Dune: The Battle of Corin by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

This is the final installament of the Legends of Dune prequels. I really liked the first installment- The Butlerian Jihad and was not too impressed with the second installment-The Machine Crusade. When I heard that Kevin and Brian were doing Dune novels set during the time of the Butlerian Jihad I was very excited. I liked the trilogy they did that takes place about 15 years before the original Dune. It was easy going and the first 2 books were fantastic. Then the inconsistancies started. Gurney Halleck owes his loyalty to Duke Leto Atreides because Leto saves his life in the Harkonnen slave mines/pits-in the prequel books Gurney hides in a shipment of glass that inadvertently ends up on Caladan. Gurney did not even know who leto was nor did Leto know who Gurney was. They actually meet through a mutual friend. Which is fine, but kills the relationship for the first 3 original Dune novels. Stupid little slips like that made me dislike the prequel novels. Also I did not like description of the Tlulaxu Breeding Tanks. It the end of the series before readers of the original novels find out the horror of what the Tlulaxu use to grow gholas. Even then it is never explained in detail. Just enough information to horrify you. In the prequels much detail is given-it kind of ruins the surprise for the rest of the novels. It is the spirit of how Frank Herbert wrote and it is unfair to expect Brian and Kevin to be able to copy that-but I do think they could at least not have glaring inconsistancies with the original Dune novels. It is hard to write in a well known world and not make errors. I figured with them going so far into the past with the Butlerian Trilogy it would not matter. Plus many questions could be answered:
How did the feud begin between House Atreides and House Harrkonen?
How did the Spacing Guild get its beginning?
How did the Bene Gesserit begin?
The ground work for all of those questions to be answered was laid out splendidly in the first book-The Butlerian Jihad. Sadly, the second and third book focused mostly on wars and fighting. It did answer the questions but in a very unsatisfactory way.-I was hoping for brie and wine followed by prime rib and chocolate mousse and instead got cheese whiz on ritz crackers with Boones Farm followed by salisbury steak and instant jello pudding. Makes me wish more than ever that Brian had half his fathers talent for writing.
All in all I highly reccomend reading it for any fan of the Dune novels. I am still looking forward to book 7 which they will supposedly start now. I am sure they will botch the attempt but supposedly Frank Herbert left a rough draft and perhaps they will gently change that.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!