Thirteen, Richard K. Morgan

Title:		Thirteen
Author:		Richard K. Morgan
Rating:

If you like your science fiction hard nosed and edgy, then Thirteen is for you.  In fact, so far, everything I've read by Morgan is grade A goodness of the same sort.

Set in the not too distant future, Thirteen tells part of the story of an... well... it's complicated.  The hero - Carl Marsalis - is an outcast working for the man.  He's kind of a cop, but his relationship with authority is challenging, and his assignments...  suffice it to say he hunts down escaped people like him.

And what is he?  Well, a thirteen is a member of the last (thirteenth) generation of genetically modified super soldiers.  They're faster and stronger than regular humans, and the programs were all shelved and the survivors are outcasts, relegated to a few fringe communities and the Martian colonies.  Some don't like that, however, and get loose with the rest of us.  When that happens, Carl is called in to find them and bring them back, or kill them if they won't come along.

But Carl gets brought into this story in a sideways way, involving a crashed ship from mars and a series of murders.

We get to watch Carl interact with humans - and other thirteens - and in the process see all kinds of interesting things about the dystopian society they live in.  This is a deeply uncomfortable world, and humanity is not doing well.

But Morgan's science fiction has that sort of edge about it.  Everything is dirty, and the real motivations for things are hard to find.

In short, this is good stuff, and I highly recommend it.

Oh, and it was published under the name Black Man outside the US, so if you're looking for it elsewhere, that's the name.

Lord Of Light, Roger Zelazny

Title:		Lord Of Light
Author:		Roger Zelazny
Rating:

Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors.  His writing is light and quick, with am occasional turn of phrase that leaves me laughing uproariously.   He tackled big and small stories, along with big and small themes.  Not everything he wrote is perfect - like all of us, he had his up and down projects - but I find a lot more hits than misses with his works, at least until near the end of his life.

Lord Of Light is an earlier work, and one I really enjoy.  The story follows a group of colonial humans on a distant planet in the far future.  Some are gods - via technology and/or mutation - who oppress the rest of society.  Among the gods, though, there is one who opposes their rule, and who will fight to free humanity from the tyranny of the few.  He is Sam, and quite a character he is.

It turns out that those in power have taken on the roles of ancient, Hindu deities, and their associated aspects (or powers).  Sam, however, has taken a different path, and is considered a Buddha, among other things, and the conflict between him and his fellow gods is something to see.

In this work we see Zelazny writing when he was young.  I love this book, and reread it every few years just because I can.

The Devil's Eye, Jack McDevitt

Title:		The Devil's Eye
Author:		Jack McDevitt
Rating:

Another Alex Benedict novel, like A Talent For War, Polaris, and Seeker.  Once again we have the usual assortment (in hardish SF) of space ships, aliens, and a threat of some sort that might or might not come from the aliens.

And as with the other books in this series, the actual narrator is Chase Kolpath, Benedict's assistant and pilot.

This time we have a mystery involving a famous writer asking for help and then having her mind wiped - entirely - for no obvious reason.  Benedict and Kolpath start looking and, well aliens and threats ensue.

If this sounds a bit vague, it is.  I read the book a while back and the details have slipped away from me.  I had to open it up and scan a few pages to refresh my memory even that much.

I enjoyed it, but I think my tolerance for this sort of work is dwindling.  There's another book in the series, I see via a quick glance at Amazon, but for now I think I will pass.  Those who've loved these books will, no doubt, want to read Echo, but I am off onto other things.

The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

Title:		The Gods Themselves
Author:		Isaac Asimov
Rating:

This was a recommendation from somewhere, but I honestly don't recall who it was that suggested it.

It was originally published in 1972 and it reads like it, which, alas, is a problem I have with a lot of science fiction of late.

In this one Asimov was playing with parallel universes, parallel people/beings in those universes, and the end of the world (or worse).  Alas he was also writing about the kinds of personal interactions and sex his various characters might have, and (IMO) not writing about those things all that well.

And for as bright as he was I don't feel like he did the science justice here.  The potential for ending the world could have been handled in a much more convincing way.

The end result isn't all that interesting, sad to say.

