Paul of Dune

'Paul of Dune' takes place just a year after Muad'Dib's forces seize control. The jihad is in full force and Muad'Dib has created many enemies. Muad'Dib's inner struggle of accepting the number of lives lost is chronicled in detail. Most of the plot centers around Count Fenring who schemes to overthrow Muad'Dib. Princess Irulan whose inner struggle with accepting the life as Muad'Dib's wife is detailed.

Paul laments that people view him as a monster bc the jihad has cost so many lives. However, in his view the jihad is necessary for the betterment of mankind. In fact rather than attempt to stem the violence, Paul encourages it. Allows no dissension and gives direct orders to annihilate whole worlds killing billions. This is where the authors are WRONG.

One of the primary lessons of Dune was to show the pitfalls of a Messiah or a religion built on a charismatic leader. Frank Herbert discuss this objective of Dune in the preamble of Heretics of Dune.

The jihad that was unleashed after Muad'Dib ascended to power was not something that Paul wanted or that he considered good for humankind. Instead he lived with the hope that he could control the jihad, that he could somehow stem the tide of the jihad and curb the violence.

Frank Herbert never intended for the jihad to be considered a good thing. Just the opposite. Frank would never have portrayed Paul as an unsympathetic figure.

Besides the obvious contradictions with Dune, what makes the story frustrating is the slow, plodding pace of events. Page after page is devoted to trivial matters such as the building of the giant Citadel. Then there is the transition to the chapters of the youth of Paul.

Who cares about the youth of Paul? Dune begins when Paul is 15 for a reason. Because, his life before than is of little importance. If anything, the life of the Fremen before Muad'Dib would have been far more interesting. Muad'Dib was only a tool Herbert used to tell the story of Dune. So Paul's life before Dune is of little interest. Instead the focus should have been on the Fremen.

So we are left with a book with a bunch of filler material, that doesn't go anywhere, that leaves an avid Dune reader very confused, and without any new revelations about the Dune universe.

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

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

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.

This review was previously deleted by Amazon.com for unknown reasons. I've gotten used to this, so here it is again for your benefit.

Paul of Dune

Perhaps the authors should have titled this Dune: Days of our lives or perhaps Dune: 90210, as the prose is no better than that found in a third-rate soap opera. Whereas the elder Herbert didn't try to describe every last thing, but was still able to inform the reader of what was going on through vivid allusions and subtle nuance, Bri and Kev take a bland clinical approach towards writing all the new Dune stories.

All characterizations fall flat in Paul of Dune. While reading this story, I find that the Paul depicted in this story is not the same one as the Paul which toppled the Padishah Emperor and discovered his "terrible purpose." What is particularly irking is how Paul of Dune short circuits the original intent of Dune. Dune was in many ways a coming-of-age story for Paul Atreides. It is implicit in Frank's storytelling that Paul, although exquisitely honed in statecraft/combat/politics/Bene Geserit ways, was just a green boy with little real-world experience before the betrayal of the Atreides by the Harkonnnens and the Emperor. POD sabotages this narrative by having Paul participate in a war against the Moritani before the events of the original Dune. Bri and Kev do not enhance the characterization of Paul with these incessant tack-ons.

Frank Herbert conveyed a distinct Fremen culture through his original Dune series. Fremen culture FELT like a real foreign culture. The characterization of Stilgar by the senior Herbert was genius. Unfortunately, Bri-bri and crew have Stilgar talking like Dylan from Beverly Hills 90210.

I rate Paul of Dune at 0 stars.

I wish I could agree with Brian's nephew's evaluation of this book quoted in the title. But I can't. So far as I can see, the writing is just as uninspired and the use of language every bit as inept as in their previous eight "Dune" books. (Every noun must be qualified by an adjective or some other modifier, for example.) The characters are two-dimensional at best and, even allowing for the difference in writers, simply do not seem to be the same people encountered in Dune or Dune Messiah. While it is true that there seems to be less restatement of events that occurred only a few "chapters" earlier, there are still too many reminders of Duniverse basics that anyone other than a first-time reader (or someone who has recently suffered severe head trauma and a resultant loss of memory?) should already know and remember. And the inclusion in the four "Emperor Muad'Dib" sections of elements and events just recounted in the three "Young Paul" ones invariably comes across as clumsy and forced. Particularly when none of them are ever mentioned in Dune or Dune Messiah.

Which of course brings me to the issue of inconsistencies: the book continues the now established tradition of introducing inconsistencies with the original six books by Frank Herbert (for example, according to Dune, Paul never left Caladan, his birthworld, before the Atreides moved to Arrakis, but nevertheless the "Young Paul" flashbacks have him journeying twice to Ecaz and once to Grumman) ... but this is no longer an issue, because we are informed in a tête-à-tête between Paul and Irulan that she is in fact the real author of Dune ... and probably of Messiah and Children as well. (No doubt in upcoming tomes we will discover that Harq al-Ada is the author of Leto of Dune and Gaus Andaud the historian/fictionalizer of the events of God Emperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse.) The message here is clear: everything we fans thought we knew about the stories "ain't necessarily so." The new Prophets of Dune continue their revelation of a new Gospel, which we must either accept or be cast out as "Talifans."

But that's just one masterful performance that takes place in this multi-ring circus. Other attractions include the provision of further support for the retcon corrections to two mistakes made in earlier books (even though both are now safely covered by the "Irulan Solution") and the creation of the foundation for a plot element introduced in Hunters and Sandworms.

