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Title | Sisterhood of Dune
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Steve Stone
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Publisher | Tor - 2012
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First Printing | Tor - 2012
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Title | Mentats of Dune
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2014
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First Printing | Tor - 2014
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Title | Navigators of Dune
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2016
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First Printing | Tor - 2016
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Category | Science fiction
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Josef Venport, Manford Torondo, Salvador/Roderick/Anna Corrino, Vorian Atreides, Valya Harkonnen, Gilbertus Albans, Erasmus
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Main Elements | Empires
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Website | Brian Herbert
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 Sisterhood of Dune
It is eight decades after the last of the thinking machines were destroyed in the Battle of Corrin, after Faykan Butler took the name of Corrino and established himself as the first Emperor of a new Imperium. Great changes are brewing that will shape and twist all of humankind.
The war hero Vorian Atreides has turned his back on politics and the Imperium. THe descendants of Abulurd Harkonne, Griffin and Valya, have sworn vengeance against Vor, blaming him for the downfall of their fortunes. And others even more bizarre and deadly have sworn vengeance against Vorian Atreides, and they will hound him to the end of the known universe.
Raquella Berto-Anirul, as the first Reverend Mother, has created the Bene Gesserit School on the jungle planet of Rossak. The descendants of Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva have built the trading conglomerate Venport Holdings, using mutated spice-saturated Navigators who fly "spacefolder ships". Gilbertus Albans, the ward of the hated robot Erasmus, has established his own school on the bucolic planet o Lampadas where he teaches humans to become Mentats...and hides an unbelievable secret.
The Butlerian movement, rabidly opposed to all forms of "dangerous techonology", is led by Manford Torondo and his devoted Swordmaster, Anari Idaho. And it is this group, so many decades after the defeat of the thinking machines, that begins to careen across the civilized worlds in mobs, millions strong, destroying everything in its path.
All of these characters, all of these groups, will become enmeshed in the contest between Reason and Faith. All of them will be forced to choose sides in the inevitable crusade that could destroy humankind forever...
Mentats of Dune
In Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Mentats of Dune, the thinking machines have been defeated but the struggle for humanity's future continues.
Gilbertus Albans has founded the Mentat School, a place where humans can learn the efficient techniques of thinking machines. But Gilbertus walks an uneasy line between his own convictions and compromises in order to survive the Butlerian fanatics, led by the madman Manford Torondo and his Swordmaster Anari Idaho. Mother Superior Raquella attempts to rebuild her Sisterhood School on Wallach IX, with her most talented and ambitious student, Valya Harkonnen, who also has another goal—to exact revenge on Vorian Atreides, the legendary hero of the Jihad, whom she blames for her family's downfall.
Meanwhile, Josef Venport conducts his own war against the Butlerians. VenHold Spacing Fleet controls nearly all commerce thanks to the superior mutated Navigators that Venport has created, and he places a ruthless embargo on any planet that accepts Manford Torondo's anti-technology pledge, hoping to starve them into submission. But fanatics rarely surrender easily . . .
The Mentats, the Navigators, and the Sisterhood all strive to improve the human race, but each group knows that as Butlerian fanaticism grows stronger, the battle will be to choose the path of humanity's future—whether to embrace civilization, or to plunge into an endless dark age.
Navigators of Dune
Navigators of Dune is a fascinating portal into vital components of the mesmerizing, intense universe of Dune, the climatic finale of the Great Schools of Dune Trilogy, set ten thousand years before Frank Herbert's classic Dune.
Every Dune fan knows of the Spacing Guild's mysterious Navigators, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood's program to breed a superhuman, and the Mentats, trained as human computers to replace forbidden thinking machines. But until now, readers knew little of how they came to be.
Navigators, mutated by spice into beings far superior to normal humans, make space travel possible across the burgeoning Imperium. Their prescient awareness allows them to foresee safe paths through the universe as starship engines "fold" space. Only industrial magnate Josef Venport knows the secret of creating Navigators, and he intends to build a commercial empire to span the galaxy.
But at every turn Josef is embattled by the forces of antitechnology fantaticism, "Butlerian" zealots led by the charistmatic and dangerous Manford Torondo. They aim to turn back humanity's new renaissance and drive the Imperium into a dark age. And between those titanic forces stands the uncertain new emperor, Roderick Corrino, forced to take the throne after the assassination of his brother. The Navigators are they key to charting a glorious future for humanity...or the end of civilization.