Still, there was a story here, and it held my interest to some degree.  Not awful, just not as good as I think it could have been.

And yet this won both a Hugo and a Nebula in 1973.  Really?  My standards must be really different.

Seeker, Jack McDevitt

Title:		Seeker
Author:		Jack McDevitt
Rating:

Seeker is another Alex Benedict novel by Jack McDevitt.  Set in the far future, Seeker tells the story of a group of people fed up with earth who make their exit and hope to establish a new society on another planet.  Well, actually, it tells that story from the perspective of Chase Kolpath, Alex Benedict's assistant, thousands of years after the actual event.  She and Alex follow some clues that lead in the direction of that ancient story and wind up, well, you should read it for yourself.

As with earlier Benedict novels, I have some mild reservations about telling the story from Chase's perspective rather than Alex's, but it holds together and is a pretty good read.

With the obvious exception of the Mutes and their unexplained telepathic communication, this is basic, hard SF.  There is faster than light travel with rules, a society spread among the stars, and a few complications and limits that keep things interesting.

So far I like McDevitt overall, and this holds up well compared with the other works of his that I have read.

Recommended if you like real SF.

Polaris: Jack McDevitt

Title:		Polaris
Author:		Jack McDevitt
Rating:

Polaris is the second novel in the Alex Benedict series by Jack McDevitt. I briefly reviewed the first - A Talent For War - some time back.

Set in the far future, Polaris describes Alex Benedict's efforts to understand how and why the crew of the ship Polaris disappeared.  Benedict is a dealer in antiquities, not a detective, so his take on things can be different from that of someone "in the business".

The story is actually told from the perspective of his assistant and pilot, Chase Kolpath, and that is perhaps the weakest link in the novel.  Telling it from the perspective of someone other than Benedict lets important realizations (and some events) happen off stage, so we only find out about them later.  It may be a reasonable way to maintain the story and keep the reader guessing, but it feels a bit forced at times.  Not horribly bad, though... just a bit off.

I enjoyed the novel for what it is - a detective story in an unusual environment - and found it pretty good reading.  Enough to cause me to start the next in the series now.

Illium and Olympos: Dan Simmons

Title:		Illium and Olympos
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Argh... lots of time spent on these before giving up.

I read all of Illium, the first in a 2 volume set by Dan Simmons set in the far future.  In it, for reasons that I still don't know, a group of gods and humans is acting out something like the story told in The Illiad but on a terraformed Mars, or something like that.  A set of humans on Earth is struggling to figure out what they really are, and a set of moravecs - effectively cyborgs that are mostly machine, with wetware brains interfaced to their computers - based around the outer planets is worried about unusual physics in the Mars area, and so sends a small team to investigate.

Olympos is the continuation of the story, but I stopped reading just under halfway through that book because it is all just too disjoint and silly for me to keep going.  Lots of things didn't make sense to me once Olympos got started, as if Simmons had a bunch of new things and ideas to add to the series at that point and just did so without worrying about how things interacted with the contents of Illium.

As a result, Simmons - famous for the Hyperion series - just couldn't make these work for me.

I was kind of OK with Illium, but none of the characters except the moravecs were all that interesting.  The humans on earth are too dumb to live, the humans (or whatever they are) bringing The Illiad to life have no business being where they are and are thus unexplained in an irritating way, the Greek gods they interact with are too arbitrary and stupid for words, and the "scholic" Hockenberry is so far beyond unexplained that his presence and actions drove me crazy.

These books are long and definitely needed a serious editing.  Illium clocks in at 725 pages in my paperback edition, while Olympos is 891 pages.  I know there is an argument saying that sometimes authors need that sort of room for their story, and I fully understand that, just not in this case.  Simmons needed to put these books on a serious diet.

If you really want to know, it was Setebos that drove me away.  Simmons is playing with a bunch of different literary references, well above and beyond The Illiad.  I was OK with that despite not having read most of them, but by the time we get descriptions of Setebos and what he/she/it is doing on at least one copy of Earth, I could no longer sustain the willing suspension of disbelief.  I plowed on for a while longer, but then stopped.  Whenever I had the time and desire to read but faced picking Olympos back up, I did something else instead.  After a week of not reading I decided the problem was serious enough to give up.

