Review: Legends of Dune Trilogy

I just finished The Battle of Corrin last night after going on a reading blitz since the book was engaging near the end.

The Battle of Corrin is the final book in the Legends of Dune trilogy.

I shall first speak about the trilogy, then I shall talk about the Dune series as a whole.

Legends of Dune span over a few hundred years which was an interesting concept because they use the characters from who are young (20s) in The Butlerian Jihad (Book One) and then they skip to the age of sixty in The Machine Crusade (Book Two) and then throw everything away and jump a good sixty years in The Battle of Corrin (Book Three). They can manage to do this because a lot of the characters are either robots or people with life-extension treatments. Personally, I liked the first two books the most because they revolved around the same main characters, but then since so much time has passed by the third book, not many familiar faces are around. It was as interesting concept to show that this war that they are fighting against the machines doesn’t just take a few years of a lifetime.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Legends of Dune trilogy as it showed the origins of MANY concepts in Dune such as where the Mentats came from, where the Bene Gesserit were formed, and more importantly, how they fold space. Many questions which were just not questioned in the original Dune series. I felt the characters were dynamic and even though there were probably 15 main chracters in the entire trilogy, they flow from one chapter to the next very well. These books were written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I cannot speak about Mr. Herbert, but I have enjoyed Kevin J. Anderson’s work on the Star Wars novels and they keep me captivated.

As for the Dune series on a whole, I have finally completed reading them. For a rundown of the series along with ROUGH release dates…can’t seem to find any on the Net:

Legends of Dune (2000)
The Butlerian Jihad
The Machine Crusade
The Battle of Corrin

Prelude to Dune (late 90s)
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
House Corrino

Dune (1965 onward to 1984 when Frank Herbert died)
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune

Essentially, Frank Herbert made the Dune universe and with six Dune novels but then died before completing the final seventh novel. Talk about a cliffhanger. He builds up so many plot points that just never get resolved.

In comes Brian Herbert (his son) who finds outlines of Dune 7 years later as well as backstories for much of the fabled Butlerian Jihad and other characters. He teams up with Kevin J. Anderson to pull off an Episode I like movement and creates not only a prequel to the series, but a prequel-prequel which takes place thousands of years before the series.

In doing so, they have commented that elements from these prequels will lead into Dune 7 (which has now become two separate novels which are being written right now) which I find interesting because there are certain elements which were never mentioned in the series by Frank Herbert that I can see being re-introduced in Dune 7.

It’s been a long ride reading all 12 Dune novels but I must say that the Dune universe rivals the Star Wars universe. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say that I enjoy the Dune universe more, just for it’s high end science fiction. I’m not knocking Star Wars…I’m just saying I really like the original concepts found in the Dune universe. I just went on the website and noticed the Dune series is considered the science fiction equivalent of Lord of the Rings. Whoa, that’s a high claim, but totally justified.

Heck, while I’m on a roll, let’s talk about the movies. I was introduced to Dune by renting the movie from…1984 I believe? This movie sucked big time. It was awful. However, it did have Captain Picard and Sting. You cannot go wrong there.

Anyhow, the redeeming factor in the Dune media series was a great mini-series back a few years ago, which followed with Children of Dune mini-series (a combination of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune). I thoroughly enjoyed the Dune mini-series…Children of Dune…not so much. I encourage everyone to watch the Dune mini-series – it’s only six hours long.

I look forward to Dune 7.