It's been quite a while since I've read such a passionate and entertaining Dune rant!:PWith The Winds of Dune (Canada, USA, Europe) now on the shelves, Adam "Wert" Whitehead goes all out and doesn't pull any punches while discussing Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Here's an excerpt:
The new Dune books were revealed to be what, in fairness, a lot of less-invested SF commentators had been saying for years: a cynical cash-grab designed to exploit a respected intellectual property and turn it into a franchise. Because the authors knew that this would go down like a lead balloon with the fans, the importance of these 'notes' and 'outlines' had been inflated many times until they became some kind of oracular vision, Frank Herbert guiding their writing hands from beyond the grave. The truth of the matter is that if these notes didn't even tell them who the bad guys were, the notes could not have been very comprehensive at all. Oh sure, I think they exist - the stuff with loads of past Dune characters being resurrected as gholas (so they can re-examine their lives and the impact of their decisions five thousand years on) does actually sound like a Frank Herbert idea - but I think we're possibly talking about some very rough, "What if?" brainstorming ideas, certainly nothing to hang a dozen more novels on.
[...]
The worst part of all of this is that when I went to reread the original Dune itself a couple of years back, I found myself completely unable to get into it. The sound of Frank Herbert spinning in his grave made it impossible to concentrate on the text.
Can you feel the love!?!
Read the full piece here.
P. S. Wert, GRRM told me that he really enjoys your blog and your reviews.:-)
6 commentaires:
Personally I find Adam to be the best blogger/reviewer out there for the genre. He's not as pretentious as some and not as mediocre as others. also he has a good variety of SF, F, Movies, TV, games, everything.
i'm completely in agreement with this review, though had i written it i would have probably included a lot more corpse raping metaphors.
Its plain jealousy that authors like Anderson/Brian herbert, Modesitt and others receive(due to their prodigious volumes of material) from the likes of 'net fans who have never written a book or who keep claiming they have one coming! lol
Nah, not jealousy. I used to be a somewhat hardcore Dune fan, I enjoyed the House novels, but the Jihad novels just left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. Very very bad, for pretty much the same reasons Wert stated.
I haven't read Dune 7 yet, not sure I ever will, and I have no intention of ever reading any new book by that duo. Paul of Dune? Winds of Dune? WTF? They dropped right off my radar. Wert is so right when he said they should have ended it right there after the grand finale.
They're bloated books, twice as long as most original Dune books with barely a fraction of meaningful content.
C.B.
Ive always meant to get around to reading dune bit i never have ... I hope they don't turn WOT into something like this
"Its plain jealousy that authors like [...] receive(due to their prodigious volumes of material) from the likes of 'net fans who have never written a book"
And the repeated assertion, that rationally expressed literary criticism has anything to do 'jealousy' is an indicator of stupidity and lack of eduction.
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