Thursday, January 22, 2009

Badly Written

Many years ago, humorist Mark Twain listed eleven literary offenses of James Fenimore Cooper, author of the Leatherstocking Tales, and in particular The Deerslayer. Number eight upon that list was: ...crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader...

As I am reading the latest Dune interquel, Paul of Dune, I keep being reminded of that comment. In particular, the section that is supposed to be set between the first prequel trilogy and Dune itself -- I am simply floored by the ridiculous discontinuities and violations of story logic that keep cropping up.

Do Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson think that being licensed to write further works in the Dune universe means that they can toss in whatever outrageious ideas happen to pop into their minds and expect us to accept it as the authentic Dune universe?

Several times now I have been sorely tempted to throw the book against the nearest wall, and have been stopped only by the simple fact that this is a library copy and I don't want to have to return it to the library damaged.

2 comments:

Major Major said...

You mean like when Duke Leto and Lady Jessica turned out to have had and lost a son and were so bereft, evidently, that they never mentioned the child again? (Like in Dune.)

Tattercoats said...

Or that the boy Paul should have gone to Ecaz and seen the beginning of the War of Assassins against Grumman? That entire sequence caused my suspension of disbelief to crash and burn.