4 Stars.
Pros: Herbert paints a beautiful picture of an otherwise barren landscape. He uses all the senses to really bring Arrakis to life and you're fully immersed into the world of Dune. You can smell the Spice (cinnamon), hear the sand slithering as the Sandworms approach, feel the hot, dry air scrape against your cheeks as a sandstorm forms. It's a truly immersive read.
Cons: A very cerebral, heavy read that's hard to wrap your mind around but if you just let things happen as they will, it makes for an entertaining story/Jessica and Paul's Bene Gesserit training seems to prepare them for almost anything and their ability to always get out of a scrape sometimes gets abit old/The appendices at the end were helpful for fleshing out the planet and history of Arrakis but they were tiresome after you'd finished such a heavy tome.
Full Review:
Paul Atreides, the only son and heir to the Dukedom of House Atreides, knows he's different. But when his mother brings him before a leader of her school, a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit and the Truthsayer to the Emperor, it is proven. He survives the test of the Gom Jabbar and is declared "human." Though it comes to pass that, he really seems to be much more than that.
He often has dreams of things that have yet to happen, and the events in those dreams have a habit of actually occurring. He's seen his future, or at least a part of it, as living in the desert with his mother and the desert people of Arrakis, the Fremen. The Emperor has given the planet of Arrakis, otherwise known as Dune, to Leto Atreides, Paul's Father, but nothing in the Empire is ever just "given." There are back stabbings, dark dealings, shady bribes, and everyone seems to be pitted against everyone else, but especially Leto Atreides and Baron Vladmir Harkkonnen, the head of the Harkkonnen house who ruled Arrakis before Leto took over.
Impossible to really summarize without giving things away, Dune is an incredibly complicated, interwoven, complex story of Pauls' rise to power. It's a story of the "hero's journey", with all the pitfalls and despair attached. Paul is a powerful and intelligent person, though he's only fifteen at the beginning of the novel. And with the training he's received from his Mother, the Lady Jessica, a Bene Gesserit initiate as well, Paul transforms into something different, something inexplicable. He is Paul Atreides, Usual, Muad Dib and everything in between.
When I first read this book, I think it was too dense for me to really follow. But now that I'm older, it was easier to follow. And though there is a plethora of knowledge, terminology and phrases, you can take the book as it is and enjoy it simply for that. The appendices at the end helped to flesh out the book and how Arrakis came to be and it's obvious Herbert put his heart and soul into this novel.
I'm interested to see how the rest of the series plays out and whether Paul Muad'Dib will continue on his Messiah journey or if he'll succumb to the "downfall of the hero" as is so often the case.
Comments
Post a Comment