For some, there’s nothing good after the original Dune, but if you are here, you probably want more than that. Politics, religion, ecology and technology collide when forces of the empire plot against each other in order to seize control of Arrakis. The story began with young Paul Atreides whose family accepts the stewardship of the planet Arrakis where you can find the only source of the “spice” melange. Written by Frank Herbert and published in 1965, Dune is a science-fiction epic set in a distant future where the one who controls the “spice” controls the universe - it’s the over simplistic way to introduce the story.ĭune takes us in a feudal interstellar society in which noble houses controlling individual planets had pledged allegiance to the Padishah Emperor. So, I tried to compile what I found and this is the result. Wrong, things get more complicated the further you go in the series. After a long while, I thought I might pick up where I left off, thinking I would be easy. Two books later, it was not as good as it was at the beginning, so I took a break. Then, I didn’t want it to stop, so I keep on reading. There is a grand adventure in here, but it’s weighed down by the book’s place in history.Last Updated 1 month ago.Like a lot of people, I read Dune and I thought it was awesome. Paul doesn’t sit by a tent doorway, he ‘crouches by the sphincter.’ There are some great turns of phrase to be found, but much of the book wobbles between stilted and downright atrocious.įor all its many flaws, Dune deserves to be recognised for its contribution to the genre. The pacing goes from glacial for most of the novel to a rushed conclusion that doesn’t quite do justice to any of the many plot-lines it concludes. The Hmm-mmm-mm-ing and Ah-h-h-ing gets very tired very soon. Heroes and villains alike spell out their exact thought processes, often verbally, and no real person has ever spoken like one of these characters. Herbert jumps from one character’s head to another in the middle of a scene without skipping a beat.
#DUNE BY FRANK HERBERT FULL#
The full omniscience of his writing is a far cry from today’s more focalised writing. Obviously, some of this is the result of changing prose standards over time. Frank Herbert has phenomenal ideas and a grand sense of scope, but on a prose level, he falls well short of what I’d expect in a classic of the genre. The problem, bluntly put, is Herbert’s writing. The real drawback, however, is not that the ideas have grown stale over time, nor that the book is (with a few exceptions) painted in black and white. Come for an adventure, and you’ll get one. Yes, you can look at it as a meditation on the nature of authority and heroism, but you don’t have to. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Harkonnens are a bunch of evil murderers with no redeeming features at all. The Atreides are noble and brave, though with an edge of steel running through them. Once you accept that the idea are better used elsewhere, you can read Dune on its own merits. But my experience on a reread is actually the opposite of what everyone else seems to be saying. There is a reason I used it in my dissertation, after all. Dune is a multilayered narrative, and has thematic wells you could drink from for years and never dry up. Now, there is certainly something to be said for that perspective. Sure it looks like a fun space adventure, but there’s more below the surface. The ideas are more complex than you think.
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The world we live in is just too different.ĭune is a book that most people will tell you gets better on a reread.
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Put simply, you can’t read Dune today the way a person would have in the sixties. It’s seeped into every aspect of modern life. Dune is ground zero for so many things, but the genre has grown and flourished in those fifty-plus years.
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It’s not 1966 anymore, and all the big ideas were ones I had seen elsewhere, and often used to better effect. At the time of publishing, these ideas were groundbreaking, but half a century on those ideas have been copied and re-imagined hundreds of times over. I first read Dune in 2017, and I went in expecting to have my mind blown. Yet as the book itself teaches us, legacies are a tricky thing, and Dune‘s is no different. In that respect, Dune is unquestionably one of the greatest novels in the science fiction canon. Dune was not the first space opera novel, but was a game-changer for the genre. Without Dune, there would be no Star Wars. Fifty-five years after it was first published, Frank Herbert’s work has shaped an entire genre. It is impossible to talk about Dune without taking into account its legacy. The Atreides family now control Arrakis, but their enemies are many, and tragedy is certain. Only on this one world is the spice melange located, and he who controls the spice controls the universe. Click here for a full index of my Dune Saga reviews-Īrrakis.