Sandworms of Dune Book

***CONTAINS SPOILERS***

This is part two of Dune 7, or at least Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's interpretation of how Frank Herbert may have intended it based on a supposed outline and notes they'd found of the book. I ripped apart part one of Dune 7, Hunters of Dune, in my previous review, but believe it or not, that book was better and more enjoyable than this one, but not by much. Sandworms of Dune was one of the worst books I've ever read, in terms of plot, pacing, character development, dialogue, writing style...basically, in any category in which you would judge a book's worth, this book was the pits. I must note that I am placing 99% of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Kevin J. Anderson, who's horrendous writing style, apparent in every one of his "100 books, half of them bestsellers, selling over 20 million, etc" in his own words, is smeared and slapped on every page of these awful, awful books.

In a nutshell, this story tells, again, in excruciatingly boring detail, the story of the struggle between humans and thinking machines. Yes, it's really that basic, and really as stupid as a Terminator-style fight between evil robots bent on slaughtering humans for no apparent reason other than revenge, and people fighting back. Throughout it all, we get more gholas, more characters from the old books brought back for no apparent reason other than "it would be cool," (more on this later), and more one-dimensional character "development," or in the case of KJA's style, character "devolution." Because, you see, the characters in these Dune 7 books act and talk NOTHING like they did in the previous 6 real Dune books by Frank Herbert. Here we have Bene Gesserit sisters showing loads of emotions, for example, when they had always been in complete control of their feelings and expression of them in previous books. The entire "Dune babies" storyline has dialogue so stiff and lame that it makes young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I seem eloquent by comparison. And the stupid midichlorian tangent from that movie is better than a lot of the reasons given in this book for why things happen (too many for me to detail, not that you'd want me to, anyway...trust me).

The characters in these books act so STUPID you're shocked they survived beyond a few chapters previously. Example: Face Dancers had infiltrated the no-ship and were sabotaging it. One of the characters says he can create a poison that only kills Face Dancers and doesn't affect true humans. He says he can make it into a gas. Another character, who's supposed to be a military genius, asks "what good will that do?" After some back and forth, he exclaims "Oh, I get it! We can run it through the air vents and it will only kill Face Dancers!" Really? A supposed legendary military mind in these books, the great Miles Teg, is that dense? This is but one of numerous examples in these books.

I could go on and on but I'm so sick of these books that I don't want to. However, what truly makes them awful is the last 100 pages or so, when every defeat of the villains is accomplished so easily that it's amazingly anticlimactic, and there are seriously six to seven deus ex machina solutions to every problem such that the entire books ends up being wrapped up so neatly and tidily that it's absurd. It has one of those "and they all lived happily ever after" feelings, which, after what is supposed to be described as the final struggle for the survival of humanity, is again limp and anticlimactic. Humans and machines living in harmony singing Kumbaya and holding hands...gee, how nice!

Anderson's typical introduction of the "ultra" or "ultimate" anything gets so ridiculous that I literally laughed out loud ("ULTRAspice," ULTIMATE Kwisatz Haderach," etc). Seaworms, sandworms morphing into giant "Monarch" worms, Duncan Idaho described as a "superman." As one poster on an internet message board stated, these books pass the KJA "wouldn't it be awesome?" test, in that you can find every new thing they introduce and picture him thinking "wouldn't it be awesome if worms lived in the sea?" for example.

The most infuriating this about these books is that it's clear they COMPLETELY misunderstood everything Frank Herbert was trying to get across in his 6 books. The Butlerian Jihad was a crusade against thinking machines such that humanity was becoming too dependent and complacent with the assistance of mass automation, and they rebelled against it such that they vowed never to let their inherent and natural abilities and talents go to waste again. It was a way to ensure humanity would flourish and evolve over the millennia. KJA and BH turned this into a mindless fight against killer Terminator robots (who just appear out of nowhere) and humans. Stupid. And Frank Herbert had said REPEATEDLY that he introduced "hero" characters who turned out to be eminently flawed and corruptible to shatter the myth of the hero who saves the day and conquers all and the blind devotion of humans throughout history to follow such a character, often to ultimate ruin. And what to KJA and BH do? Introduce the newest superman, ULTIMATE Kwisatz Haderach Duncan Idaho. And get this...near the end of the book, he contemplates how he will not be corrupted by his immense power as so many before him have, and solves the problem buy simply stating to himself, "I won't let that happen." Problem solved. Case closed. Ludicrous. Equally galling are the CONSTANT references to the non-canon events in the stupid "prequel" books KJA and BH have written, repeated AD NASEUM in these Dune 7 books to the point of making me angry enough to slam the book down. How many times to we have to read about Paul "almost being assassinated" by Fenring? Or the ridiculous histories of their laughable "Oracle of Time" or "Serena Butler?" And don't get me started on the ridiculous ENEMY, who turn out to be cross-dressing smarmy robots, again their own creations, Omnius and Erasmus (yes, the names are that stupid), who also end up being so easy to defeat. We're to believe they've spent 15,000 years plotting revenge on the humans, and have slaughtered trillions of humans throughout Dune 7, yet Omnius is simply whisked away by the Oracle in a matter of a paragraph, while Erasmus cuts a deal with Duncan basically over a handshake ("I'll stop slaughtering humans if you promise to be nice to us."). I couldn't make stuff this idiotic up. And the constant attempts to tie-in more of their fanfic as canon is truly disgusting. Basically, these two books would make an excellent film for Mystery Science Theater 3000 to rip apart, and at least then, they'd be slightly enjoyable!

I'm going to stop now because I could go on forever, but if you read my review of Hunters of Dune and this book, you'll get a clear picture of how I really feel about these bastardizations and how I and LOADS od others worldwide do not consider anything these guys have written as canon or "real" Dune. It's fanfic aimed at Young Adult/Tweens that is being passed off as legit, but it's not. Don't fall for it.

And as with Hunters of Dune, there are a smattering of interesting ideas or plot threads that I attribute to Frank Herbert himself (based on his outline, which they claimed to be doing for these entire books), but these are few and far between. In fact, if you add them all up, they'd amount to what you'd expect from...an outline. And not the "copious notes" they claimed to have found for this book. No one buys that excuse from them anymore, and no one buys their books anymore, either, judging from the dismal sales and the cancellation of the latest series of "interquels."

Stick to the 6 original Frank Herbert books and use your imagination to come up with how he may have finished the saga in Dune 7 had he lived. He certainly wouldn't have changed it into a cheesy planet-hopping whizz-bang-pow shoot 'em up space opera ala Star Wars the way these guys did. I may read their "prequel" and "interquel" Dune books just for some laughs, as I know I'll never accept them as canon, although after reading their insipid attempt at Dune 7, I'm not sure I want to put myself through that.