Anderson, Kevin J. & Herbert, Brian
DUNE: HOUSE ATREIDES
Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Bantam Spectra 1999
PB 645 pages
ISBN # 0-553-5827-2
This story is for Dune fans.
Mirrored after Frank Herbert's classic Dune novels, son Brian and his coauthor have met their goal of setting the stage for this grand adventure. Dune: House Atreides begins some thirty or forty years before Paul's story, back where the reader can discover "the reasons for the terrible, destructive enmity between House Atreides and House Harkonnen," as Brian Herbert puts it.
The book opens with Baron Vladimir Harkonnen flying observation on spice mining operations on his fief-planet of Arrakis (Dune); then moves to the planet Kaitain where the current Emperor of the Known Universe--Elrood Corrino IX--assigns Planetologist Pardot Kynes (Liet's father) the task of understanding the spice melange and its only known environment, Arrakis. After that, the story moves to the planet Caladan, where the reader meets Leto as a fourteen year-old, before he becomes that planet's duke. Then the reader is carried back to the planet Kaitain where Emperor Elrood gets into an argument with the ruler of the planet Ix--Earl Donminic Vernius--who had long ago married a woman the Emperor wanted. The next chapter introduces us to Baron Harkonnen's nephew, Rabban, who has a disappointing hunting trip on Arrakis so, on his return to his homeworld of Giedi Prime, takes up hunting a small human boy instead (Duncan Idaho), which is a national sport on that world. Eventually, we get back to Leto, who travels to Ix for a year's study with his father's friend Earl Vernius. Ix has it's own problems: an angry emperor who seeks revenge by creating a planetary revolt against their earl.
But this story isn't out of main characters or planets to visit. Bouncing between the above story-lines we also have the emperor's son, Shaddam, and his friend Hashmir Fenring who just can't wait for the old emperor to die naturally. They give him a little push. They also increase the trouble on Ix with a scheme for the Tleilaxu to study a possible artificial replacement for the valuable and rare spice melange which extends life ... and enables space travel ... and expands the minds of many talented people into supernatural abilities. Another story-line examines a set of twins--sons of the Ixian ambassador--one of whom becomes a guild navigator and the other who invents a high-speed communication device to allow instant messaging between planets. Oh yes--and another plotline that bounces in-between all of the others is on the planet Wallach IX, the story of Jessica's birth (Paul's mother). We find out who her mother is and how very, very much trouble the Bene Gesserit had in getting their human breeding scheme put into place: the one designed to produce the universe's super-being, the Kwisatz Haderach, which--of course--will be Paul in Frank Herbert's Dune.
I did leave out a couple more plot-lines, like how, after the revolution on
Ix, Earl Vernuis' children escape to an exile on Caladan while the Earl and his
wife go "renegade"; and how Pardot Kynes discovers the Fremen and changes the
face of Dune forever. And, of course, there's that reason (or should I say
treason) that stirs up between House Harkonnen and House Atreides. But I'll let
you read that.
Though House Atreides is a very acceptable prequel to Frank Herbert's Dune, this
reviewer did not find the reading pleasurable due to the disjointed style of
delivery.
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