Final installment—chronologically, anyway—in the Dune series (Hunters of Dune, 2006, etc.) begun by the late Frank Herbert in 1965 and continued by his son, Brian, and collaborator Anderson.
Thousands of years in the future, the Great Enemy that threatens humanity’s survival has been revealed as Omnius, a megalomaniacal intelligent machine that survived the Butlerian Jihad, and his independent-minded sidekick Erasmus. Vengeful Omnius commands hordes of be-weaponed thinking machines and spaceships; Erasmus has consumed thousands of human personal histories in an attempt to understand the human species. The pair have created millions of undetectable Face Dancers (they can mimic any human shape) and placed them in key positions in the Spacing Guild administration, the factories of machine planet Ix and even the Sisterhood—heir to the old Atreides empire—led by Mother Commander Murbella. They have also cloned the evil Baron Harkonnen and the baron’s old foe, Paul Atreides, whom the baron has worked assiduously to corrupt. Other than the beleaguered Sisterhood, the machines are opposed by Norma Cenva, the godlike Oracle, inspiration to the traditional spice-addicted Guild Navigators, and a spaceship containing clones of famous figures from the past, including Duncan Idaho, Paul Atreides, Leto II and the Bashar Miles Teg. Everybody agrees that events are shaping up for Kralizec, the long-foretold battle at the end of time. In true Herbertian fashion, everybody has a secret agenda; everyone dreams of defeating all opposition; and each side plots to create and control an omniscient superbeing known as the Kwisatz Haderach. Let Kralizec commence. The boys do a great job in investing the plot with heft and complexity and the narrative with pace and momentum, and conveying the sheer ferocity of the betrayals and duplicities. Less felicitous are the bland characters, whose extraordinary abilities rarely come across with much conviction.
Dune lite—but for all that, a rare, rattling page-turner that no Dune adherent will pass up.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1293-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
Categories: SCIENCE FICTION | SPACE
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
55
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
This future space fantasy might start an underground craze.
It feeds on the shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian series), Aeschylus, Christ and J.R. Tolkien. The novel has a closed system of internal cross-references, and features a glossary, maps and appendices dealing with future religions and ecology. Dune itself is a desert planet where a certain spice liquor is mined in the sands; the spice is a supremely addictive narcotic and control of its distribution means control of the universe. This at a future time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation. What is needed is a Messiah. That's our hero, called variously Paul, then Muad'Dib (the One Who Points the Way), then Kwisatz Haderach (the space-time Messiah). Paul, who is a member of the House of Atreides (!), suddenly blooms in his middle teens with an ability to read the future and the reader too will be fascinated with the outcome of this projection.
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and it should interest advanced sci-fi devotees.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1965
ISBN: 0441013597
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Chilton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1965
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION
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