Short Version: Utter Abomination
Longer Version: I could have slammed my head into a wall two hundred times and hallucinated a better ending. You will never in a million years convince me that this pile of dreck was conceived by Frank Herbert.
How do I hate it? Oh, let me count the ways:
Genetically engineered sandworms - They live in the ocean (Great Ghu, did either of these two 'authors' even read Children of Dune? If they did, did they skip all the 'boring' parts about ecology?) and produce ultra-spice (All the Prescience! But Just One Calorie!).
Evil Twins!: If one Paul Atredies ghola is cool, then two must be twice as nice, right? Especially if we make one evil!
Deus Ex Machinas - Thrill as each member of the ghola brigade, one at a time, manages to trigger their old selves and their 1337 powers just in time to overcome the unstoppable threat of the chapter! Wow to randomly appearing fleets of warships, vastly overpowered tertiary characters, and a lamely executed endgame that drags on for chapters after the only slightly interesting part has happened.
Writing - I realize that Frank Herbert is a hard act to follow, but if you set out to continue his work you're inviting the comparison. Characters from earlier books are one-note caricatures of themselves - which would be acceptable in the gholas since they're copies of the originals but isn't forgivable in characters like Sheeana, Murbella or Duncan, while newer figures like Omniss and Erasmus aren't nearly as clever or precious as we're supposed to think they are.
Misunderstanding the Universe - This is the central problem with all the post-Herbert Dune books, I think. The authors just don't seem to grok the vibe. Under the new regime, the universe has devolved into just another sci-fi setting. Bene Gesserit become Jedi. Prescience and spice derived abilities substitute for the Force, and just as Anderson fell into the trap of cooking up bigger and bigger spectacles of Force use in Star Wars (C'mon, tossing fleets of Star Destroyers across space? Did he even notice how much effort it took to lift a single X-Wing fighter in ESB?). Most egregious of all, however, is how seriously the duo seem to misunderstand one of the core concepts of Herbert's works. The story of Dune begins with Paul Atreides, a man who can see ahead through time and comes to the realization that prophecy is a trap. He is succeeded by his son, Leto II, whose central lesson is the danger of consolidating all of humanity under one immutable ruler. So, what then is the grand culmination of the series as imagined by Brian Herbert and Anderson? Why, the immutable rule of one man guided by prescience, naturally.
I can buy the idea that Herbert was building towards Duncan Idaho, the continually reborn man, as being a final Kwisatz Haderach. But I can't accept Herbert making him exactly the kind of Heroic god figure he spent so many pages deconstructing.
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