'Dune' Book Review: Spice Spice Baby (Book Club #3)

An imperfect sci-fi classic.

Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s Dune is certainly something. It’s a lyrical space opera more interested in politics and intrigue than in science fiction. It envisions a future star-spanning civilization rooted in religion rather than secularism. The world-building is strong but also vague. Character development is almost an afterthought.

There is much I enjoyed reading Dune for a second time, twenty-odd years after my first reading. I had forgotten all but the broadest of strokes. There is also plenty I found myself puzzling over.

For one thing, the second half of the book, and especially the third act, felt perplexingly rushed, with an ending so abrupt I wasn’t sure if something was wrong with my copy of the book.

Everything after the time-jump feels hurried, though I don’t think Herbert ran out of time or got bored. I just think he isn’t interested in a lot of the details that I find interesting—like getting to know characters better. Chani, baby Leto, the Fremen civilization itself—these all get short shrift in the novel.

It makes it a little hard to care as you approach the novel’s finale. Paul becomes less and less human (ironically, given his passage of the Bene Gesserit test at the beginning of the story and his acceptance into the ranks of “human” by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam).

For the first half to maybe two-thirds of Dune we get lots of development of Paul’s character, and of his mother Jessica, but after the capture and death of Duke Leto and Paul and Jessica’s entrance into Stilgar’s Sietch Tabr the details of their story seem to fall by the wayside.

In this section of the book, the more interesting bits center around characters like the Baron Harkonnen, his nephew Feyd-Rautha and the emperor’s fascinating “errand boy” Count Fenring. The entire Fremen revolution takes place almost exlusively off-screen.

By the time the emperor and the Harkonnens and the Guild show up (with all the other Great Houses poised up above in space) the Fremen have become enormously powerful and well-organized but we didn’t see any of it happen and that, I’m sorry to say, is something of a letdown.

I guess I enjoy the action and wanted to see some raids, ride some more sand worms, see Paul grow into the prophet-general he becomes, suffer setbacks and so forth.

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Even the surprise attack on the Fremen in the south—while Paul and his armies are gathered near Arrakeen—is only talked about rather than shown. It robs the story of some of its emotional potential. I mean, yeah, it sucks that baby Leto is dead but we hardly knew the kid, didn’t see it happen, and Paul himself barely bats an eye. It’s very odd.

The novel also suffers from too many songs. We talked about this in the discussion thread earlier this month, but like Tolkien, Herbert is obsessed with checkering the novel with verses of song that are just not very good. I admit to skipping over many of these—I cut my teeth on Lord of the Rings, learning to skip past those long Elvish songs early on (though I do love the One Ring poem).

Nonetheless, complaints aside, there is something very mystical and poetic about Dune. It reads like lore, and perhaps its fuzzy details and all the bits that are skipped over helps the prose feel almost more mythological than anything.

I suppose much of this is a matter of taste. While I enjoyed Dune and its arid Arrakis and its strange heroes and debaucherously grotesque villains, I’m the kind of reader who likes the details to be filled in, the action to be spelled out, the politics and intrigue woven in with all the rest more seamlessly.

The first three books of GRRM’s A Song Of Ice And Fire do all of this perfectly. They are very Dune-like but we still get the gory details. Herbert’s “Red Wedding” would be two paragraphs long, some brief mention to Jon Snow that his half-brother was dead; another passage later on with Tywin briefly mentioning his diabolical plot to a co-conspirator.

Or take the revelation that the Guild needs the spice to run their spaceships. That’s really fascinating. Why couldn’t we delve into that a bit more?

Paul is also a bit of a disappointment. His powers are interesting enough, but his character isn’t, at least not once he becomes Maud’dib. Then he is all terrible purpose and white savior. He and his mother are all over the map.

There’s an ominous bit with Jessica thinking to herself that Paul can only fulfil his destiny if Chani is dead; a couple chapters later she’s urging Paul to follow his heart. By then, Paul is done with all that romantic nonsense, though. Dune is often jarring like this. Things happen suddenly and there isn’t always a very good reason for them to.

Still, a good read that I ploughed through much more quickly than either A Clockwork Orange or Starship Troopers. The next book in this little diabolical book club will be even quicker. I’ll post an announcement for Book Club #4 soon.

What did you think of Dune? I’m off to see the movie tonight so I’ll have more thoughts on that, though my review of the film will likely be at my blog at Forbes.