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A review by lpm100
Dune by Frank Herbert
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.0
Book Review
Dune
2/5 stars
"Overrated: The only thing that's worse than a story that's too long is one with a backstory that's also too long."
*******
I'd be interested to know whether or not this book sold so many copies before or after the screenplay.
Apparently, it is 215,000 words long give or take (p.871) and the writing involved studying notes over a four-year period prepared between 1957-61. The book was written and rewritten between 1961- 65 (p.880)
It appears to have sold just as many copies as "50 Shades of Gray" (trash, and that demonstrates that you don't have to write anything particularly profound to sell a lot of books or get a movie made) or even the highest-selling of the Harry Potter books.
The book was a bit too long. I don't think that it took more than 400 pages to say what it took every bit of 884 pages-- including three (!) appendices--and an afterword-- to say.
∆∆∆Maybe the author knew what he was doing (as evidenced by the book sales and two movies being made about this), but my problems are that:
1. There is a glossary with a substantial number of words, and one has to keep flipping back and forth and it interrupts the reading action. What would have been the problem with providing the words as embedded notes AND doing a glossary?
Or even just using fewer of these made up words and sticking with plain English.
2. I guess the point of this plot is to tell us that it is a time when the world has amalgamated into Some Big Thing (for example, p.64, Muslim quotes of the Kalima within an Orange Catholic Bible) where they have words from lots of different languages that are in common use--with a substantial amount of Arabic.
But, only a very educated person would know the origin of many of the words. (Why not put the word origin within the glossary?)
In the afterward, we are meant to understand that there are elements of Sufi mysticism as well as Buddhism.
Who can be expected to know all that and catch all of those allusions?
Another example is the author writes that (p. 478) "A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened."
How many people know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? 1-2/100?
3. This book is just WAY. TOO. BUSY.
a. It has THREE (!) appendices: 1. The Ecology of Dune; 2. The Religion of Dune; 3. Report on Bene Gesserit motives and purposes. (I think I read the first in the afterword and left the other two behind. Ain't nobody got time for that.)
b. An Afterword that explains certain sections of the book and the perspective of the author. It's written by his son, but it really probably would have been a more helpful foreword/ prologue to the book so that the reader wasn't desperately fumbling to put together the plot details.
All of this extra spinach adds another 90 pages on to the book for a total of 884 pages.
4. Another problem with making up a bunch of new words is that sometimes some of them are NOT actually ones that were made up, but ones you need to investigate (Coriolis force/rapier/bodkin) instead of filing it off somewhere and hoping it will explain itself later in the convoluted plot.
5. Chapters are sequential, but with no numbering/titles. Nor index.
6. A picture would be worth a thousand words. Who is related to whom? What is the rank of this Duke with respect to others? Do these ranks directly parallel the five levels of peerage in the English system? (duke/duchess> marquess/marchioness> earl/countess >viscount/viscountess> baron/baroness.)
7. The book requires putting together too much scattered information ("oh, I remember X from 125 pages ago that explains Y). The preamble at the beginning of each chapter is a bit of foreshadowing that may be resolved several hundred pages later.
Also, it is necessary to consult outside sources / internet sites to explain (for example) why did the house of Arrakis have to leave Caldan?
8. A lot of the biology of this book does not go together. They have a sparsely populated planet with no water, but they have scavenging birds? Do the birds wear water recovery suits?
If the planet is so dry, that nothing can live on it...... Then from what did these gigantic worms (mouths with 80 m wide) evolve, and what was the selective process?
9. Whither the obsession with the Middle East?
-The exotic vocabulary in this book is mostly Arabic (jihad/dar al-Hikma, etc)
-Much of the action takes place on a desert planet.
-With warlike and tribal people that are bound by all manner of tribal codes.
-With everyone wearing burnooses
-in the afterward, Frank Herbert's son says that this was meant to parallel Lawrence of Arabia. (A foreigner comes and unites a bunch of warring Arab-like tribes.)
∆∆∆There are lots of strange resonances in this book to current/historical times:
1. Some °°universal°° religion that is associated with a °°particular°° people. Islam is supposed to be universal, but the language of God is Arabic. And Arabs are native speakers and a source of authority. Bene Gesserit is a priestly class of people that seem to be related to each other.
2. A messiah will come from some place, and they will be from this race of people. Paul will be the Savior for the Fremen/Kwisatz Haderach, and he is the son of a Bene Gesserit. The Messiah will come for the Jewish world, and he must be from the house of David. Muhammad was the first prophet, and he was from a particular Arab tribe.
Also, קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ, is a fairly obscure Jewish term that I found that most people even in an Orthodox synagogue did not know.
3. All these religions freely borrow from each other. In this dystopian novel, it seems like Buddhism / Islam / Christianity have amalgamated into something different. (They may have even taken elements from Buddhism or Hinduism, but I don't know very much about them and could not recognize the allusions.) In current times, Judaism is a source religion (that borrowed some number of their ideas from neighboring tribes that did not survive). Christianity takes selected bits of Judaism and the concept of sacrifice and creates something new. The Muslims do cut and paste from the first two and create something still different.
So that's how we get to Sunni ancestors fleeting from Nilotic-Ourouba (p.568).
