Does anyone know what "dust cover" this comes from? The UK hardback?Paul of Dune—From a Hero to a Tyrant
By Kevin J. Anderson
Over the past ten years, Brian Herbert and I have explored Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, ranging from ten thousand years before the original Dune (in our “Butlerian Jihad” trilogy) to five thousand years after Dune (in our most recent pair of novels, Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune). However, we faced our biggest challenge when writing Paul of Dune, a novel intimately entwined with the original masterpiece, dealing with the most important character of the series.
At the end of Dune, Paul Atreides is a charismatic, optimistic hero who has just overthrown the corrupt Emperor; crushed his enemy, the Baron Harkonnen; and taken the Princess Irulan for his wife. He is about to launch his faithful Fremen on a violent jihad to cement his control of the galaxy. Frank Herbert wrote his own followup to Dune—Dune Messiah—but he chose to pick up the story a dozen years after the original novel: The jihad is already over, countless billions have been killed, and Paul has become a tyrant—an extremely unsympathetic character who has turned a blind eye to the corruption in his government and the awful things being done in his name.
What in the world happened between those two novels? How can we explain the dramatic shift in Paul’s character? Paul of Dune is the untold story of that vital gap in Dune history; how the legend—and tragedy—of Paul Muad’Dib unfolds; and how Princess Irulan becomes his biographer, propagandist, and myth-maker, willing to doctor history as she sees fit.
Because the story is so closely meshed with Frank Herbert’s classics, plotting our novel and adding crucial events about the brief, dramatic reign of Muad’Dib posed a considerable challenge for us. Brian and I read, and reread, and reread the original classics, as well as Frank Herbert’s notes and correspondence, in order to develop Paul of Dune. The millions of Dune fans worldwide now have the missing link in Paul’s transformation from hero to tyrant. [1]
(Play "spot the errors in the text", if you're really bored. Or the lies.
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