Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for…
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.
Dune is a sci-fi epic though there is a reason that most compare this to the Lord of the Rings. Unlike Tolkien’s tome it’s a far bit more adult than that. I don’t mean this in a tits and blood kind of way but in a scheming houses kind of way. House Atredis is assigned to the planet Arrakis, source of Spice the power behind interstellar travel, because The God Emperor of mankind is getting worried that they’re getting too big for him to control and thus has planned out with House Harkonnen to wait for them to unpack before raiding their compound and burning it all to the ground and killing them all. However two manage to escape, the wife and son, who will be forced to survive amongst the Dunes before they can have their revenge.
Now the problem with any book about super smart people scheming against one another is that there are a few times in this book where they are really clever, for the sake of the plot, and some times when they are really, really dumb, for the same reason. The worst point may be where the prisoners have managed to survive certain death once; only to escape before promptly falling to certain death again several pages later. While the bad guys saw through the first one and will call out their lackey’s on the second they themselves are happy to wash their hands of the whole thing, the second time around and assume it’s all golden. Also even the bits that do work feel a little abridged but I’ll get onto that later for while it may hinder your understanding of what is going on and why it also serves as the books greatest strength.
Now the plot struck me as very Shakespearean. There is a lot of sworn revenge, mistaken identity that can lead to yet more heart ache and brooding young men bearing the title of their father. Now I’m in a bit of a chicken and an egg situation in that I’m not sure the writing allowed me to notice this in the text or the text allowed me to notice quite how Shakespearean the writing is. Please note that while Shakespeare may be the greatest writer England has ever produced I’m not sure how much of a compliment I mean this to be. See Shakespeare could write a flowery piece of prose but ask me how many year eleven students forced to find a single joke in Midsummer Nights Dream there are. See Shakespeare is great when it’s on the boards in the hands of a pro who can inject the life and intention that it needs to come alive and Dune felt to me much the same way. There are a number of lines here that I thought would work great in some thespians mouth but are flat and awkward on the page.
Now perhaps the first two points led to this or vice versa but the book struggles so much to get across motivation and characterisation that they resort to internal monologues for each of the main characters. These are done in italics alongside the rest of their speech. The thing is these often are so clearly trying to get across bits of the story or plot we will need going forward that within the first few chapters I was picturing these not as some artsy voice over narration but as literal monologues the characters break the forth wall to spew over the edge of the stage into the audience.
This isn’t helped by exposition they are given to handle and sometimes the odd words thrown in. I complain when fantasy writers rename a rabbit or an elf just to sound impressive but here there were a few words thrown in that I had no idea what they were. Was our hero being threatened by a gun, a sword, or a piece of fruit. I know the book has appendix and glossaries but it’s common in modern sci-fi to give some kind of context clues so that we have a rough idea of what’s being waved around on the page. But again this could be due to the huge praise for the book I have come up.
The end of the book, won’t be spoiled here. At least not massively. It has some great set pieces and scenes but honestly the last hundred to seventy pages felt rushed. Like we chucked out some random pages and scenes to make it to the end on time but again that could be because of the great positive the book has.
I’ll get to that now and that is the short length. Yes it’s a decent sized book but for a sci-fi/fantasy epic this is a walk in the park. This established so much of the genre and the conventions and yet sits at under six hundred pages. There are many, much worse authors, who can’t get their first instalment in under six hundred pages these days.
Yes there are sequels but I don’t think you come out of this feeling like you now have to read them. They’re there and by all accounts they are quite good but you can stop here if you want and go onto something else once again.
Yeah Paul falls flat when he’s supposed to be going into shock over the loss of his papa and yet is talking as stiffly as everyone else has for the rest of the novel thus far but he still has a full arch and story for you to enjoy. Yeah the rest of the cast are a little under developed but considering the needless anecdotes, side stories, and diversions some authors go on to flesh out their side cast to the point that you’ve lost sight of the main story I didn’t actually mind.
My only other real complaint of the book would be the lack of fleshing out two of the key aspects they have when dealing with foretold chosen ones and various such prophecies. In this book from the mid sixties we get them dealing with who started the prophecy and why as well as people twisting the meaning of prophecies for their own ends. Now I don’t want to delve too much into these as my complain would be that they are not nearly used as much as they should be but they gave an epic sense to this universe. The prophecy wasn’t just scribbled down millions of years ago to service our story but exist as part of it and you feel like you can trace the conception to now and see all it has affected on the way. Now I’ve been told that the second books goes more into this and maybe I’ll read it. There is enough on show here to give an indication of where this is going even if it is shoved in at the end. And I’m not talking about the big set pieces and sword fights but the characters dealing with being the chosen one and what that means to them and others looking at what they had wrought by elevating him so.
Kibbin's Codex 