on my way home from nyc yesterday, i picked up a copy of “dune: house corrino” — brian herbert’s attempt to cash in on the overwhelming success of his father’s “dune” series.

i read it in less than three hours, between nyc and dc, and i still can’t get the vile taste out of my mind.

frank’s works were an impressive, multilayered chronicle of the interrelation of society, politics, and economics. he had subtle and three-dimensional characters, amazingly intricate plotlines, and deftly investigated the evolution of ideologies and societies in extremis.

in contrast, brian’s works (the three “house” books and a new “butlerian jihad” prequel that i haven’t polluted my mind with and don’t intend to) are cartoonish, written with the broadest of third-grade-level language, and with only vaguely plausible plotlines. even worse, they violate some of the most basic tenets of the original dune universe.

these books aren’t even dune lite. they’re baked dune, or air dune — tasting of sawdust and leaving you wishing you hadn’t bothered.

if brian doesn’t stop with these or learn how to write better, there’s only one solution: he must suffer the fate baron harkonnen’s etiquette advisor in “dune: house corrino” — sliced to bits by giant blades in a vast open vat of shit.