books

_A Dirty Job,_, Christopher Moore
_The Road to Dune_, Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Christopher Moore is not quite as good as Pratchett at writing humorous fantasy; still, he's pretty close. Moore specializes in absurd horror with reasonably happy endings. This is one of those. Good lightweight entertainment.

I didn't read all of _The Road to Dune_, because I don't want to damage library books by throwing them at walls. Thus I carefully skipped the KJA reconstruction of a plot outline by Frank Herbert that was partially used by _Dune_, and the four short stories by Brian Herbert and KJA at the back of the book. What's left? The good stuff, I believe: letters to and from Frank Herbert concerning _Dune_, a brief history of its writing and publication, and quite a few early drafts and deleted scenes from _Dune_ and _Dune Messiah_. I regard Brian and KJA as not-very-good authors of fanfic, fanfic which contradicts significant details of the original texts and doesn't even try to maintain the original style.

books

_A Dirty Job,_, Christopher Moore
_The Road to Dune_, Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Christopher Moore is not quite as good as Pratchett at writing humorous fantasy; still, he's pretty close. Moore specializes in absurd horror with reasonably happy endings. This is one of those. Good lightweight entertainment.

I didn't read all of _The Road to Dune_, because I don't want to damage library books by throwing them at walls. Thus I carefully skipped the KJA reconstruction of a plot outline by Frank Herbert that was partially used by _Dune_, and the four short stories by Brian Herbert and KJA at the back of the book. What's left? The good stuff, I believe: letters to and from Frank Herbert concerning _Dune_, a brief history of its writing and publication, and quite a few early drafts and deleted scenes from _Dune_ and _Dune Messiah_. I regard Brian and KJA as not-very-good authors of fanfic, fanfic which contradicts significant details of the original texts and doesn't even try to maintain the original style.

Books.

_The Amphora Project_, William Kotzwinkle.

Based on the first chapter, this is unreadable tripe. The POV is third party omniscient butterfly; there are two dozen characters introduced, all of whom use the same voice. Alien races have been made up for joke value, but then Kotzwinkle forgot the joke. Paragraphs appear to have been combined randomly from different plots. Who edited this?

Books.

_The Amphora Project_, William Kotzwinkle.

Based on the first chapter, this is unreadable tripe. The POV is third party omniscient butterfly; there are two dozen characters introduced, all of whom use the same voice. Alien races have been made up for joke value, but then Kotzwinkle forgot the joke. Paragraphs appear to have been combined randomly from different plots. Who edited this?