Above all this, however, my biggest problem with the book is ... that it's just plain boring. This makes sense in a way, seeing how from my perspective it (and the three "Heroes" books slated to follow it) is completely unnecessary: the "gap" left by Frank Herbert between Dune and Dune Messiah was not an accident. While I would be very much interested in seeing any notes Frank Herbert may have left concerning the Fremen Jihad and that period of Duniverse history, I have practically no interest in pulp fictionalizations of his ideas (or worse, of the second-rate ideas of lesser writers) by lesser writers. (Other than reading them to criticize and complain, of course.)

Fans of the previous "New Dune" efforts, young adults and people who don't read much in the way of real books will probably be able to enjoy this one. Real Dune fans should pass, unless you're also the kind of person who ogles traffic accidents or just someone who wants to keep current with the latest bumps along the downhill road Dune is currently on.

I feel this is much better than many of the newer books in the Dune series. It gets to the core of the Dune saga by focusing on conspiracies involving houses Atreides, Harkonnen, and Corrino.

The book is set in two separate time periods which it moves back and forth between acts.

The first time period is between Dune and Dune Messiah and details the spreading Jihad and Paul struggling with becoming someone he doesn't want to be in order to ensure a particular future. This squares well with the original Herbert books and adds depth to characters, particularly Gurney, Shaddam, and Korba.

The second time period is slightly before the original Dune and focuses on a War of Assassins in which Paul and Duke Leto are targets and gives a little more backstory for Paul.

I enjoyed the book and unlike the later ones in the series (Hunters, Sandworms, etc.) I didn't regret the time I spent reading it.

It could have been better if it had focused only on a single timeframe, but it's still good and reads as several related books in one volume.

... so I don't actually need to pay for this stuff.

"Paul of Dune" is the latest chapter in the continuing "Dune" saga, as Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert continue to cash in on Brian's father's masterpiece, er, I mean, continue his father's vision.

As I read the original "Dune," I wondered what Paul Atriedes was like as a young boy. Well, now we get a little peek at the youngster. In separate departures from the story, we get flashbacks of a young Paul first following his father to Ecaz, as Duke Leto enters into a marriage alliance with its ruling house, which, of course, becomes part of a greater tragedy. Then you later see Paul on the battlefield of Grumman where he endures a stampede of horses and watch a giant seabed collapse.

In the present tense, Paul's jihad consumes world after world, and he begins to doubt if sending out hoards of fanatics to slaughter entire planets is a good thing or not.

Maybe I'm disappointed because I'm reading the original "Dune" right now. It's here I discover the glaring contradictions to what Frank himself wrote. Read "Dune" and you'll glean these impressions:

1. Duke Leto always loved Jessica, and no other woman. The first prequel trilogy changed that, and so does "Paul."
2. Paul, while well-trained, never experienced any real danger before leaving for Arrakis. Now, Paul fights on the battlefield.
3. Paul never left Caladan before leaving for Arrakis. Opps, that was a lie by Princess Irulan.
4. And Princess Irulan is now a sophisicated political machinist. Before, she was a mere writer, who had to contend herself with books about Paul instead of actually being his real wife.

Yes, I've read the entire Dune saga, and will read "Winds of Dune" when it comes out. But as I've said before, "Dune" ended with Frank's eulogy to Bev. Brian and Kevin can keep writing whatever they want, but this saga has become a mockery and a cheat imitation. It's no longer a flattery.

This book was a complete farce. The authors were trying so hard to fill Paul's backstory with more and more trash, carried over from their House trilogy novels. This seemed to be the only sad theme they have been carrying on, layers within layers within layers of rubbish!

Skipping between Emperor Muad'Dib and young Paul Atreides was completely unnecessary. Again backstory had to be added, so that present story could move along.

Irulan was like a flower vase, placed there with absolutely to look pretty but can do absolutely nothing. Writing propaganda for Paul, I don't think that was the original role that Frank Herbert made her do, it was more like a scribe, to record historical events and moments for posterity. Irulan and her books.

They tried to make Paul less the messiah and more human by making him vulnerable to assassination attempts, especially by oh, childish Marie and the Fenrings, Bludd etc. Advance hunter-seekers indeed. They had to use slightly tweaked but recycled material from Frank Herbert's Dune, so that we can relate to the previous assassination attempt on Paul from the Dune novel - utterly no imagination!

Paul had regrets about how his jihad went along, but it wasn't until Dune Messiah that he expressed it or tired of it. I would have thought this novel would actually explain how his campaign lasted so long and how he managed to inspire and drive the Feydakin forward in the Jihad.

Korba, the high priest, and the eventual conspirator, turned out to be stupidly childish in his attempts to defend Emperor Muad'Dib's honor, to the point of fanatical. Was that really what the authors were trying to portray, a fanatical priest?

Otherwise, like one of the other reviewers mentioned, the story actually picked up towards the last few chapters, but then crashed miserably all over again. Too many discrepancies that had to be "killed off" in time for it to be joined in with Dune Messiah.

I find it appalling that the authors would actually have the stamina to write such garbage. Perhaps each author writes their own chapters, and then they compile them mix and match style and tada... Paul of Dune.

Highly NOT recommended to all true Dune fans - The true Feydakins. Only recommended to readers who have no exposure to Frank Herbert's true Dune series, or novice 5-star fanatics.

When the post Frank Herbert Dune books started appearing I read the first couple and quit because I thought them pretty poor.

Recently I gave them another chance with this one because they have a lot of fans and I rather enjoyed Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns.

I regret this thoroughly, as this book was even worse than I recall the initial books of the series being. It has no strengths of its own, but it damages the characters and themes of Dune by filling in events referenced in passing and involving the characters of Dune with details, personalities, motivations, and themes often glaringly incompatible with those found in the original series.

To give it the rating it deserves would require negative stars.