Ok, I just finished reading Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and it’s not too bad if you’re into reading the sci-fi futuristic genre.

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson most notably wrote the Dune prequel and sequels series of books, plus their own books too, but nothing can ever compare to the Dune series.

Everything I read in the sci-fi genre gets compared to Dune, because it was an experience for me and Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson did a fantastic job on keeping that series going.

Anyhow, this is a Hellhole review and it’s got some similarities to the overall theme of the Dune series….

• Elite group of oligarchical commerce driven nobles vying for position constantly
• A corrupt ruling class
• A rebel force on outskirts of civilization (a la Arrakis, or Dune planet)
• A noble, moral leader sent into exile (a la Duke Atreides)
• And a surprise that I almost gave away here that is akin the what the Fremen offered in the Dune series

I have a tendency to re-tell the tales when I review a book or movie but I will try to make this a literary review not a re-telling….

Hellhole is good because it’s dumbed-down enough to make even a new reader get up to speed ASAP on what happened, or is happening, unlike the dune book where you were forced to learn a new vocabulary and learn or wonder about all the new breeds, species, and life forms being introduced at almost every turn in the Dune books.

I like how they devote a few pages here and there to fill in missing gaps in the storyline, and I’m not saying this as a bad thing.

for example, there’s a rebel leader/general in this story and Hellhole, like many other books glosses over and passes over the origins and specifics of the dispute in order to get the story moving along and to introduce the characters and establish the plot line.

But what I really liked is that at some point in the book, we get the nitty-gritty on everything that happened and in a concise clear-cut manner, and I think that’s great because while I’m reading the chapters, in the back of my mind I’m wondering, “so what’ happened during the battle that sent the General into exile”.

Hellhole is book One of a 3-part series and I will definitely be looking out for and reading the next two books, either to get closure on what happens next or for enjoyment and entertainment purposes.

I picked up my first Dune book back when I was about 11 years old, and back then I was a bookworm who read all types of stuff but never really got into the science fiction genre

The Dune series is by far and way the BEST science fiction series ever written, and I write this knowing that many people agree.

when I first picked it up it was so enticing and it sucked me right in once I saw that there were words in here foreign to me, words like Bene Gesserit, gom jabbar, Fremen, etc…  It was this “foreign-ness” that made me want to struggle through my first reading of dune, but I was reading it from a kid’s point of view; a kid who wanted to read yet another adventure action story, and I wasn’t looking to get bogged down in a series, or an epic.

By the time I was done reading Dune as an 11-year-old, I was getting fluent in Frank Herbert-isms, meaning that the sprinkling in of foreign words to the reading were more easily understood by the time I finished it.

Then I read the rest of the Dune books later on over the course of the year, and even though I read them out of order and confused myself mightily, it also proved that each book by itself is an entertaining read.  The rest of the series was good, if not better because it gave me more adventure, action, plot, intrigue and even more words to learn.

I gave away all my dune books, then about 20 years later, I was in a book store looking for something to read, something light like a john Grisham book… and I saw that there were PREQUELS written by Frank Herbert’s soon and another co-author contributor, and at this time I realized that Frank Herbert had died, (RIP, and thank you for this legendary legacy of literature! ).

The dune prequels = awesomeness because they told us readers how it all began much like the prequels for the star Wars movie showed us how Darth Vader came to be.

After I slammed through all the prequels, I saw that SEQUELS were being written too, holy crap! More Dune books?, Bring it on!

Dune prequels, more details to come later but some summaries first.

In the dune books there was a bias/fear/prejudice against anything technoligically designed that oculd think for itself, or rather….anything that posses machine-like artificla intellegience was banned.

The Butlerian Jihad referenced in the Dune books is covered in the prequels, and the Machine Crusades was a great bookthat covered this in detail.  Other prequels talked about how all the machines came into power and the enslaving of humanity that ensued.

The Dune Sequels discussed what happened after the Scattering, which was when the Gom Emperor Dune let his jihadists run amok, unchecked out into the rest of te universe, and it intorduced some fantastic new evolved species in these sequels too.

that’s what I loved about the dune books, they were always new developments among current species, and sometimes new species developed via intermingling of sects, or just random evolutions and advancements.

If you like the sci-fi genre or just a challenging and enjoyable read, or two, or 12… get going with this series but make sure you start with Frank Herbet’s first book in the series, Dune, by frank Herbert…

• Then read all the rest of the original series of his book, skip the poetry stuff
• Then read the prequels to get up to speed
• Then read the sequels…