June begins the summer reading season, when the emphasis shifts more towards light, entertaining fair. Here at Titanic Book Site.com, we just can’t break away completely from serious Titanic and ocean liner books, but we do manage to squeeze in some good, solid novels, purely for entertainment value.

If you were a youngster in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s and had any interest in SF at all, one of the must read books was Frank Herbert’s groundbreaking novel Dune. This epic, set far into the future involved a stunning complex array of power brokers struggling for control of the galaxy. At the top of the heap was the Emperor from the Corrino family. Below him was a group of influential families which comprised the Houses of the Lansraad. Further complicating the issue were other powerful factions including the Spacing Guild, in control of all space travel, and the Bene Gesserit order of sorceresses, with shadowy goals of their own.

The entire structure of this future society was based upon a very special and rare commodity, known as melange, or spice. Spice gave the Spacing Guild pilots the ability to see into the future in order to steer their ships safely, it gave the Bene Gesserit order their psychic powers, and it extended life and health to all those who could afford to ingest it. Spice came from one source, and one source alone, the desert planet Dune. Built into this story was an entire prehistory upon which the events told in the novel were based.

The foundation of the story was the long, bitter rivalry between two of the houses the Atreides and the Harkonnens. The hero of the book was the Atreides heir, Paul, a young man born with abilities he was never meant to have. The story unfolds his rise to prominence, beginning as a privileged yet gifted noble, to a refugee on the run from his enemies the Harkonnens, to his rise to power amongst the native inhabitants of Dune, the Fremen, and ending with his struggle against all the factions arrayed against him, including even the emperor himself.

Herbert went on to pen several sequels to Dune, but none of them ever came near the quality of his original work. Jump ahead over 30 years, and along comes a whole new group of Dune novels penned by Herbert’s son, Brian with the able assist of Kevin J. Anderson.

Finally, here are Dune sequels worthy of the original. Actually, they are prequels, telling in superb detail the developments of the two generations before Paul Atriedes’ time that formed the backdrop of the original novel. Dune, House Atreides is the first novel of a trilogy. It tells of the time when Paul’s grandfather was ruler of that house. The second book, Dune House Harkonnen, continues the story showing the depth of depravity that corrupted the Harkonnen house, an evil that tainted everyone else. Dune House Corrino wraps up the set covering the machinations of the Emperor and his minions trying to maintain control over the other Houses and over the spice. House Corrino ends shortly before the events that begin Herbert’s original novel.

If you have read Dune, and remember it at all, you will find the answers to so many of the questions hinted at in the original book. How did Paul’s grandfather, a master of the spectacle of the bull fight, end up being gored to death in the ring? (Bravo for the bull, I say, but that is another story). What events convinced the Emperor's planetologist on Dune to betray the empire and turn his efforts to aiding the suppressed inhabitants of that planet, the Fremen. What heinous acts did the Harkonnen heir do to earn him the name Beast Harkonnen? What happened in Paul’s mother’s life that convinced her to beget a son, instead of the daughter she was ordered to have.

The intertwining elements of all these factions struggling against each other are told though out each book in the trilogy. If there is any criticism of the series, it would be that it is a patchwork of very short chapters, each leaping from one faction to the next. The sequence is always logical, but the brevity of the chapters breaks up the smooth flow of the narrative. But that is a minor complaint, more than compensated for by the rich, complex story of the two generations leading up to the time of Paul Atreides and his epic quest. If you enjoyed Dune, I highly recommend this prequel trilogy.