his concluding volume follows hard on the heels of Dune: House Atreides (1999) and Dune: House Harkonnen (2000). Together, the three books constitute one enormous unbroken novel, a prequel to Frank Herbert's famed Dune (1965) and the five volumes that followed. The events in the prequel occur a few decades before the opening of Dune, and span some 20 or so years in themselves.
This final volume, although the shortest of the three, is the most action-packed, as all the manifold, entangled threads spun in the earlier books are tied off or severed. And that's saying a lot, since both predecessors featured a plethora of plot.
Of course, the main sequence from the point of view of the unborn Dune Messiah Paul Maud'dib involves the affairs of Duke Leto Atriedes (himself a young child in the first book) and the Lady Jessica, Paul's father and mother. House Atreides, having earlier suffered a number of setbacks at the hands of both House Harkonnen and the Emperor, now rise up resurgent. Despite the death of Duke Leto's first son, Victor, and much political treachery against them, the Atreides clan is finally able to mount a long-delayed attack on the planet Ix, to oust the usurping Tleilax and restore the rightful ruling house of Vernius, whose royal representatives have found refuge with the Atreides for two decades. In so doing, Duke Leto and crew also uncover the Emperor's insanely dangerous scheme to create a synthetic spice-substitute and destroy Arrakis, thus fueling a scandal that will severely curtail the Emperor's powers.
On other fronts, Baron Harkonnen and his clan, including his brutal nephews Rabban and Feyd-Rautha, ride their own roller coaster of contingent victories and ultimate defeat. After uncontested domination of Arrakis and success with various plots, Harkonnen finds his empire crumbling beneath him, as his Mentat assassin Piter de Vries fatally oversteps himself by attempting to kidnap the infant Paul, and the Emperor discovers years of insubordination and removes Arrakis from Harkonnen's grip. Meanwhile, among the native Fremen, Liet Kynes, Imperial planetologist and secret Fremen leader, fights his own battles for sovereignty and ecological balance. And the Bene Gesserit, those psychically empowered "witches" who run their breeding programs with a millennial focus, find their own machinations unraveling.
An old universe exploded anew
The titling of these three books is, in a way, rather arbitrary, since all three royal houses (Corrino is the family name of the Emperor) share the stage equally in all volumes. In fact, the constantly rotating viewpoints and short chapters employed by the authors ensure that no one clan will dominate their tale. Consequently, though, the juggling insures that any main narrative thrust—as in the original, which was Paul's biography above all—will be lost.
There are three main questions to ask concerning any project of this type. How do the books read on their own? What new qualities and insights do they bring to the table? And how faithful to the spirit and ambiance of the original are they? In order, then:
Herbert Junior and Anderson are both accomplished writers and can masterfully handle a novel of this complexity. They set a huge number of plots and subplots spinning, never losing the "wheels within wheels" experience that Anderson identifies as one of the aspects of Herbert Senior's work that he most enjoyed. We get a sense that this is a real working interstellar empire, with its various factions—the Tleilax, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, CHOAM, the Fremen, the royal Families—all arrayed in contention and interaction. The characterizations are all handled efficiently, the dialogue—of which there's a plenitude—is always believable and never sententious. And the action scenes—such as the death of the Face Dancer during the conquest of Ix, or the way Baron Harkonnen inventively yet offhandedly tortures a master of politesse who had disappointed him—are nimbly done. In short, as sophisticated space opera, these books would have constituted quite a respectable achievement.
As for extending Herbert's conceptual universe, these books do so only minimally, for they are constrained by the dead iron hand of the canon. Nothing that contradicts Herbert's bible can be allowed to intrude. Where the authors have room to play is in the niches—the whole Ix subplot—and in fleshing out the backstories of the familiar personages, as well as the creation of a goodly number of brand-new characters. On this front, they do a credible job. Finally the heretofore enigmatic Duke Leto assumes substantiality. Following him from youth to maturity, we gain a sense at last of his formative experiences and motivations. Likewise, Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck emerge as more well-rounded individuals, as does the Emperor himself. Learning, for instance, how Baron Harkonnen devolved into a corpulent monster is very satisfying. And such newcomers as Ixian rebel C'tair Pilru hold their own.
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.
