Sandworms of Dune: Mastah B's review...
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:03 pm
When I first decided to write a short review of Sandworms, I was on a plane with my two children flying to the Midwest to see my family. I was about halfway through the “novel” when I noticed I had misplaced my bookmark. My daughter, seeing my conundrum, said “here daddy, you can use this” and proceeded to hand me an airline barf bag. I thought to myself “how apropos.” I used that bookmark to the final, tedious end of my reading.
I’m not going to lie; as most of you have certainly deduced, I hated this book with a deep passion. I’ve spent a number of hours trying to find some redeeming qualities and have met with minimal success. I began compiling a list of inconsistencies, not only between the original Dune series and this book, but also between Hunters and Sandworms, and within the book itself. I gave up and decided it was pointless. I will spare you the excruciating details of my analysis and just hit the high points. I will assume in this review that you know the general order of events and express my opinions on them. I have no desire to rehash the whole storyline and update you anymore than you have a desire to read such nonsense. I will just point out the particularly painful parts….
I will also devote very little of my effort to expressing the problems with the writing style in general. The repetitive nature of this, the underdeveloped plots and characters, the deus ex machine cop outs, etc. etc. are well known and well documented. I’m not a particularly proficient writer myself, so I won’t hurl too many stones inside this glass house of mine.
For starters, I found one of the major flaws of this book to be the return of the past characters. Simply put, the characters don’t act like themselves. They are like vacuous shells of their former selves. In Frank’s original series, I could read a passage by Leto II, or Duncan Idaho, or Waff and without knowing ahead of time who was doing the speaking, I could have told you who the character was. Good luck trying that in Sandworms. The Bene Gesserit characters were like dumbed-down, yet more outlandish versions of the former BG. They simply did not behave like Bene Gesserit. And I mean none of them; not just the former Honored Matres that were now BG. Duncan and Sheeana seem to have completely forgotten Teg’s superspeed and I don’t think Teg even uses his “double vision” anywhere in the book. The Baron is now apparently a sadomasochist who isn’t concerned about shocking others or gaining pleasure from dominating others, but seems to be obsessed with the pain itself. Scytale, oh god, Scytale doesn’t act even remotely like a BT and his kinder gentler ghola version of himself at the end nearly made me vomit in my bookmark. Simply put, these were not the characters we knew and loved previously.
The author’s bring back Paul Atreides and Leto II—arguably the most important characters in the whole series—but they serve NO purpose. They are clearly red herrings designed to draw your attention away from the “huge” revelation (:roll: ) that Duncan is the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach. An Ultimate KH, I might add, that has limited or no prescience, has to be confined in a no ship for years because he can be tracked by prescience and cannot access any OM—hardly the male version of a Reverend Mother….
Countless others have pointed out the one-upmanship the author’s display throughout this book. Seaworms make “ultra spice”, Duncan is the “Ultimate” Kwisatz Haderach, Norma is a virtual goddess far more powerful than the God Emperor, and so on and so on. I don’t need to rehash this, but I can’t help but wonder what the motivation behind this was……
The Golden Path apparently failed. Despite the fact that Leto II’s empire was “multigalactic” and then humanity scattered further out than that, apparently all humans are now in a single galaxy and have been surround by the Machine Empire. Not much of a Scattering was it.
So much for making sure no one force could control the fate of all mankind. 3500 years of jacking around for no reason, bummer. Of course, Leto II’s character never gets to comment on this, which is probably just fine because it probably wouldn’t have made much sense.
Quelso. Maybe it should have been “Kelso”, because it was incredibly stupid and I literally laughed out loud when I read those sections. You see, Stilgar and Liet Kynes are brought back apparently to be trash recyclers on the Ithaca. But when they find the planet Quelso, they see a planet that is in the process of desertification from the sandtrout that BG have planted. Oh wait, it gets better. The people of the planet don’t like those dirty BG and they aren’t real fond of the sandworms either. So they (I’m not making this up) fly around on ships and shoot them with giant supersoakers. That’s right, giant water canons. Liet Kynes and Stilgar, longing to be desert dwellers again, decide to stay and go along with this. That’s correct; they decide to stay with the people who are trying to exterminate Shaihulud. The Old Man of the desert. You know, the God that Stilgar worshipped. Sure, they are hoping to change the ways of these people and maybe even assemble a couple of stillsuits, but until then they will just go around and hunt sacred worms with water guns. I couldn’t make this shit up people. The Ithaca crew decides to go along with this plan and they split. Exit two totally meaningless characters from the main storyline….
Then of course there is Paul sucking blood back up into his body, worms combining into one giant worm, Sheeana walking into a worms mouth (gettin’ chiggy wit it
) and soaking up what is apparently internal spice juice, Tleilaxu deciding to be nice to women, machines and mankind living together in perfect harmony….aaaawwwwwhhhh….aint that last bit sweet?
This is by far the worst of the entire “new canon” books IMHO. I think this is because it’s billed as the “grand climax” and you just expect a lot more from it. I really hated the Legends series, but at least those were characters I didn’t know or give a crap about. Every painful reading of a Scytale chapter (chapters being typically 1 or 2 pages) made my heart ache for the Duniverse that once was. As many have also stated, I felt a need to at least see it to completion. I did that and it was the “bitter medicine” of a KJA future. One good thing came out of this reading for me; I can finally stop the insanity and feel comfortable with the decision to avoid Paul of Dune like the plague…….
