An easy read with characters who aren't all that complicated and races that seem to represent different human groups today in terms of points of view and behaviour. A lot of unbelievable traits also mixed in and some rather silly ways to act from races hundreds of thousands of years old, when you'd think control is no longer the point. However, it does lay the ground for a second novel and I hope it improves on the first. I would have given this a full 4 stars if characters had been a bit more mature.

In the tradition of his father, Frank, Brian Herbert starts an intriguing, wheels within wheels trilogy of competing individuals and races struggling for dominance even as they all face a mysterious threat to the very existence of the galaxy.