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| Paul of Dune | 
 enlarge | Authors: Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
Publisher: Tor Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $12.35
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New (53) Used (18) Collectible (5) from $12.20
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 1249
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.8
ISBN: 0765312948
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765312945
ASIN: 0765312948
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New!!! bce
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Product Description
Frank Herbert's Dune ended with Paul Muad’Dib in control of the planet Dune. Herbert’s next Dune book, Dune Messiah, picked up the story several years later after Paul’s armies had conquered the galaxy. But what happened between Dune and Dune Messiah? How did Paul create his empire and become the Messiah? Following in the footsteps of Frank Herbert, New York Times bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are answering these questions in Paul of Dune. The Muad’Dib’s jihad is in full swing. His warrior legions march from victory to victory. But beneath the joy of victory there are dangerous undercurrents. Paul, like nearly every great conqueror, has enemies--those who would betray him to steal the awesome power he commands. . . . And Paul himself begins to have doubts: Is the jihad getting out of his control? Has he created anarchy? Has he been betrayed by those he loves and trusts the most? And most of all, he wonders: Am I going mad? Paul of Dune is a novel everyone will want to read and no one will be able to forget.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Best of the Herbert-Anderson continuation of the Dune saga September 29, 2008
64 out of 70 found this review helpful
Though I'm still not a fan of the writing style of the Herbert-Anderson team (more on this later), I have to say that "Paul of Dune" is by far their best effort to date in this new series of Dune novels. Here's why I say this.
1. It's longer. The leisurely pace avoids the screenplay rush of the first few books of this new series of Dune novels.
2. The plot is suitably intricate.
3. The history of Paul, Jessica and Alia as well as the fascinating Count Fenring are fleshed out in interesting detail, as are other characters such as Shaddam IV, Wensicia, and Irulan.
4. The book has an interesting dual timeline that flows well--you do come to expect the shift to the alternate story line when it occurs. This technique is not easy to do, and it makes for interesting, episodic reading.
5. The concluding four or five chapters are by far the best, but--seem as if they were written first. I got the unmistakable impression that the end was the first part of the book to be finished. Was it? I don't know.
Episodic can be good--and bad. There are two timelines (young Paul, and the Jihad after Paul becomes Emperor.) But they devolve into episodes because the drive towards the culmination of events in the timeline, which would be Dune Messiah of the original series, seems hazy at best.
There is a lot about the jihad, the war to unite the universe under the Fremen and Paul-Muad'Dib. There is a lot of intrigue of the minor houses alluded to by Frank Herbert and expanded well by the authors. But the episodes in this timeline ultimately do not drive powerfully to the conclusion. They just don't entirely hang together, though they are exciting in and of themselves. The new material in the life of young Paul is less satisfying--the characters are familiar names but hardly seem the same. As usual, the fleshing-out of characters is poorly handled and sketchy at best. And the conversation style is glib and contemporary, not fitting the original style. This is problematic, because we know the names of the characters, we know their motivations, but we now see a different person at almost the same point in time as in the original series. It's jarring--and disappointing.
Worse yet, however, is the writing. Sad to say, even though this book is hugely improved, as were the last two or three previous (Hunters of Dune, in particular,) the writing is positively an example of what NOT to do in fiction. Silly adjectives are used in abundance. The authors don't show the reader, they tell the reader. (For example, "Her beautiful gown was spattered with blood." No, no, no. Show me why the gown is beautiful as in "The cobweb-silk lace of her wedding gown was soaked crimson in her own blood") There are sentences following others that use "he" or "him" but the previous paragraph is about someone else. You have to stop and figure out whom the author is now writing about. And the chapters are clearly written either by one author or another. (And one author is worse than the other, but I don't know which one, so don't ask.)
The thoughts of the characters are flat and facile, the sentences often end in cliches or in a modern style not in keeping with the imperial formalities of the Dune Empire. The shift to the high language is jarring.
If ONLY, as Kurt Vonnegut once remarked about Kilgore Trout, the brilliant but bad sci-fi writer in his novels, he could learn to write. There ARE good courses and workshops on what to do and what not to do. The Herbert-Anderson team has great ideas and concepts. If they could apply decent writing techniques, we'd have a series worthy of the original.