I’m not going to lie; as most of you have certainly deduced, I hated this book with a deep passion. I’ve spent a number of hours trying to find some redeeming qualities and have met with minimal success. I began compiling a list of inconsistencies, not only between the original Dune series and this book, but also between Hunters and Sandworms, and within the book itself. I gave up and decided it was pointless. I will spare you the excruciating details of my analysis and just hit the high points. I will assume in this review that you know the general order of events and express my opinions on them. I have no desire to rehash the whole storyline and update you anymore than you have a desire to read such nonsense. I will just point out the particularly painful parts….
I will also devote very little of my effort to expressing the problems with the writing style in general. The repetitive nature of this, the underdeveloped plots and characters, the deus ex machine cop outs, etc. etc. are well known and well documented. I’m not a particularly proficient writer myself, so I won’t hurl too many stones inside this glass house of mine.
For starters, I found one of the major flaws of this book to be the return of the past characters. Simply put, the characters don’t act like themselves. They are like vacuous shells of their former selves. In Frank’s original series, I could read a passage by Leto II, or Duncan Idaho, or Waff and without knowing ahead of time who was doing the speaking, I could have told you who the character was. Good luck trying that in Sandworms. The Bene Gesserit characters were like dumbed-down, yet more outlandish versions of the former BG. They simply did not behave like Bene Gesserit. And I mean none of them; not just the former Honored Matres that were now BG. Duncan and Sheeana seem to have completely forgotten Teg’s superspeed and I don’t think Teg even uses his “double vision” anywhere in the book. The Baron is now apparently a sadomasochist who isn’t concerned about shocking others or gaining pleasure from dominating others, but seems to be obsessed with the pain itself. Scytale, oh god, Scytale doesn’t act even remotely like a BT and his kinder gentler ghola version of himself at the end nearly made me vomit in my bookmark. Simply put, these were not the characters we knew and loved previously.
The author’s bring back Paul Atreides and Leto II—arguably the most important characters in the whole series—but they serve NO purpose. They are clearly red herrings designed to draw your attention away from the “huge” revelation (:roll: ) that Duncan is the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach. An Ultimate KH, I might add, that has limited or no prescience, has to be confined in a no ship for years because he can be tracked by prescience and cannot access any OM—hardly the male version of a Reverend Mother….
Countless others have pointed out the one-upmanship the author’s display throughout this book. Seaworms make “ultra spice”, Duncan is the “Ultimate” Kwisatz Haderach, Norma is a virtual goddess far more powerful than the God Emperor, and so on and so on. I don’t need to rehash this, but I can’t help but wonder what the motivation behind this was……
The Golden Path apparently failed. Despite the fact that Leto II’s empire was “multigalactic” and then humanity scattered further out than that, apparently all humans are now in a single galaxy and have been surround by the Machine Empire. Not much of a Scattering was it.
So much for making sure no one force could control the fate of all mankind. 3500 years of jacking around for no reason, bummer. Of course, Leto II’s character never gets to comment on this, which is probably just fine because it probably wouldn’t have made much sense. Quelso. Maybe it should have been “Kelso”, because it was incredibly stupid and I literally laughed out loud when I read those sections. You see, Stilgar and Liet Kynes are brought back apparently to be trash recyclers on the Ithaca. But when they find the planet Quelso, they see a planet that is in the process of desertification from the sandtrout that BG have planted. Oh wait, it gets better. The people of the planet don’t like those dirty BG and they aren’t real fond of the sandworms either. So they (I’m not making this up) fly around on ships and shoot them with giant supersoakers. That’s right, giant water canons. Liet Kynes and Stilgar, longing to be desert dwellers again, decide to stay and go along with this. That’s correct; they decide to stay with the people who are trying to exterminate Shaihulud. The Old Man of the desert. You know, the God that Stilgar worshipped. Sure, they are hoping to change the ways of these people and maybe even assemble a couple of stillsuits, but until then they will just go around and hunt sacred worms with water guns. I couldn’t make this shit up people. The Ithaca crew decides to go along with this plan and they split. Exit two totally meaningless characters from the main storyline….
Then of course there is Paul sucking blood back up into his body, worms combining into one giant worm, Sheeana walking into a worms mouth (gettin’ chiggy wit it
) and soaking up what is apparently internal spice juice, Tleilaxu deciding to be nice to women, machines and mankind living together in perfect harmony….aaaawwwwwhhhh….aint that last bit sweet?This is by far the worst of the entire “new canon” books IMHO. I think this is because it’s billed as the “grand climax” and you just expect a lot more from it. I really hated the Legends series, but at least those were characters I didn’t know or give a crap about. Every painful reading of a Scytale chapter (chapters being typically 1 or 2 pages) made my heart ache for the Duniverse that once was. As many have also stated, I felt a need to at least see it to completion. I did that and it was the “bitter medicine” of a KJA future. One good thing came out of this reading for me; I can finally stop the insanity and feel comfortable with the decision to avoid Paul of Dune like the plague…….
