Dune
Year: 1965
Author: Frank Herbert
Publsher: Chilton Books
Pages: 412
Published: 23/03/22
Author: Frank Herbert
Publsher: Chilton Books
Pages: 412
Published: 23/03/22
As regular readers will know, I love science fiction. It’s by far my favourite genre (with horror a close second), but I have read disappointingly few of the genre’s defining novels. You may also be aware, if you read my reviews or end of year film awards that Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune in 2021 completely blew me away (even if David Lynch’s attempt in 1984 did the exact opposite); so I felt compelled to read Frank Herbert’s iconic novel just to immerse myself into that wonderous world even more in anticipation of Villeneuve’s forthcoming Dune: Part Two.
The desert planet of Arrakis is the only place in the universe where the Spice Melange can be farmed to fuel interstellar travel, making the Spice the most valuable resource in the known universe, and by extension Arrakis the most valuable planet. The great House Atreides led by the Duke Leto has been granted control over Arrakis and placed in charge of the Spice mining operations, taking over from House Harkonnen, bitter rivals of the Atreides and led by the dangerously deceptive Baron.
Paul, son of the Duke, is in training to take over his father’s position. Their arrival on Arrakis presents the perfect opportunity for Paul to learn how to lead a people as the Duke desperately attempts to build connections and ally House Atreides with the Fremen, the native warrior people of Arrakis.
But when House Harkonnen decimates the Atreides military and invades Arrakis, Paul and his mother Jessica must go into hiding, become one with the Fremen, and Paul must rise to become the prophesised Maud’Dib to reclaim Arrakis for the Fremen and destroy House Harkonnen.
Dune is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time, inspiring a number of the biggest sci-fi franchises of all time such as Star Wars and Star Trek among many others. Which is why it pains me so much that I didn’t really enjoy my time reading Dune. Believe me, I’m glad I did it because the novel does so beautifully realise this hostile planet of Arrakis and how it functions ecologically, but the way in which story is written, and how characters communicate with each other is often so arbitrarily complicated that I can’t help but feel as though I missed the point of it all.
I have heard claims that modern authors don’t see the beauty of language like many of the great authors of the past did, and whilst I can certainly understand that point, Dune (much like Lord of the Rings when I read that) often had me losing interest because it was so indirect with its language and too concerned about making the wording as flowery and poetic as possible. I would often find myself at the end of a sentence having no clue what was just said, and only after re-reading it multiple times would I deduce the true meaning of it. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern media and my attention span is too small, but all I ask is that when I’m reading a book that I’m told the information I need in a way that flows well, and gets to the point. Herbert does neither with Dune, and whilst I cannot deny his application of the English language is indeed beautiful, it doesn’t flow, and it doesn’t communicate its true intentions the majority of the time.
I also hated the ending. There was so much happening in the final few chapters that even three pages towards the end of the book there were some major storylines left unresolved…and then it just ended basically mid-conversation. It’s like there’s another few chapters missing from the back of the book. Herbert did of course write multiple Dune sequels, but this book legitimately didn’t have an ending which I found both surprising and disappointing.
Beyond this I also found many of the characters to be insufferably irritating. Everyone is either entirely devoid of emotion or conveying such peculiar emotions that I’m unsure what to feel at any given moment. Paul is more often than not a blank slate with no emotional connection to anything that is happening around him. Meanwhile his mother, Jessica, has such extraordinary amounts of love and contempt for everyone and everything that I often couldn’t tell whether she loved Paul as a son, as someone she wanted to have sexual relations with, or was someone she wanted to kill. They are only two examples but rest assured each and every single character in Dune either has no emotional range, or only emotions that exist on the broadest reaches of an emotional plane. It made it impossible to connect with the characters in the story.
When you add to this the whole problem of the entire story literally being the white man colonising a planet, oppressing the natives, and then joining the natives as their saviour to get revenge on other white colonisers and it’s kind of difficult to even start to care. If I had read this book around the time of its publication in 1965 (thirty years before I was born) then I doubt I would have seen an issue with that, but as society has moved on and begun to recognise how problematic the white saviour trope is, it shows how poorly the book has aged in some areas.
But one aspect of Dune I loved is how it describes Arrakis. This is about as inhospitable of a planet as could be conceived and so Herbert goes into painstaking detail to communicate to readers how humanity is able to survive under such harsh conditions. The world has real geography to it, and the Fremen are so in-tune with the environment around them that they are able to live in harmony with the inhospitable climate of the planet. All the time that Herbert spends going on about royal families, political struggles, and religious prophecies just makes me want him to get back to talking about the ecology of Arrakis. That’s where the truly incredible writing is, and that’s what engrossed me the most.
As I stated earlier, I’m glad I read Dune…but I doubt I’ll ever return to it. I couldn’t gain momentum with it, and it often felt like a chore to get through it. I may read the sequel, Dune Messiah, just to see if any resolution is provided there. But otherwise I think I may just stick to Villeneuve’s film adaptations, the man clearly understands these books far more than I do and has the ability to convey the complexities of the narrative in ways that interest me more.