Recommended, with reservations, but still, the finest of the new series without a doubt.
____________________
My ranking for my reviews is as follows:
Five Stars: a must read or no flaws apparent to me, perfectly written, superb
Four Stars: good! but has a few small thing I take issue with, either in writing style or in content
Three Stars: Like a three star movie that's good for a rainy evening when nothing else is on the tv, it's readable, has content worth looking at, but the flaws in writing overshadow the overall achievement of the book.
Two Stars: Read it if you like that kind of thing, but the book (or other item) is pretty terrible.
One Star: Never should have seen the light of day.
 0 Stars September 18, 2008
49 out of 76 found this review helpful
Paul of Dune is another poor attempt at writing in the Duniverse. It is obvious that this duo of authors has learned nothing from their previous 8 books and are severely lacking knowledge of the Duniverse. They add things in that contradict the original 6, for example: it is known that the Tleilaxu are religious fanatics in this book, although that was not revealed until Heretics of Dune to the other factions in the books, some millenia later. This and countless other inconsistencies and complete disregard for the legacy of Dune and its author Frank Herbert have made me give it a one star rating, although it really doesn't even deserve that. Poor writing, predictable plots, poor character development (although these characters have been developed in the books by Frank Herbert, they are badly represented in this book) and a need for action and one upmanship make this a book you definately should not read.
0 Stars, a travesty and disgraceful piece of unedited fan fiction that does not understand the original September 19, 2008
43 out of 69 found this review helpful
I sat down to read Paul of Dune with much trepidation, Hunters and Sandworms were atrocious examples of writing that I debated long and hard if i should even attempt to slog through the moronic prose and cardboard characterization that are earmarks of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
PoD continues with a familiar format, very short chapters, telling instead of showing, no inner monologues, blatant insertion of their own creations that contradict the work done by Frank Herbert (details below), and utter disregard for the themes of the Dune Universe.
The authors attempt to confuse us with inept smoke and mirrors to explain their blatant rewriting of the entire Dune Universe. According to the revisionist view Paul was born on Kaitain,completely ignoring Paul's fathers statement to him:
"Seeing the direction of his father's stare, Paul thought of the wet skies out there--a thing never to be seen on Arrakis from all accounts--and this thought of skies put him in mind of the space beyond. "Are the Guild ships really big?" he asked.
The Duke looked at him. "This will be your first time off planet," he said. "Yes, they're big. We'll be riding a Heighliner because it's a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner--we'll be just a small part of the ship's manifest."
If the authors had read Dune as they claim to have, they would know that Leto never lied to Paul ever!
The Muadru have been mentioned in every single book the authors have written for Dune since The Machine Crusade, yet not once in the original six Dune novels written by Frank Herbert are they mentioned. Yet the authors have inserted their own creation wholesale into the original works without any regard for the originals.:
Paul says, "There appears to be a linguistic connection between the Fremen and the Muadru, but the latter race vanished at independent sites all over the galaxy--suggesting a terrible cataclysm that took them all at once."
There are no other races in the Dune universe, just humans and variations of humans, the inclusion of a mysterious alien race shows a total lack of understanding of the Dune Universe.
Princess Irulan gets worked over pretty good as well.
"...and how Princess Irulan becomes his biographer, propagandist, and myth-maker, willing to doctor history as she sees fit."
This statement form the TOR newsletter indicates that the growing dissent against the wholesale destruction of Frank's work is not the actions of a talifan's, the authors in order to cover their inconsistencies, use Irulan as a scapegoat because you know, we are better writers and have written more Dune books in less time than Frank ever did so everything he wrote was just the work of a propagandist.
Duke Leto's cairn. The authors have Paul create this massive shrine yet in Children of Dune, the cairn is still very simple and plain, not the ornate monstrosity the authors describe, yet again an example that they did not read the original works at all.
Total misunderstanding of the Fremen culture. No Fremen at this time would ever yield a Honor Challenge. Ever! Death is the only outcome.
The book is also poorly edited, actually i wonder if it was edited at all, in one scene Paul is fighting anonymously along side his troops yet does not even know the name of the planet he is on and the next moment he does without explanation. Sloppy and very poor. I have tutored eight grade students with better writing skills than these two authors. The lack of any editing is painfully clear.
