Tag Archives: Brian Herbert

Dune – House Corrino

November 28, 2019 BeRKA Leave a comment

I first read Dune in 1984. I liked it a lot and later read and enjoyed the five sequels.

I love the way the noble houses are described in the original books. I love how well Dune/Arrakis is described. When I read Dune and the following novels by Frank Herbert I could see where the ideas for the nobles in Traveller has got (some of) its inspiration from.

Now I have read the last one of the Prelude to Dune trilogy prequels, called House Corrino by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. This was an interesting book written in the same style as Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. This book focuses a lot on the Tleilaxu occupied world of Ix, where the Tleilaxu is trying to produce synthetic spice for the Emperor (from House Corrino). It is an interesting book, but I think that the other two prequels, House Harkonnen and House Atreides were better.

Arrakis - Dune

Original image from wikimedia. License Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Reviews, Science Fiction

Dune – House Harkonnen

August 23, 2017 BeRKA Leave a comment

A few years ago I read Dune – House Atreides. Now I have read the next one of the prequels. Dune – House Harkonnen.

We get to know more about the Harkonnen family and a few new characters are introduced. Not all are bad.

But the bad and stupid ones do what could be expected of them.

There are also the expected side stories about the Atreides and other important Houses.

A few concepts are introduced a bit too early here. Things that didn’t exist until later in the original series. That is a bit annoying. But other than that, I thought the book was quite good. (But don’t read it until you have read all of the original Dune books first. The originals are a lot better.)

Harkonnen flag – Image from wikimedia – CC-BY-SA-4.0 license

Reviews, Science Fiction

Dune – House Atreides

August 7, 2008 BeRKA 2 Comments

I first read Dune in 1984. I liked it a lot and later read and enjoyed the five sequels.

When I read Dune and the following novels by Frank Herbert I could see where the ideas for the nobles in Traveller has got (some of) its inspiration from. I also liked the style in which these books was written, with chapters about the different adversaries that met in a confrontation in the final chapters.

Other than that there wasn’t many ideas from the books that could be used in Traveller. There are no personal shields in Traveller, nor are there any Guild monopoly for transportation, and not much cloning (with restored memories) either. But this doesn’t matter. These books are still a great source for inspiration for Traveller just because of how the nobles are described. It is also some of the best science fiction that I have read.

Now I have read one of the new prequels called House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. This was an interesting book written in the same style as Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. It described the intrigues of the nobility in the Dune Universe very nicely, and the book also had a good plot. Now I just must read the rest of the prequels. 🙂