For me, Illium and Olympos are failures.  I suggest reading other things.

A Talent For War, Jack McDevitt

Title:		A Talent For War
Author:		Jack McDevitt
Rating:

A Talent For War is pretty good science fiction.  It's set in the far future, after humanity has had first contact with aliens, and fought a war with them.  The story revolves around someone trying to find out what really happened to a war hero who turned the tide of that battle.

I found the characters reasonably well developed, though not perfect, the descriptions of future technology were interesting and well done, and the story moved along at a good clip, mostly without bogging down.  From me, given my recent reactions to science fiction, that's high praise.

If I have a complaint it is that some of the story winds up being a bit opaque, and I am still not entirely clear on what really happened in the history being described.  Then again it is, after all, history, and that may well be deliberate.

There are two more books in the series, or so I am informed: Polaris and Seeker.  I will probably look them up.

Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale, Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Chris Samnee

Title:		Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
Authors:		Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Chris Samnee
Rating:

The Shepherd's Tale is a short graphic novel given much of the back story behind Shepherd Book, one of the characters from Firefly and Serenity. I enjoyed it greatly, but I am a fan. In truth it's a quick read, but it seems important back story for the series. I wish it could have been fleshed out in the original medium, though, rather than in book form.

An interesting device is the telling of the shepherd's story in reverse, starting at the Haven Mining Colony and working back through his life, linking formative incidents and events in a chain.

Recommended for fans. Those who don't know Firefly and Serenity need not bother until they do know them.

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Title:		The Sparrow
Author:		Mary Doria Russell
Rating:

If I have my facts right, The Sparrow is Mary Doria Russell's first work of fiction. She was an academic before turning to writing for a living. It won several awards, and I can see why.

It's a story of mankind's first contact with intelligent life from another world. In this case we encounter radio broadcasts from a planet in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri, and an entirely private expedition is mounted and sent there by the Jesuit order before any other body can get things rolling.

Only one of the crew - Father Emilio Sandoz - survives and returns to earth, and the controversy around his return is challenging, to say the least. The book tells the story of the expedition to Rakhat, alternating between the present - after Sandoz's return - and the past - following the expedition directly.

On the plus side, Russell's writing is quite good, and her characters are, by and large, extremely vivid. Though this is a science fiction story, what it features is people and how they deal with events well beyond their control or understanding. We feel for Sandoz in his struggle to come to terms with what happened to him on Rakhat, and for those in his order trying to find out what those events really were.

The alien planet and culture are well described and believable, at least for me. Rakhat is different enough that understanding it isn't trivial, and yet similar enough that there is the basis for some understanding at all. This isn't Star Trek; everyone doesn't speak English.

In general the story is well told, well plotted, and well written, but I have two issues that hold me back from giving this book a really great review.

First, Russell disposes of some of her characters to abruptly, even some we have followed for a long time. Yes, real people do just die, sometimes unexpectedly, but I found that a bit frustration here. I had come to care about these characters over many pages, and found the parting more than abrupt in some cases.

Secondly there are some issues of logic and practicality that Russell ignores. The expedition makes no effort (that we are told about, in any case) to avoid contaminating Rakhat with organisms (of any size) originating on earth, nor do they adequately protect themselves from anything potentially hazardous to humans upon arrival. As a pragmatic manner, even a completely privately funded expedition of this nature would need to take a lot more precautions than are documented here. In truth, such precautions would probably have made the story impossible to tell, though. Contact and linguistic understanding would have taken years, not weeks, and much of the story would not even be possible. In that light I understand the lack of caution, but I lost the willing suspension of disbelief in a few places as a result.

I wish I could bring complex characters like Emilio Sandoz to life on the page the way Russell does. It gives me something to aspire to, I suppose.

Recommended.

The Rise Of Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Rise Of Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Well, I'm done with the Hyperion series now, and I'm glad.

The Rise Of Endymion wraps up the Hyperion books for good, or so I hope. It's not that it's a bad book, but it could have been so much better.

Slow to the point of plodding at times, we're told about character development rather than seeing it, and quite a few things are very predictable.

