A few years ago I read the entire Dune series (all 6 books) over the course of several months. It was a major undertaking, even for a committed science fiction fan like myself, and as much as I loved the stories, I needed a break from Dune for a bit. A few years ago, Kevin J. Anderson teamed up with Frank Herbert's son, Brian, to continue the Dune vision. They pored over Frank Herbert's notes and came up with a new series of books which started with Dune: House Atreides. Enough time has passed since I read the original books, so I figured it was time to give the new ones a go. I'm about 500 pages into Atreides and, while I'm generally enjoying it, I keep getting jolted out of the story by turns of phrase and bits of character description that don't jive with what I remember of Dune.

One thing I enjoyed most about the originals was that Frank Herbert, while writing the occasional
1,000+ page tome, had a sparse style to his writing. He didn't go into long explanations of technology, or spend much time on scene description. He just threw out words like kwisatz haderach and went on with his political intrigue and world building. He'd have a character make an offhand reference to the kwisatz haderach and drop another crumb of revelation in the reader's lap, but wouldn't give you the full explanation directly. It was an effective tool for holding my interest. It let me piece together the clues myself - like a detective assembling clues to solve a murder.

I haven't felt the same urge to keep reading with House Atreides. The story is good enough and generally interesting, but there isn't the same compulsion to keep turning pages.
I was having trouble pinning down what was bothering me, and then, while looking over a few recent blog posts, it hit me. In this post we covered the issue of characterization and character description. The general idea was that if an author provides conclusions about a character's nature, there's nothing left for the reader to do. That's exactly my issue with House Atreides.

In the original series, I picked up details about the characters and terms by osmosis rather than by direct explanation. As a reader, I love that style. I hate being lectured, and I find blocks of description or scene-establishing text to be incredibly tedious. I love to see characters and their motivations revealed throughout the story rather than being told "he was fiercely loyal to his master and would die for him". That's good to know, but if you're told that in the first ten pages, it leaves you with nothing to learn in the remaining 690 pages.

It takes a skilled author to pull this off, though. Too little detail and a reader is left adrift without any descriptive clues. In contrast, the new Dune is rife with description. It's brief and paced well, but lacks that immersive quality I found in the original Dune. Related to this, Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert's challenge seems to have been diving back into this vast universe and mythology without necessarily having to explain the backstory as they went along. The intrigues and House relations were established by Frank, so there wasn't much need to revisit those in detail. The worlds and major characters had likewise been introduced. What was left to tell? Not much. It's an action/adventure story with lots of explosions and murders, but it pales in comparison to the original Dune.

If you're writing original fiction, or playing in another author's sandbox, take care with your characterization. Always leave some mysteries to keep the reader engaged.