The end result of Paul of Dune is a terrible, terrible piece of fan fiction that is a waste of ones time, show's zero respect for the works it is based on, is another example of rewriting and destroying one of the seminal works if American Science Fiction, and like much of today's popular works, complete utter crap with no value whatsoever.
Yes, I have a copy of Paul of Dune, a gift from a former employee, so don't bother with that line of attack
 Thought-Provoking Sequel September 20, 2008
25 out of 50 found this review helpful
How did Paul Muad'Dib go from powerful, idealistic hero-turned-emperor at the end of Dune to disillusioned demigod at the beginning of Dune Messiah? This book explores that process against a backdrop of the jihad that Paul himself unleashed. Engrossing and insightful, this is one of the best novels in the Dune Saga.
And the violation of Frank Herbert's legacy continues to continue... September 25, 2008
25 out of 31 found this review helpful
I find it ludicrous that my previous review on this abomination was deleted, despite the fact that I gave out several good points as to why this book was a bad one. Yet, there's all these shill five-star reviews for this book that make it clear that they didn't actually read the book. For shame.
If you're a person who hasn't read this book and are reading this review, then please know that many one-star reviews for this book were deleted, to up the overall rating of this book and that many shill, vague five-star reviews were added to increase the overall rating as well. If you want to see what this book is really like, then read any review below a four-star rating.
Sigh. Where do we start? The cardboard characters? The plot inconsistencies? The contradictions with Frank Herbert's books?
Again, another unnecessary addition to the Dune series. If Brian and Kevin had put all their effort into writing Dune 7 than piddling around with two prequel trilogies, then we MIGHT have a worthy read.
But no. They just couldn't stop at Dune 7 and move on to go back to writing their own original series. No. Dune is their cash cow, and they're going to milk it, by gum!
Here, we see an wholly unnecessary novel. 'Dune Messiah' was about the consequences of Paul's Jihad. That was what Frank Herbert was concentrating on. He wanted to show us the consequences of Paul's vision, and not waste time with explaining about all of the battles on various planets and what not. And we were happy with that, because Frank Herbert wrote about what was relevant, and though sometimes it's fun to see how things happened or what happened to make things the way they were in the future, in the Dune series this was not missed because Herbert had a greater message to share with us. (which was completely ignored in Hunters/Sandworms of Dune, BTW)
Here we are presented with a book that spends a good amount of time in the past in Paul's childhood - entirely unnecessary as the House trilogy was - and all you can do is bang your head in frustration. The Harkonnen/Fenrig offspring that was hinted at in the canon Dune books was supposed to be just that - a tempting little rumor that made us think. Here, it's ridiculous. The Fremen are also very out of character, and the editing mistakes in this book are downright laughable. Contradictions are abound - in this book, Paul has been offplanet several times before the family move to Arrakis, yet in the original Dune novels, Frank Herbert makes it clear that Paul has never been offplanet, and Arrakis was his first trip away from home. This is but one of many mistakes and contradictions that plague this... this... "book".
Many things are told, not shown. Frank Herbert was wonderful at putting in details here and there that add up to the greater picture, without wasting time on useless fluff and filler. But here in Paul of Dune, so much time is wasted on so many things, and the characters of Dune are not quite the same here in Paul of Dune, and there were far too many Brian/Kevin-created characters for my liking.
If you MUST read this book out of curiosity, then go to the library. Don't waste a single penny.
The six books by Frank Herbert, along with the Dune Encyclopedia, are canon, and nothing but. Brian and Kevin's books are poorly written fanfiction at best, and an utter and complete abomination at worst.
Repeat after me, my fellow Dune fans. This is the litany against the False Dune books.
I must not fear the false Dune books.
The false Dune books is the mind-killer.
The false Dune books is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face the false Dune books.
I will permit it to pass over me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the false Dune books has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
(Originally, the fifth line was 'permit it to pass over me and through me', but I do not want the false Dune books to pass through me, no way!)
Repeat that Litany, my fellow Dune fans, and do not fear. There are only six (or seven, including the Encyclopedia) Dune books. No more, no less. The books written by Brian and Kevin are nothing but a blasphemy, and I await with bated breath (in disgust) for Jessica of Dune.
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