in 2007. This is 42 years later. Can´t we find any other basis to critique this book, except that it fails to jibe with a book that most of us have long forgotten?
I liked Sandworms of Dune. It falls into the general category of ´future war,´ an honored sci-fi tradition that began way back with Jack Williamson´s ´Humanoids,´ and has moved on through such gifted writers as David Drake, David Weber, Keith Laumer, and others. We have here a large canvas to paint on -- a galactic war spreading over parsecs and centuries. Sandworms of Dune, which runs nearly 500 pages of rather compact type, has the scope to take on a galactic war.
No one mentions the characters. The authors constructed some characters that I found quite fascinating. There´s Sheeana, the Bene Gesserit who controls the no-ship, a kilometer-long starship of mysterious and possibly alien origin. There´s Murbella, a Reverend Mother who leads the Bene Gesserits -- a woman of resolve and courage who really comes alive as a strategist and warlord supreme. Waff was a fun character -- a slightly nutty old man who bred and restored the sandworms -- dying but doughty to the end. These characters and many others -- including the ´traitor´ Yueh -- drew me in and drew me along. If this book is so bad, how was I drawn to read nearly 500 pages in two days?
Some poor soul in one of the other ´pan´ reviews claims that the current authors cannot write. Lord! On the level of style and sentence structure, this book is replete with skillfully turned, complex sentences. Take the following: ´Murbella felt sickened to think of all the unprepared acolytes, spice-harvesting teams in the dune belt, transport drivers, architects and construction workers, weather planners, greenhouse gardeners, cleaners, bankers, artists, archive workers, pilots, technicians and medical assistants. All the underpinnings of Chapterhouse itself.´ Notice the structure of this sentence, and notice the extent to which long members of the list are succeeded by shorter and shorter constructions, building an acceleration of the sentence. The poor soul who sneeringly disdains the English-language ability of Herbert and Anderson really doesn´t know good English sentence structure from bad.
The sweep of this novel is epic. It comes out of the past, building on the previous books if only as an outline of future history, and resolves in a battle that is not a battle. The heroes are not heroes in the end. The villains are not villains. The obvious is not obvious. The final 100 pages bring reversal after reversal. Even the ´worldmind´ Omnius turns out to be a pawn. The plotting is brilliant. In fact, I went on Amazon and ordered the prequel to this book by the same authors, ´The Hunters of Dune.´
I suppose I will take a drubbing for challenging the ´established wisdom´ that the book is wretched. That it is a waste. Why the seeming anger and hostility against this novel? I really am not in a position to psychoanalyze the angry Dune cultists. But . . . I think my ´nose´ smells good fiction when I see it. I read 500 pages of novel in two days, unable to go to sleep at night until knocking off another chapter.
You know that almost everyone who has reviewed this book hates it and pans it. Some of you know me. Who are you going to believe? Choose as you will --
Best to all--. And summed up by saying A trip down memory lane . . . . .. Currently Sandworms of Dune has an overall rating of 6 over 10.
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Tor Books claimed At the end of Frank Herbert´s final novel, Chapterhouse: Dune, a ship carrying a crew of refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. The fugitives used genetic technology to revive key figures from Dune´s past--including Paul Muad´Dib and Lady Jessica--to use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them.Based directly on Frank Herbert´s final outline, which lay hidden in two safe-deposit boxes for a decade, Sandworms of Dune will answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades: the origin of the Honored Matres, the tantalizing future of the planet Arrakis, the final revelation of the Kwisatz Haderach, and the resolution to the war between Man and Machine. This breathtaking new novel in Frank Herbert’s Dune series has enough surprises and plot twists to please even the most demanding reader.
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