If you’re a fan of poetic but meandering language then Dune will likely be up your street, but if like me you prefer things to get more to the point then it’ll likely be a bit of a tough pill to swallow. It doesn’t mean the book isn’t good though, it certainly is fantastic as evidenced by everything it’s inspired, it just wasn’t really for me.
The desert planet of Arrakis is the only place in the universe where the Spice Melange can be farmed to fuel interstellar travel, making the Spice the most valuable resource in the known universe, and by extension Arrakis the most valuable planet. The great House Atreides led by the Duke Leto has been granted control over Arrakis and placed in charge of the Spice mining operations, taking over from House Harkonnen, bitter rivals of the Atreides and led by the dangerously deceptive Baron.
Paul, son of the Duke, is in training to take over his father’s position. Their arrival on Arrakis presents the perfect opportunity for Paul to learn how to lead a people as the Duke desperately attempts to build connections and ally House Atreides with the Fremen, the native warrior people of Arrakis.
But when House Harkonnen decimates the Atreides military and invades Arrakis, Paul and his mother Jessica must go into hiding, become one with the Fremen, and Paul must rise to become the prophesised Maud’Dib to reclaim Arrakis for the Fremen and destroy House Harkonnen.
Dune is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time, inspiring a number of the biggest sci-fi franchises of all time such as Star Wars and Star Trek among many others. Which is why it pains me so much that I didn’t really enjoy my time reading Dune. Believe me, I’m glad I did it because the novel does so beautifully realise this hostile planet of Arrakis and how it functions ecologically, but the way in which story is written, and how characters communicate with each other is often so arbitrarily complicated that I can’t help but feel as though I missed the point of it all.
I have heard claims that modern authors don’t see the beauty of language like many of the great authors of the past did, and whilst I can certainly understand that point, Dune (much like Lord of the Rings when I read that) often had me losing interest because it was so indirect with its language and too concerned about making the wording as flowery and poetic as possible. I would often find myself at the end of a sentence having no clue what was just said, and only after re-reading it multiple times would I deduce the true meaning of it. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern media and my attention span is too small, but all I ask is that when I’m reading a book that I’m told the information I need in a way that flows well, and gets to the point. Herbert does neither with Dune, and whilst I cannot deny his application of the English language is indeed beautiful, it doesn’t flow, and it doesn’t communicate its true intentions the majority of the time.
I also hated the ending. There was so much happening in the final few chapters that even three pages towards the end of the book there were some major storylines left unresolved…and then it just ended basically mid-conversation. It’s like there’s another few chapters missing from the back of the book. Herbert did of course write multiple Dune sequels, but this book legitimately didn’t have an ending which I found both surprising and disappointing.
Beyond this I also found many of the characters to be insufferably irritating. Everyone is either entirely devoid of emotion or conveying such peculiar emotions that I’m unsure what to feel at any given moment. Paul is more often than not a blank slate with no emotional connection to anything that is happening around him. Meanwhile his mother, Jessica, has such extraordinary amounts of love and contempt for everyone and everything that I often couldn’t tell whether she loved Paul as a son, as someone she wanted to have sexual relations with, or was someone she wanted to kill. They are only two examples but rest assured each and every single character in Dune either has no emotional range, or only emotions that exist on the broadest reaches of an emotional plane. It made it impossible to connect with the characters in the story.
When you add to this the whole problem of the entire story literally being the white man colonising a planet, oppressing the natives, and then joining the natives as their saviour to get revenge on other white colonisers and it’s kind of difficult to even start to care. If I had read this book around the time of its publication in 1965 (thirty years before I was born) then I doubt I would have seen an issue with that, but as society has moved on and begun to recognise how problematic the white saviour trope is, it shows how poorly the book has aged in some areas.
But one aspect of Dune I loved is how it describes Arrakis. This is about as inhospitable of a planet as could be conceived and so Herbert goes into painstaking detail to communicate to readers how humanity is able to survive under such harsh conditions. The world has real geography to it, and the Fremen are so in-tune with the environment around them that they are able to live in harmony with the inhospitable climate of the planet. All the time that Herbert spends going on about royal families, political struggles, and religious prophecies just makes me want him to get back to talking about the ecology of Arrakis. That’s where the truly incredible writing is, and that’s what engrossed me the most.
As I stated earlier, I’m glad I read Dune…but I doubt I’ll ever return to it. I couldn’t gain momentum with it, and it often felt like a chore to get through it. I may read the sequel, Dune Messiah, just to see if any resolution is provided there. But otherwise I think I may just stick to Villeneuve’s film adaptations, the man clearly understands these books far more than I do and has the ability to convey the complexities of the narrative in ways that interest me more.
If you’re a fan of poetic but meandering language then Dune will likely be up your street, but if like me you prefer things to get more to the point then it’ll likely be a bit of a tough pill to swallow. It doesn’t mean the book isn’t good though, it certainly is fantastic as evidenced by everything it’s inspired, it just wasn’t really for me.