Hunters of Dune
Just finished ‘Hunters of Dune’ by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. For those of you not in the know its the ‘missing 7th book’ from Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Apparently this book is written from only recently discovered notes that Herbert Sr. wrote before his death.
But, is it any good?
Well, yes.
The book picks up where the last book ended and manages to provide a reasonable explanation of the cliffhanger that Chapterhouse: Dune ended on.
However, there are minor problems. The main one of these is that it’s not enough to have read only Frank Herbert’s books in order, but that you also have to have read most (as I did) or all of the prequels that the two authors of this book have done.
It’s not the total rip-off that it sounds as if you just read ‘The Butlerian Jihad’ and ‘The Machine Crusade’ - (the only two I definately know I read) you get all the extra background info that you need.
However, one cannot but read the book and wonder how Frank Herbert himself planned to introduce the concepts that the other two have introduced in six other books in a single novel. On the other hand there is the fact that when these ‘new’ Dune books appeared the last Dune book had appeared something like ten years before and so a reintroduction had to be in order.
Anyway for those who are wondering whether to continue with these books - I would definately tell them to, the rest of you, if your interested in reading a very good sci-fi novel (and are willing to ignore the film version) read the first novel Dune and see from there..
[...] I’ve no idea if it’ll be any good but I seem to recall enjoying the previous book ‘Hunters of Dune’ so hopefully. Oddly enough then, after going and buying this book I see on Whitechapel that [...]