Praise for Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

[lotek]

I don't mind shooting fish in a barrel

[D Pope]

"In the battle of witts, gentlemen, you are unarmed."

The phrase I've alwasy heard was, "I refuse to have a battle of witts with an unarmed person."

That's the way I remember Robert Conrad saying it in the movie. (right before proving it to the warden )

[lotek]

What are the standarts for "best seller" anyway? Don't you see "best seller" on book covers even before the book is out, as part of the "review" quotes and all?

ZING!!!

Yeah, Sadworms was a fricking "bestseller" before they even finished writing it!



Damn...those cover designers at TOR are PRESCIENT!!!

They're manatees !

[lotek]

Isnt it a well known fact that KJA is, in fact, a scientologist? Factually speaking?

I haven't found anything yet that points to KJA being a scientologist, I did find this on the bottom of his wiki page though:

Categories: 1962 births | American Roman Catholics | American science fiction writers | Living people

I wonder if he is still a practicing catholic?

Rob

I doubt that such an ego would accept to submit to Tom Cruise's advances, but hey what do I know ?

[Serkanner]

What are the standarts for "best seller" anyway? Don't you see "best seller" on book covers even before the book is out, as part of the "review" quotes and all?

ZING!!!

Yeah, Sadworms was a fricking "bestseller" before they even finished writing it!



Damn...those cover designers at TOR are PRESCIENT!!!

They're manatees !

Ahhhhh ... mermaids!!!!

[SandChigger]

I don't mind shooting fish in a barrel

Hell, evidently you "shoot" at the drop of a hat.

Ahhhhh ... mermaids!!!!

Hubbah!

[Freakzilla]

I don't mind shooting fish in a barrel

Hell, evidently you "shoot" at the drop of a hat.

Ahhhhh ... mermaids!!!!

Hubbah!

Looks like the chicks that want to meet me on POF.

[SandChigger]

Looks like the chicks that want to meet me on POF.

[Freakzilla]

Ok... like the white ones...

[Sandwurm88]

It seems to me that BH and KJA have pretty much just gotten boring. The paltry praise and occasional best-seller statuses have stopped and even people here who hate them with a passion can't really insult them any more. They're just a pair of bores who, in BH's case, say nothing, or in KJA's case, spew the same egotistical shit on Twitter day after day, to the point where you can't even get mad at his asinine tweets...it's more like you give his Twitter a nonchalant glance every few weeks and are like, "Eh, same old shit. This douche still has his head up his own ass...whatever..."

[Freakzilla]

...and even people here who hate them with a passion can't really insult them any more.

I think you underestimate my members.

[Nekhrun]

...and even people here who hate them with a passion can't really insult them any more.

Who? Those corpse fucking fame whores?

[Freakzilla]

See?

[lotek]

I don't mind shooting fish in a barrel

Hell, evidently you "shoot" at the drop of a hat.

I agree that sometimes it spurts, but it's just because I love you guys so much !

As for stopping the insults, well as demonstrated above, like fuck they're gonna stop !

On the contrary, the more pitiful they look the more I think about all those times where they gloated and pissed all over our sand... so now it's the "I told you so" time !

Did I hear a hat falling ?

[SandChigger]

Nah, it was just Sloey's testicles descending...

[lotek]

Drop the ball !

[Sardaukar Capt]

The OP just proves that the HLP is in it just for the money. The literary legacy of Frank Herbert is just a cash cow for them. If they were only concerned with continuing the stories Frank never got to tell from his notes then they would have brought in a reputable and true author to partner with Brian. But they didn't want that. KJA sold them a bill of goods to turn Dune into a virtual puppy-farm in the same way Star Wars has been whore'd out.

All these McDune books do is mine the subtext of Frank's Dune Chronicles using those as their plots and as a result have zero originality and the dropping sales figures just go to prove people are getting tired of it. Frank purposefully created a huge subtext/underlying story with brilliant knowledge gaps that would spark the readers imagination to complete the underlying story in their own minds. He did this to greater effect than any book I've ever read and its one of the main reasons its a masterpiece. That is why the McDune books read like instructions to something you would get at IKEA. There is ZERO subtext/underlying story to the McDune books. Their whole MO is to mine Frank's books for the knowledge gaps he put there on purpose and BH/KJA then use those as the basis of all these McDune novels. And they've done it in such an unimaginative and pedestrian way that its no wonder their books can't even crack the Top 20 anymore even with DUNE plastered on the cover.

I never could make it through Machine Crud. It reads like a bad Star Wars novel (big shock there).

Also, as others have pointed out, KJA is only a best seller because all those books that have made it on that list have X-Files, Dune, or Star Wars plastered on the cover and the overwhelming majority of those sales are to people buying for series or IP loyalty and NOT because KJA is the author. If that were the case then his own IP books would sell just as well and they don't.

[Shepherd492]

I read one of KJA's X-Files tie-ins, Antibodies, and I was stunned at how terrible it was.

I should qualify that by saying that I haven't read the nudune books, and when I read the Jedi Academy Trilogy, I was too young to notice things like writing style or characterization or plot structure, etc. So this is the first KJA "novel" I've truly read, though of course I've heard plenty from you guys about how horrible he is.

It is one thing to hear about something, and quite another to experience it first hand, so I was still amazed at how bad this book was. I couldn't believe how he managed to use the two principal characters of the X-Files so little, while repeating the same plot points a billion times and using the most juvenile prose known to man. I've already bought his other two X-Files books (yep, I'm an idiot) so I will probably end up slogging through them, along with the nudune books, which I also have.

I've got to give credit to anyone who has managed to make it through one of his Dune books because they are about 3x the size of Antibodies, and X-Files doesn't quite compare to Dune in terms of intellectual content, so I'd imagine that would be an even more frustrating experience...there is nearly nothing good about this book.

[D Pope]

X-files, Star Wars, mcDune, it's all just sand in the box to kevie.
Only the names change; gun, blaster, maula pistol... Scully, Leia , Jessica...
He's the Ely Whitney of fiction.

[lotek]

[Sardaukar Capt]

I'm willing to bet "A Customer" was probably KJA himself or one of his sycophants. A 5th grader review if there ever was one. This was probably back before Amazon tied reviews to accounts.

The standards to be hired to write these fast-food style book franchises is pretty damn low. Its still amazing he brags about it to this day.

[Shepherd492]

I can't believe it has 4.5 stars on Amazon. The saddest part is that it is extremely unlikely that ALL of the 62 "positive" reviews are bots. More likely than not, we have some idiots out there...I'm going to have to post my review later!

[lotek]

That's what we call shill-sign ^^
(the likes of which Gawd...)

[Freakzilla]

Just saw Project Gutenberg post this article:

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy

[Omphalos]

Just saw Project Gutenberg post this article:

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy

Good article. I think I was solicited by one of these guys once, and it looks like they are still in business.

http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1567" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;