I've called this book "OK" purely because if you've gotten through the first three in the series you'll probably want to read this one to learn the bits of the ending that you don't already know. That said, it's not all that well written.

A major problem that inhabits all four volumes is that Simmons lets his imagination run way ahead of what he's already written. He created a particular universe in Hyperion, changed a couple of the fundamentals in The Fall Of Hyperion, changed a lot of the fundamentals in Endymion, and a few more in The Rise Of Endymion. Effectively he's rewriting the rules of the game - his laws of physics and rules of behavior - on the fly. Changing even one rule like that in the middle of a series is difficult to do well. Your readers tend to lose their willing suspension of disbelief when you pull that stunt. Simmons does it so many times you just start to give up. There are no touchstones you can return to here.

In summary, I think the original Hyperion is a pretty good book, but it has no ending, and the three that follow it get progressively less well written. It's a shame, really. Hyperion has such promise.

Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Endymion is the first book in the second part of the Hyperion series. In it Dan Simmons takes up the story of Hyperion, some of the characters from the first series, and (of course) the Shrike some 200+ years after the first series.

Religion takes an even thicker role here than it did in Hyperion and The Fall Of Hyperion, and much of the story is a travelogue, with little in the way of explanation for why the characters are traveling where they are. In fact, they all just kind of accept apparently random travel for no good reason, which got on my nerves.

In truth, though, several things seem off here. First of all, Simmons takes some major departures from things he setup in the first Hyperion novels. Flinging aside major characters - like the new pope - with reckless abandon, and recasting events in new and entirely unexpected ways. Going so far, in fact, as to basically tell us that much of what we learned in the first two books was wrong, misleading, or outright lies told by characters there.

When combined with the oppressive presence of Catholicism and the seemingly pointless travels of the characters, it got a bit old, and I even considered putting it aside. In the end, though, a couple of minor characters - the Shrike and Nemes - kept me from doing so. Well, that and the fact that I was traveling and needed something to read where I was at the time.

Sadly, Simmons's main hero - Raul Endymion - is both boring and a bit dimwitted. I'd rather he'd focused more on Aenea or A. Bettik.

And yet again we have a cover featuring a two armed Shrike. Where was the editor during the process of getting these books out? Nonexistent, apparently.

I have some reservations - some of which may or may not be resolved by the final book in the series, The Rise Of Endymion, which I am reading now - but fans of Hyperion will probably want to read it.

The Fall Of Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Fall Of Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

The Fall Of Hyperion completes the story started in Hyperion. In the first book the main characters - well, most of them anyway - got to the time tombs on Hyperion and big events are just starting to happen. You might expect the next volume in the series to pick up right there, but no. Simmons instead introduces us to an entirely new character and starts giving us his back story, gradually weaving it into with the original tale.

We eventually get the story of the last Shrike pilgrimage worked out, sort of. There are a lot of unanswered questions, though, and some less than entirely satisfactory story telling. It's not that I require everything to be wrapped up with a pretty, pink bow, but something seems to be missing.

I noted more instances where an editor would have helped, as in Hyperion itself, and the damn cover image still features a two armed Shrike, not the four armed one actually described in the novel. *sigh*

In all I am not quite sure what to make of this. It's good, but not great, interesting, but less than fulfilling. I wish Simmons had done more with it, but I can still recommend it.

Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

I first read Hyperion quite a few years ago. So long ago, in fact, that with my rust memory it was almost like reading it for the first time again. As I recall, I really enjoyed it the first time around. I remember thinking it was a great book. Really great. Sometimes it stinks getting older. This time I can call Hyperion a good book, but not a great one.

Simmons clearly has a lot to tell, and even having read it before I was still surprised that it's only half the story, completed in The Fall Of Hyperion. I found the characters interesting and the Shrike compelling, but I seem to be growing tired of the "journey as story" phenomenon. Why is it so hard to find interesting stories that don't include the main characters traveling vast distances? Here we watch the main characters travel by space ship, tramway, wind wagon, and on foot. I didn't object that much as I was reading it, but it did sometimes seem that moving the characters around was more important than the rest of the story. That got a bit old, particularly in hind sight.

