A review by stormlightreader
Sands of Dune by Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert

4.5

I was very apprehensive going into this set of Dune novellas because I haven't read any Dune books not written by Frank Herbert. However, I found the quality of these novellas to be just as good and to me they feel as if they have a more accessible style of writing. But, I am basing that purely on 4 novellas, which can tend to be written differently to full length novels, so I withhold judgement until I've read a full length novel by Brian Herbert, which I will now be doing once I figure out where to start.

Details below for what each novella focuses on:

  • Novella 1 (The Edge of a Crysknife) is set 56 years before the events of Dune. It is clear that this was written in hindsight, but having that as a prequel novella to the first Dune book was great. Furthermore, telling this novella from Shadout Mapes POV was a good choice in my opinion. Fleshing out her backstory and telling of her involvement in the fall of previous planetary governors was really good to read. 
    • The ending of that novella was great:
      "This new planetary governor could not possibly be worse" - Shadout Mapes, as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen comes into power.

  • Novella 2 (Blood of the Sardaukar) is set during the events of Dune, while Duke Leto Atreides is in power and told from the POV of a Sardaukar soldier
    whose family was killed by Duke Leto Atreides' father, Paulus Atreides
    . This novella takes place when Leto, Jessica and Paul are captured by Harkonnens. An interesting POV.

  • Novella 3 (The Waters of Kanly) is set during the events of Dune, just after Leto, Jessica and Paul were taken by the Harkonnens. This novella is told from the POV of Gurney Halleck, but despite that, this is probably my least favourite of the collection. However, it was good to get a glimpse of what Gurney was doing when he was separated from Paul and Jessica.

  • Novella 4 (Imperial Court) is set thousands of years before Dune. and I thought I was going to hate this novella because it was so far removed from the characters of the main series and even the other three novellas. Some of the new characters went over my head initially but then I was so intrigued by these 'new' Harkonnens 😂 The political manoeuvring was interesting to read and it's wild how far back the Atreides-Harkonnen rivalry goes. Gerhard Harkonnen and his bug collection gave him a very sinister vibe, which unfortunately was dampened by the use of the term 'poisonous' where venomous should have been used (3 times in 2 pages) 😂 Nevertheless, I enjoyed this novella a lot and I was surprised that Danvis didn’t see Gerhard's betrayal coming a mile off, because I sure did. Gerhard used a very Harkonnen strategy, making this novella one of my favourites in the collection.