The Assassination of Billy Jeeling is a near-future SF novel by Brian Herbert. Released 1st Nov 2018 by ReAnimus press it's 269 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

I picked this book up because I was familiar with Brian Herbert's work continuing his father's legacy with the modern Dune novels. I was surprised that this standalone novel's writing style was so different than his other work. This book is altogether choppier and seemed less finished than his other novels.

The premise is very timely. A scientist, really a messiah figure, is working within the confines of a huge ship to clean and repair the catastrophic damage to the earth and its atmosphere. Political wrangling and greed for power on the part of established politics threatens to upset the balance at the cost of the Earth's potential destruction. The world building and the idea of the ship are very creative and well done. It's just the hastily written, unedited/unpolished narrative which was very hard going.

Unfortunately it just didn't feel like a cohesive whole to me and would almost certainly benefit immensely from a thorough editing and rewrite.

Three stars. Super premise, difficult to read, alas.

Wow. Always a fan of relatively near-future sci-fi, this book blew me out of Earth's orbit with the ingenious plot and possibly the world's most intelligent space scientist. Earth is severely threatened with extinction -- along with all of humanity -- and only this scientist knows how to prevent it from happening. Unfortunately, always-simmering politics get involved when a megalomaniac wants to pursue an action about which the aging scientist strongly disagrees. The tension ratchets up from there. Great book!

I was totally immersed in this book! Great original story about conservationists that literally save earth. Story is fast paced and and easy read. Book was full of surprises until the last page.

I think Brian made most of his career expanding his father's Dune series, and that's certainly OK by me. We all need an "in" sometimes, and what's a father for if he can't provide it? I have to admit I didn't follow Brian's Dune books, the series having played out for me while his father was still writing them. I may have checked out some of his non-Dune titles before but I don't recall. This one has the style of something written back when Dune was big - in the '70s, say. Fairly basic storytelling, and a huge information dump at every step. Neither the style nor the story were engaging for me, but others may want to stick with it. If you do, keep in mind it's not a modern space opera by any means, just a plain old SF tale told the old way.