If I have any real gripes, though, they are actually less serious. There were a couple of places where Simmons desperately needed an editor. A few sections of repetitive text and a mention of a checking account (yes, really), for example, bugged me. There were also some possible printing errors in my copy, but they might instead have been writing errors an editor would have found and removed. Editing seems to be a lost art these days.

Finally though, the biggest irritant for me is the cover art. The Shrike has four (4!) arms dammit! Why on earth (or Hyperion) do we have four volumes in this series and only the fourth finally gets that little detail right on the cover? What sort of nitwit artists did these covers without reading enough about what they were painting to get it right. Gah! (Yes, this is trivial, I know, but it's amazing how it bugs me now as I sit here with the books writing reviews.)

Anyway, if you can get past these few oddities and irritants, Hyperion is a good tale. Be prepared to read Fall Of Hyperion too, though, or you'll never know how things end.

Paul Of Dune, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Title:		Paul Of Dune
Author:		Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Rating:

I love the original Dune books by Frank Herbert. Well, I love some of them and appreciate the others for what they are, even if they aren't up the quality of Dune or God Emperor Of Dune, which are the best two in the series. Sadly, however, Herbert died with the series incomplete, and left a lot of questions unanswered.

His son, Brian Herbert, picked up the tale with co-writer Kevin J. Anderson, but rather than continue where Herbert left off, they have so far set their stories before or between the original novels in the series.

I'd read another one of their works some time back - Dune, House Atreides, I think - and found it flat. Recently, though, I was given a copy of Paul Of Dune and decided to try it, to see if the earlier work was just a poor example or actually reflected the reality of what Herbert and Anderson are writing. Sadly, it turns out to be the latter.

The Dune universe provides a rich tapestry to work with: compelling characters, fascinating settings, unique technology, incredibly complicated politics, and (of course) the spice. Herbert and Anderson, though, simply cannot find anything interesting to write about here. In fact, they barely find anything to write about at all.

The story has no focus, and we go from chapter to chapter wondering why any of it matters. It appears the time Paul Atreides spends consolidating power after assuming the role of emperor is pretty dull. If this wasn't fiction it might even be true that nothing of interest happened during this period, but Herbert and Anderson could and should have done better. Alternately, if they are following notes left by Frank himself, they should have skipped this part of Dune's history and written about something else. Something that matters.

Vacuum Diagrams, Stephen Baxter

Title:		Vacuum Diagrams
Author:		Steven Baxter
Rating:

Thanks to a lot of conflicts and two crazy jobs in the past year I am behind on my book reviews. That makes writing them a bit tougher as I have to root around in my entirely inadequate memory for what I thought of these things months ago when I finished them. I'll do my best...

Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of science fiction short stories that collect and intertwine the author's larger works in a (relatively) cohesive whole. Baxter actually pulls this off better than many - Asimov and Heinlein come to mind as examples of those who should never have tried such a thing - probably because he actually did have a relatively cohesive world view as he wrote his various works.

Nevertheless, while I found these stories acceptable, they really didn't stick with me. There's something about huge, sweeping tales - these cover the entire history of our universe, and introduce a second, if that makes any sense out of context - that makes me want more than just short stories to get them to stick.

If you've read other things by Baxter and enjoyed them then this may be your thing. You can see the overall view of the universe(s) he imagines here. For me, though, these were simply OK stories without enough glue to make them work overall.

Doorways In The Sand, Roger Zelazny

Title:		Doorways In The Sand
Author:		Roger Zelazny
Rating:

As some of you may know, I teach stone carving. Something close to five years ago we had a high school student join the class. This was a new experience for me - the class is generally directed at adults - but Jeremy was a great addition. I learned a lot from him, and he added quite a bit to the classroom experience.

This year saw him graduate and go off to college. Over the years we've watched him get ready for this and now seen him leave. I always told Jeremy he should milk his college days as much as he can. If he needed 3 PhD degrees and a 20 year post doc, for example, he should do that, and all on his parent's dime. He says that won't happen, but in the spirit of the idea I am sending him a copy of Doorways In The Sand.

In it, the hero has managed to stay in college for something like 14 years without graduating. He gets close at times, but always changes majors or otherwise manages to escape. The reason is that his uncle's estate pays for his college education until he graduates, but doesn't contain a time limit. As you can imagine, Jeremy needs to read this. The USPS will deliver a copy to him shortly.

