The book is mostly preparing the scene for whatever grand finale the Dune series is planned to have. There are three or four main directions that things move - or rather lumber - forward. The Bene Gesserit. The Face Dancers. The Tleilaxu. The no-ship. And yes, the fifth, the Enemy.
The Bene Gesserit fights its way to unification with the Honored Matres, destroying those that did not play along, and (barely) hanging onto its spice monopoly.
The Face Dancers advance their agenda by raising a clone of Paul Atreides, to be educated by a clone of Vladimir Harkonnen, for whatever unspecified purpose.
The Tleilaxu Masters are destroyed, except for Scytale, who is a prisoner on the no-ship, and Waff, who is a damaged clone held by the Spacing Guild to provide melange substitute.
The no-ship is happily jumping around the universe, serving as a crèche for a collection of clones - Wellington Yueh, Thufir Hawat, Paul Atreides, Jessica Atreides, Stilgar, Chani, the God Emperor himself - all obtained from cell samples held by Scytale.
And the unknown Enemy is, well, being unknown and being Enemy. By the end of the book, the Enemy is introduced to the reader as the two machine minds from the Butlerian Jihad, Erasmus and Omnius. They are just setting out to destroy whatever humanity is left out there (no offence, really, it is all for the sake of efficiency).
As a fan of the original Dune series, I was thrilled to see Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson continue in what was heralded as an authentic and exciting resurrection of the series. After I have read the books, I am still fine with authentic, but I would never agree with anything even remotely approaching exciting.
With this particular Dune book, I was initially hopeful, because the clumsy way in which the plot was set up in the Butlerian Jihad series was gone. Unfortunately, so was the plot. The entire book has the feeling of a middle of a protracted chess match - the opening moves long gone, the ending not yet in sight, the pieces moving in mostly predestined directions. The story culminates about as dramatically as a documentary about growing lettuce.
Lacking the exciting plot to pull me through the book, I was looking for other trademarks of the Dune series. Indeed, the book places great emphasis on the trademark devices from the earlier volumes - Other Memories of the Bene Gesserit, Axlotl Tanks of the Bene Tleilax, prescient Navigators of the Spacing Guild - but where the original books had an air of mystery, the Hunters of Dune turn almost vulgar. Bene Gesserit chat with Other Memories as if they were running an instant messenger software, the inhuman Axlotl Tanks become about as mysterious as copier machines, huge space ships with Holzman Engines that required prescient Navigators to operate are now push-button devices flown by a single pilot (at least they sometimes seem to need warming up).
To complete the picture, add the out-of-character or out-of-place behavior present in many parts of the text. To give just a couple of examples, try this Q-and-A:
Q: What does a Mentat with infallible memory do in spare time ?
A: He watches recordings of his old actions to remind himself.
Q: How does a Tleilaxu teenager acquire a space shuttle in a city under attack ?
A: He walks to the space shuttle facility and asks the first person at hand for one.
... oh well. I was resolved to write a gentle review, knowing how difficult it must be to continue in the Dune series. But I could not. Hunters of Dune is not a book. It is a technical manual. Linear, detailed, boring.
Rated as bad by Ceres on 2009-10-30
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