Herbert & Anderson's THE MACHINE CRUSADE

UPDATE:: I give up. On to another book.

UPDATE: I’m on page 576 and I have at least 100 pages to go. It’s painful, but I’m tempted just to stop here. I’m bored and I just don’t care.

OLD STUFF: I’m half-way through and I am having a really tough time with this book. This is the 5th of the Dune “Prequels” I’ve read and this, without a doubt, is the least satisfying of the lot.

Why? There are too many plotlines and too many shabbily described characters. To say that the “main” characters are two-dimensional would be, in many cases, kind. It’s as if the authors have used an outlining tool in the development of this novel and forgot to embellish. I’ll continue reading and report back; I love the “Dune Universe” and I do enjoy the information.

But the characters are just not engaging. Plus, the way that pre-space-folding space travel is described is very suspect. They appear to have interstellar speed yet that is never described, making the overall timeline difficult to understand.