As books by Zelazy go, Doorways In The Sand is good, but not one of the greats. It's fluffier than something like Lord of Light, and lacks the grand sweep of the Amber Chronicles. Still, it's fun and well written. Definitely worth your time if you're into lighter SF.

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Title:		Ringworld
Author:		Larry Niven
Rating:

Ringworld is probably Larry Niven's most famous work, having won both the Hugo and Nebula awards back in 1970 when it was first published. My previous experience with Niven's work, though, has left me cold. He's a hard science fiction writer and his characters have been very flat, to say the least. I hoped that Ringworld would be different.

It isn't.

It appears as though Niven had the idea for the ringworld and forced some characters and story together to give him a reason to write about the toy he'd invented. For me the result simply didn't work.

The toy itself - the ringworld - is an interesting idea, but other than some math about dimensions and spinning it to create gravity, everything else about it is pure, unadulterated fantasy. There are all kinds of impossible things going on here in the guise of "science": impossibly strong and thin wire, materials impervious to just about anything, multiple forms of FTL travel, unexplained failsafe systems, life extending substances, stasis fields, transmutation of one material into another, alien species, etc. One or even a few of these things would be fine in a science fiction work, particularly with some background and explanation, but Niven piles them up thick and just keeps going.

In short, he made up anything needed to let him talk about the idea of the ringworld itself. Everything other than the ring - characters, physics, story - was essentially superfluous. If he was a better writer I might have suspended disbelief, but that never happened. Not once.

Even worse, there were several places where the writing is so bad - or the copy I have is so poorly transcribed from the original - that after rereading a few paragraphs several times I had to give up and move on. Some things just didn't make sense at all.

In other places, despite the fact that the words and sentences held together, Niven didn't adequately describe the situation or action. After a while you just wind up accepting that he's not going to explain things well enough to make sense and forget about it. Not a good sign.

For amusement you can look it up on Wikipedia and read about other technical problems. There are quite a few.

I don't know why this book won any awards. It's not very good. My perception of Niven as a writer remains unchanged and I will avoid his work in the future. Too bad.

God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert

Title:		God Emperor of Dune
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

God Emperor of Dune is the fourth book in the Dune series, and my second favorite of the bunch. Only Dune itself is better.

In God Emperor we find ourselves following Leto Atreides's life something over 3000 years after Children of Dune. Yes, he lives that long and it's not horribly contrived that he does so. In fact it was setup during Children of Dune and Herbert is simply following the plan he laid out there. But ruling a multi-galactic empire for over 3000 years is not a simple thing, and Leto's got reasons for everything he does. Those reasons are impressive. I like what Herbert says about humanity here. Leto makes the ultimate sacrifice to save us from ourselves.

In addition to Leto we have a few other major characters: Moneo, Leto's majordomo; Siona, Moneo's daughter; and Duncan Idaho, the most recent in a long line of gholas with their memories restored from the first Duncan, who died in Dune.

I have to give Herbert credit. He can write with a huge scale in mind and pull it off. Sometimes I feel that Leto's words are a bit thick, but on reflection they're actually right for a character of his age and experience, and if I was a deeper reader I might not feel that way.

Another important point is that God Emperor isn't classic science fiction in the usual sense. Oh, it's a classic, but it's not a space opera full of ray guns and space battles. It's mostly conversation and description, as much of the drama is in relationships, so the interactions among characters are key.

If you liked the first three Dune books you'll probably like this one too. I know I do.

Children Of Dune, Frank Herbert

Title:		Children Of Dune
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

Children of Dune was the first "end" of the Dune series. At this point there are a lot more books in that series, but this is where the original work stopped.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It's better written than Dune Messiah, and has more content. In it, Paul Atreides' son Leto takes up his destiny. Preborn - having access to all the memories of his ancestors from conception - he finds himself following in his father's footsteps. And going well beyond them.

Some of what Herbert proposes about human nature in Children of Dune is quite interesting. Leto's "solution" is quite unique as well.

While it's still not quite the grabber that Dune itself is, this is a good book, and recommended.