I was really excited about these books. I figured each one would focus on the particular school in the title, that'd we really learn a lot about the Sisterhood, the Mentats and the Navigators. But that wasn't really what these novels were about. It was just a continuation of the Butlerian Jihad trilogy. This disappointed me a bit since I wasn't all that thrilled about storyline started in Jihad. To be fair, each book does focus, a little, on each of the schools, but the real core of this trilogy is the battle between the religious fanatic Manford Torondo, and the business man Josef Venport. It was interesting, that since Manford was a fanatic and half insane you keep hoping Josef will come out on top, but really, he's a villain in his own reasonable way. He owns all the spice, he own most of the banks, and perhaps most important, he owns the only reliable shipping company, after all his grandmother is Norma Cenva, the first Navigator. Basically the Spacing Guild but privately owned. And between the two of them the Emperor is trying to keep his empire from being torn apart.
And off on the side, there's the Harkonnen/Atreides feud. Vorian is still alive and when the exiled Harkonnens find out, even though Valya is now the Mother Superior of the Sisterhood (let's just say she had several conflicts of interest) the two sides start chasing each other around trying to kill each other. The one issue I have with this rivalry story is that it takes place TEN THOUSAND years before the events in Dune. That's a seriously long time for a feud to drag out no? Most family bloodlines don't last that long, let alone not a single person figuring out how to make peace between the two families, and not a single person figuring out how to exterminate the other family. I dunno. I mean are there any family trees that can trace themselves back to five thousand year before the Egyptian pharaohs were around? I think both father and son didn't quite grasp the timelines they were dealing with when building their worlds and how really different things will be in that time. And that's ten thousand years after the Bulterian Jihad, which is some unknown number of centuries in our future.
The same is true for the schools. That all these foundations have been set here, in this time period, and other than building them up and refining them, there is NO SIGNIFICANT change in the structure of the Empire in ten thousand years. Even the Roman Empire, which last about two thousand went through significant changes, as it grew, changed its seat of power, half of it falling, the other half changing religion, and then just fading away. But this empire is still ruled by the Corrinos millenia later (ok, they had to switch planets but that's a minor blip). I have trouble believing this when I take the time to consider it. That the Bulterian Jihad happened when it did is fine, but that absolutely every core concept grew out of it at the same time and lasted so long just doesn't work for me.
Another issue I had was that anyone needing to escape being caught after doing something they shouldn't have, they would take off to another planet. We're talking a PLANET. People disappear just fine in a city the size of New York, let alone a country or another continent. Also, there seems to be an impression that an entire planet is a single climate. Sure, I don't mind making Arrakis special as a completely desert planet. But it's not like other planets don't have deserts. I mean yes, Caladan has bigger seas than a regular planet, but most livable planets will have a sea. Sure Lankiveil has crappy weather, but the way it's described match plenty of places on Earth. I guess what I'm saying is that yes, the Earth is a wonderful place, but I could go to the Sahara Desert and suffer there just as bad as I would on Arrakis. Entire planets were being used to move people around as if they were cities on Earth, and it seemed a little extreme. And how many people are there in this Empire? After the Machine Wars billions were wiped out, and yet it seems there are bustling populations on all these planets, many of which could support billions (or is everyone sparsely populated and just collected in a few big center?). Well, humans can breed quite a lot when we put our minds to it I guess...but some of the smaller ones...are they just like a few hundred thousand? That's the impression one gets on Caladan or Kepler...but its a PLANET. There are 8.5 million people in New York, imagine a tenth of that on a planet. Most of these planets must be 90% empty...
Then there were the two androids that went after Vorian...that added absolutely nothing to the storyline, and I kept expecting them to blast their way through the innards of the sandworm and show up again, but nope. So much more nonsense that could have been eliminated.
And the biggest flaw in Herbert/Anderson's writing...they are bloody repetitive. Take the Ptolemy character, his best friend is killed by the fanatics. Now he gets his own POV chapters, maybe once every 5 or so other POV's...and in EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER, we are reminded that his best friend died at the hands of the fanatics and that Ptolemy hates the fanatics and wants revenge. Don't know about you, but as a reader, my memory lasts more than 50 pages or so, I don't need key bits of a character's personality or background re-iterated every time I encounter him. Sure, between one book and the next, definitely, the books were published a year apart. But within a single book, I just felt like the authors we padding the story so the books could be fatter, a trilogy instead of a duology...they weren't saying more, they were just saying the same thing over and over (and over) again. And because of this, I found the books more annoying that anything. I have a hardcover set, and the covers are really nice, but I'll be giving the away. They might have otherwise been decent, but I since there were so many re-iterations of all the main points, its kind of like I've already read this trilogy three times over.
The one thing I will say, the battle between Faith and Reason, which is really what is at the core of this trilogy, is quite the reflection on what is happening in the United States today. Where an empire (or a country) can be torn apart by a mob driven by obsession and desire rather than truth, where inconvenient contradictions can be argued away (e.g "all advanced technology is evil"...well except spaceships since otherwise how could the Butlerians spread their message...oh and weapons, since how else can they fight back the unbelievers...basically the leader needed spaceships to move around, but he didn't care if an entire planet died of a plague since he was safe and sound in another solar system).
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