Critical Myth-Interpretations

This trilogy was originally announced quite some time ago, shortly after the release of the author’s “Medstar” novels, set during the Clone Wars period.  Some years later, I found myself enjoying the novels, but all too aware that many of the connections to the “Medstar” novels, particularly the characters that crossed over to the new trilogy, were frustrating.  After all, I had no intention of dredging up the older novels after all this time, so the relationships were lost on me.

Thankfully, enough of the story was self-contained to keep the frustration from becoming overwhelming.  There are references to the excellent Clone Wars novel “Shatterpoint”, the novel that utterly redeemed Mace Windu as a character, and those are a bit easier to detect and appreciate.  The story itself covers a period just after the Jedi Purge and the rise of Emperor Palpatine, and the author paints a rather bleak (and often all-too-familiar) picture of the civil changes brought about by the newly minted Empire.

The novel has a very noir edge to it, despite the solid foundation in the “Star Wars” universe, and that gives the story unique identity.  The writing can be a bit dense, however; the author likes to use large words and complicated phrasing, even when less challenging prose would get the job done.  This can lead to wordy, stilted passages that can be a bit distracting.  Even so, it didn’t take long to get used to it, and the book is worth the effort.  Just be prepared to wonder how many references to “Medstar” you’ve missed along the way!

Rating: 7/10

I’ve more or less decided not to review media tie-in novels quite so much, because most of them are average and don’t inspire much in the way of commentary.  In this case, however, I made an exception, since the book is part of the post-finale relaunch of the “Deep Space Nine” novels.  For the most part, I have found those novels to be among the most impressive in recent years.

One thing I loved about the first dozen or so post-finale DS9 books was the format.  The format was very similar to the “New Jedi Order” run of “Star Wars” books, where the story was broken into duologies, quartets, and so forth, but ultimately comprised a serialized long-term arc.  This all culminated in “Unity”, after which the story began to sputter and falter.  The post-finale books have been given less and less attention, and now the story is barely making any progress.

This novel is merely the most recent symptom of the problem.  The gimmick for this book is its presentation; two stories, both connected to the post-“Unity” arc, are told in a “flip-book” format.  One side covers the action on DS9 after the events of “Warpath”, and the other side fills in the expository background for the villain revealed in the first side.

Both sides tell their appointed tales rather well.  Considering how long it took for the book to be released since “Warpath”, this should be no surprise.  Unfortunately, the book resolves nothing, leading towards a cliffhanger that will need to be resolved in a future novel.  Given how infrequent the post-finale DS9 novels have been, this is not a welcome prospect.  There are already too many dangling plot threads from the ill-advised “Worlds of DS9” novellas, released immediately after “Unity”, and far too little indication that this situation will ever be repaired.

Given my disenchantment with the recent relaunch of the “Next Generation” novels (which also covered a relaunch of sorts for “Voyager”), I can only hope that the upcoming “Destiny” trilogy will pick up the pieces and get the novels back on track.

Rating: 6/10

This is the final volume of the House Trilogy, rounding out the events that took place a generation or so before the classic Frank Herbert series began.  Having read six of the eight Herbert/Anderson releases now, I think it’s safe to say that I despise the writing style and most of the associated choices.  I’ve described all of my issues with the poor writing in the past, and there’s little reason to revisit that long list now.

Instead, I will be focusing on issues with the plot.  One problem with the House Trilogy is that the end of the story is already written in stone.  There’s a sense of fatal inevitability to everything, and rather than use that as a strength, the authors choose to slide in a few major wars and conflicts to introduce unanticipated twists in the story.

This is a problem that crops up every time an author attempts to add to a tightly-bound canon.  I see it all the time in tie-in fiction, especially some of the early “Babylon 5” or the “Buffy” novels.  Events cannot rise above the noise threshold of the main story, or it’s something that should have been referenced in the original canon.  When the established canon is a few decades old, there’s simply no excuse to overlook this basic principle.

Which means that the Great Spice War and everything related to the Tleilaxu and Project Amal simply doesn’t track as written.  Of the two, Project Amal could have worked well enough, had all the activities been contained, meaning that all characters aware of the truth behind the axlotl tanks and the failed “amal” had been killed.  Instead, major characters are aware of all this information, in flat contradiction to the canon.

Worse is the Great Spice War, which replaces the delicate scheming of Shaddam IV with heavy-handed destruction.  Entire planets are wiped clean and several Houses are threatened, so much so that one would expect such a war to be mentioned rather significantly in “Dune” itself.  In fact, if someone were reading this book before the original “Dune”, they might be fooled into believing that the Great Spice War was based entirely on references in the book itself.  But nothing of that scale was ever mentioned.

Beyond the events themselves, the characters act according to such simplistic motivations that the subtlety of that future society is lost.  The wheels within wheels of “Dune” were revealed through actions, not words, and one always had the sense that more was left concealed than ever seen.  Too much stands exposed in this book (and in the Herbert/Anderson novels in general), and it seems odd that such open action would give way to far more sophisticated planning within the space of a single generation.

Other quibbles remain (the truth about Piter de Vries, the birthplace of Paul), and none of them should have happened, but it’s clear to me that the Herbert/Anderson novels will never properly mesh with the original canon.  In the broad strokes, it might work (at least up to this point, as I’ve not read the concluding novels as yet), but only if the originals and new novels are seen as retelling history from two vastly different perspectives.  Frank Herbert’s original novels would be a more philosophical approach based on deep study of individual accounts, while the new novels would be a more shallow, event-driven dramatization based loosely on fact.  Both have a place, but the former is far more satisfying.

Rating: 5/10