House Corrino Reviews

[Gobalopper]

It's just about that time of year when the next Dune novel from Anderson and Herbert is released. This time we have House Corrino, the last of the prequel novels, coming out very shortly if not already out in some places. The SciFi.com review was mentioned by ExAtreides in the forum, here is a caption from it:

Having acknowledged all these strengths, I nonetheless found this whole prequel lacking in the vitality and soul of the original. Herbert Senior was never a master stylist, but there was a quality about his prose that captured the reader in a way that these books do not. Maybe it was something as simple as his habit of giving the reader the raw, uncensored italicized thoughts of his characters, a trick the current writers do not employ. Also missing from House Corrino is any mythic subtext or fairytale qualities. Just citing the Oedipal tension between Paul and his mother in the original is enough to show what's lacking here. The sense of destiny and cosmic forces at work that Frank Herbert emphasized is here replaced by a somewhat mechanical scrupulousness, accurate but ultimately unaffecting.

Overall the novel received a grade of B compared to the C they gave to House Atreides, there wasn't a review for House Harkonnen.

Feel free to share your reviews in the messageboard or post any you come across. Mahdi mentioned to me that they will be working on "Dune 7" next but I'm not sure where he read that. There are also plans for a series on the Butlerian Jihad period but not much more information on that yet. Check the official Dune site for more details on the novels.