Rating: 
Summary: Not worthy.
Review: I found this book to be lacking in most areas. While mildly entertaining, the writing was amateurish. And worst of all, you'd swear this was fan fiction from some teenager. Not very true to Frank Herbert's vision at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Cartoon series out of DUNE
Review: Ah... Dune junkies. The original DUNE was such potent substance that we all found ourselves grabbing the pricy hardcovers of Frank Herbert's son's concoctions off the store shelf and actually reading them, asking ourselves every 2 pages: "Why am I reading THIS?" The original DUNE series was indeed very addictive, and we all have had this little substance abuse since then. When the fake DUNE came out, I was among the first ones to buy them, in hardcover... Woe to me, all three of them.
One thing is clear: the creator of the original DUNE was an immense literary talent; his son Brian is not. The latter's only credential is that he is the son of Frank Herbert; therefore he has an inherent right to take his father's literary canvass and turn it into a cartoon series, making a few bucks in the process. These new books' do not aim at the perpetuation of Frank Herbert's intellectual legacy. Their goal is making a few bucks off our substance abuse. I admit I may be wrong. It is quite possible the poor Brian sees himself a rightful Duke of the DUNE series with a signet on his finger but does not realize that he is out of his league. He was bright enough to understand that he could not do it alone, so he hired a writer to do it for him. For all that, as for literary collaboration of Anderson and Herbert-junior, 1+1 does not equal 2. It equals 0. Having finished reading the prequels, I opened the original DUNE. Ah, what a pleasure it is to revel in its complexities and nonpareil multi-dimentionality!
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it. Very readable and a worthy prequel to Dune.
Review: This book is a great read. It is, of course, a prequel to Dune, the Frank Herbert Sr. classic. Although it is not as great a book as the original Dune, I actually liked it better than all of the sequels to Dune written by the original Frank Herbert Sr. The novel takes place in the latter years of the Old Duke's reign on Caladan, the home of House Atreides. It introduces us to the Old Duke, and to Duke Leto Atreides, who we never really get to know in the original Dune, since he gets killed off there fairly soon. Duke Leto is the central character of this novel, and that fact is what makes this a pleasure to read. The story is fast-paced, interesting, and very readable. It was good enough that I have re-read it, and I enjoyed it very much the second time. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and Well-written
Review: I think Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson took on a heck of a challenge, with hundreds of thousands of DUNE fans expecting something as good as, or better than, the original. And, I must say, they came very close. The pre-Paul Atreides/Muad'ib/Kwisatz Haderach era was put together in a suspenseful and comprehensive way. DUNE is still DUNE, but House Atreides is a masterpiece in it's own right.
Rating: 
Summary: Very accessible and not to bad (regarding its not Frank)
Review: This book an easy read where the original Dune books ar much more complex. The original books remain interesting after the first read, and one still discovers new things on second or sometimes third read. House Atreides holds a lot of interesting background info on Frank's universe. And I liked that. The end was a bit to "easy" in my opinion. But remember this is not Frank. Rate the book on its own merits. Then it is a decent read.
Rating:
Summary: fun stories
Review: While the Dune:House books will never be written to the...critics satisfaction, all 3 are excellent stories. I read the original Dune books in the mid 80's & loved them. I have now read the 3 "House" books, and enjoyed them as well. No one will ever be able to meet the expectations of the "experts", but thank you, Brian and Kevin, for letting us enjoy Dune again. I'm looking forward to the rest. Let's learn to enjoy books and stories without being so critical about the style. Some will never be satisfied, but most of us are. Literature is for entertainment as well as art. So just enjoy the books for what they are, fun.
Rating:
Summary: Trying to remember Frank Herbert?
Review: House Atreides is the first volume of a trilogy which is intended as a prequel to the events narrated in the great classic "Dune" by Frank Herbert. The initial idea of Brian Herbert (Frank Herbert's son) was to write a conclusion to the original saga which comprised six volumes. This idea was reinforced when some drafts of a "Dune 7" novel were found years after Frank Herbert's death in 1986. What finally resulted was the collaboration of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson (well known already for working within others universes not created by himself, like Star Wars and the X-Files), to write several novels that take place in the 'Dune Universe', both authors claiming that some plots and ideas were taken from Frank Herbert's notes. The attempt is of course futile in the sense that no one will ever come close to write the way Frank Herbert did. He was an exceptional writer with an incredible wisdom and very peculiar style. Thus, when one reads House Atreides, one might see the body (characters, places and events of the Dune Universe) but the soul is missing. And it was precisely the soul of Herbert's works that made him inmortal. The problem with House Atreides is that it does not resist the comparison. If we could be able to judge it without thinking in the original Dune series it could be a nice adventure, even with some interesting events and places. On the negative side, the writing is no more than average, and the two different pens are clearly felt. Some of the events seem forced just to fit in the overall saga and many character responses are poorly backed As it stands, House Atreides and all the novels which the Anderson-Herbert duo are writing might be interesting only as they will make us remember the greatness of Frank Herbert. The big incognita will be their final volume "Dune 7". Will it really be the conclusion that Frank Herbert was thinking for his epic saga?. We will never know...
Rating:
Summary: An extremely pale shadow of Frank Herbert's Dune books...
Review: I've been reading and rereading Frank Herbert's Dune books for twenty years, and I have to say that I find this book a shameful attempt to captialize on a great SF author's fame. The plot is contrived and simplistic, and the characters are cardboard cutouts. To paraphrase Thufir Hawat when he dealt with the Baron: Frank Herbert could tell us a thing with the literary equivalent of the lift of an eyebrow or the wave of a hand...could express an entire sentence in the the way he accented a single word. This writing, by comparison, is cloddish! I'm sorry if this hurts the authors, because writing any book is a huge task and I'm sure that enormous effort went into writing this one. But the authors should expend their energies making their own creations, and stand or fall on their own imaginations, not Frank Herbert's. Bantam Books, too, should reconsider their all-too-transparent motivations. I'm thankful that Christopher Tolkien has not fallen into this trap, and that the Lord of the Rings remains pretty much how J.R.R. left it (don't get me started on the films...).
Rating: 
Summary: This is the first Dune book I have ever read
Review: I was interested in Dune since a friend suggested it was a good read. Accidentally I picked up this book instead of my intended origional Dune. I thought this book was extremely entertaining, probably one of my top 10 favorite books and worth every penny. I loved the multi-plot writing in the book that gives the reader insight in every perspective. I intend to finish the prequel trilogy and then continue on to the origional series. If this book doesn't compare to the origionals as most of the reviews say then I am in for a treat.
Rating:
Summary: Great job, but some significant mistakes
Review: Despite some significant mistakes, this book does a decent job of recreating the world of Herbert's DUNE. Unfortunately, the writing style is geared more towards the less intellectual crowd, an apparent attempt to cater to Hardy-boy type readers who prefer sex and violence over the smooth philosophical undertones which characterized Frank Herbert's DUNE series. The authors also suffer from mistakes and misreading of the original book, Dune, in other ways. The authors go somewhat overboard with making the Harkonnens into monsters, and depict them with red hair, when the original book had them with black hair. Fenring's hmmm's are actually a secret language between him and his wife, but the authors apparently overlook this, and mistakenly portray this as a speech defect in their new prequel. The level of violence and sexual innuendo is played up in this prequel, and characters such as "the Baron" are a far more affected than the original book ever suggested. The level of adventure is heightened, which is a refreshing change. The authors also do a good job of creatively enhancing details which were only mentioned in Herbert's dune, as well as creating some intriguing ones of their own. Overall, a good read, but the authors would have benefited from closer reading of the original books.
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