Dune Chronicles, #1: Dune (BOOK REVIEW)


I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked this book up. I had this preconceived notion of a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-type society on the sands of a distant planet. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Arrakis, the sand-covered planet in Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 science fiction novel Dune, makes Tattooine seem paradisaic. With water being such a rare commodity as to become a form of currency, it amazes me how life can still be possible, but Herbert found a way to make it believable.

This future, some 10000 years removed from our time, sees the human race divided across the galaxy, and run more or less by the Imperial Corrino family. The most valuable substance in the galaxy (with the exception being the water on Arrakis), is the spice melange that grows exclusively on Arrakis. It extends life and gives those who ingest it prescient awareness. The spice is crucial to the powerful matriarchal order known as the Bene Gesserit who have an aptitude for physical and mental abilities outside of the norm, and have been bred for generations to develop these traits. They’ve been conditioning the genetic line to produce a prescient superhuman male known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who would become somewhat of a messianic figure. Our protagonist, Paul Atreides, who is the son of a powerful Duke and a Bene Gesserit who we assume is this prophetic hero.

The interplay of feudal politics and a fully realized world universe make Dune one of the freshest takes on the Scifi genre that I’ve encountered in a long while. Despite the books age being over 50 years at this point, it holds up with particular strength as some of the best science fantasy on the market.

My favorite aspect was indeed the value placed on such a common necessity like water, because it’s something we rarely think about too closely. When it becomes so valued that even the tears shed for the dead are sacred gifts, you know it’s something Herbert thought long and hard about. In retrospect, it’s such a strong physical necessity that when they spoke about it in such sparsity I often felt very parched myself, a testament to how it was presented.

The prose was often stunningly poetic, but I felt that at times Herbert neglected to fully detail certain scenes that I was excited to see. Many times he would skip full scenes that you’d expect any other writer to relish divulging, which he’d explain narratively as the passage of time. This really bugged me, and many times I lost the will to keep going with the story, so I’d put it down and do something else.

Of course, the end was the true climax of the tale: where every thread of the story lead and connected. And it was wholly satisfying, and gratifying. It was the reward for my patience. Now I can’t wait to read the next book.

One of my biggest peeves in literature is the prophesied hero, because we already know he’s going to be okay. We already know he’s going to succeed. Most takes on this approach present a hero that doesn’t believe he’s the messiah, the promised or chosen one, and instead have to overcome great hardships. I wasn’t a fan of how Frank Herbert approached this concept, making the character fully convinced of his place as the chosen one, and had full confidence in the correct outcome of the struggles faced. This doesn’t make for edge of the seat reading, but was interesting nonetheless. I guess that can’t be avoided in a story where prescient thought is key to the plot.

Overall, an excellent, classic read. I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to get to it and through it, but I’m happy I did.

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24 thoughts on “Dune Chronicles, #1: Dune (BOOK REVIEW)

  1. If you found the issues of water rights to be interesting then you should check out the book The Water Knife. Actually all the books by that author are good. I just can’t spell his name for the life of me.
    x The Captain

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I see people encouraging you to read the sequels, and I want to give you my recommendation. Be careful in doing so. Because Frank Herbert passed away before finishing the series, there’s no real conclusion to the story. There are a billion prequel novels (which I’ve never read), so I can’t speak to them, but before you invest a lot of time in the Dune universe, know that Frank Herbert’s original vision was never completed.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thanks for this. I have heard a ton of different thoughts and I appreciate it. I’ve decided I’d read up until about book 4, because after that isn’t as good? Or so I’ve heard.

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    1. I’m going to disagree with Lavendarladi. You should definitely watch the movie, especially if you can find the director’s cut. The trick is remembering that the movie 1) is old, and the visual effect technology was no where near ready to attempt what was needed, and 2) it’s an adaptation of the novel, nothing more. If you expect it to recreate the novel you’ll be disappointed. If you treat it like it’s own story inspired by the book, it’s a lot of fun.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Oh wow, you’d never read Dune before? Neat!

    Then again, it’s easy to assume everyone’s read ‘the classics’ whether they have or not. Funny thing is, I’ve personally never read any of the other novels past the first– though I hear the ‘expanded universe’ novels written by Herbert’s son and Kevin J. Anderson are pretty terrible.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. A book I read as a kid. I marvelled at the way FH redefines black gold (oil) as spice and the Middle East as these Bedouin-like warriors who harvest spice by trapping sand worms in large underground lagoons. It’s a book of extraordinary vision. The space astronauts who can only navigate high on the spice drug, a sort of hallucinatory drug, that allows them to avoid colliding with asteroids. I read it thirty-five years ago, all five books, or at least I thought there were, and will dip in again one day. It has influenced me greatly. The sense that humanity is commodity driven, venal and cruel. But it takes a lack of a common resource like water to make us truly human, truly we as ought to be, tribal, honourable and fiercely proud of our culture. At our best, we’re not individualistic but interdependent.

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  5. I agree that it seems like at times Hubert used summary where scene was called for. He definitely did his homework on making the economy of Arrakis believable, but I think this caused his characters to become a little flat at times. It also took me longer to read than I had thought it would. It seemed like a short read but there is a lot packed in there, which could have contributed to his summarizing of events in places. Great review!

    Liked by 1 person

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