4. Some governance system is backed by a series of corrupt feudal lords that have incessantly shifting alliances. (The Japanese emperor was theoretically the head of Japan, but he required the allegiance of fairly independent) daimyos.
5. (p. 182) "The imperial Court is, indeed, a long way off." Chinese proverb: "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." （“山高皇帝遠”）
6. Bene Gesserit= Jews (self interested/ invisible/destructive/purveyors of self-serving but influential ideas that they themselves don't believe). (p. 811), Fourteen Sages ≈ 12 caliphs of the Shia Twelvers. Or the 4 Rightly Guided Caliphs/ "Rashidun" of the Sunni.
7. Some dynasties that are at war with each other, but also related to each other and actually trade people among themselves. (The British royal family is actually German-- Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Alex Feodoranova of Russia started out as Alix Hesse [of later Germany].) The Atreides against The Harkonens.
8. Gladiator killing for sport, like in the corrupt Roman Empire (p.521).
9. Desert dwellers killing each other / not being afraid to die, and wives being immediately remarried to the survivors. Launching "jihad" (p. 562). Just like historical Arabs!
∆∆∆It seems like the events in this book were foundational for several books that were written later:
1. Some future dystopian planet where everyone is drug addicted, and corrupt overlords control the people by control of this drug. (Nancy Farmer. "The House of the Scorpion.) In "Dune," everyone is addicted to spice.
2. Dynasties that live in outer space are fighting each other, and they find out that they are related to each other. Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Baron Harkonen was the father of Bene Gesserit Jessica.
3. The grouching about planets managed under evil corporations was redone later in the movie "Total Recall." (That phrase actually shows up in this book.) Also, Arrakis could have been turned into a planet fit for easy human habitation, but evil supraplanetary corporations wouldn't allow it. The same way they would not start the reactor to turn Mars into an oxygenated planet in "Total Recall."
4. The theme about Scary Underground Worms was repurposed into the movie "Tremors," starring Kevin Bacon.
5. Burnooses all over the place! It seems like this has been a theme in so many movies that I've lost count. (These types of clothing are Arab; why they hold so much sway over the Western imagination, I have no idea.)
Verdict: NOT recommended. Watch the movie instead. (For the record, I don't plan to even do that much. Because this book has already taken up way too much of my reading time. And I can't get any of it back.)
One good quote (p.651): "you cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the Orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Orthodox ethic.
Dune
2/5 stars
"Overrated: The only thing that's worse than a story that's too long is one with a backstory that's also too long."
*******
I'd be interested to know whether or not this book sold so many copies before or after the screenplay.
Apparently, it is 215,000 words long give or take (p.871) and the writing involved studying notes over a four-year period prepared between 1957-61. The book was written and rewritten between 1961- 65 (p.880)
It appears to have sold just as many copies as "50 Shades of Gray" (trash, and that demonstrates that you don't have to write anything particularly profound to sell a lot of books or get a movie made) or even the highest-selling of the Harry Potter books.
The book was a bit too long. I don't think that it took more than 400 pages to say what it took every bit of 884 pages-- including three (!) appendices--and an afterword-- to say.
∆∆∆Maybe the author knew what he was doing (as evidenced by the book sales and two movies being made about this), but my problems are that:
1. There is a glossary with a substantial number of words, and one has to keep flipping back and forth and it interrupts the reading action. What would have been the problem with providing the words as embedded notes AND doing a glossary?
Or even just using fewer of these made up words and sticking with plain English.
2. I guess the point of this plot is to tell us that it is a time when the world has amalgamated into Some Big Thing (for example, p.64, Muslim quotes of the Kalima within an Orange Catholic Bible) where they have words from lots of different languages that are in common use--with a substantial amount of Arabic.
But, only a very educated person would know the origin of many of the words. (Why not put the word origin within the glossary?)
In the afterward, we are meant to understand that there are elements of Sufi mysticism as well as Buddhism.
Who can be expected to know all that and catch all of those allusions?
Another example is the author writes that (p. 478) "A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened."
How many people know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? 1-2/100?
3. This book is just WAY. TOO. BUSY.
a. It has THREE (!) appendices: 1. The Ecology of Dune; 2. The Religion of Dune; 3. Report on Bene Gesserit motives and purposes. (I think I read the first in the afterword and left the other two behind. Ain't nobody got time for that.)
b. An Afterword that explains certain sections of the book and the perspective of the author. It's written by his son, but it really probably would have been a more helpful foreword/ prologue to the book so that the reader wasn't desperately fumbling to put together the plot details.
All of this extra spinach adds another 90 pages on to the book for a total of 884 pages.
4. Another problem with making up a bunch of new words is that sometimes some of them are NOT actually ones that were made up, but ones you need to investigate (Coriolis force/rapier/bodkin) instead of filing it off somewhere and hoping it will explain itself later in the convoluted plot.
5. Chapters are sequential, but with no numbering/titles. Nor index.
6. A picture would be worth a thousand words. Who is related to whom? What is the rank of this Duke with respect to others? Do these ranks directly parallel the five levels of peerage in the English system? (duke/duchess> marquess/marchioness> earl/countess >viscount/viscountess> baron/baroness.)
7. The book requires putting together too much scattered information ("oh, I remember X from 125 pages ago that explains Y). The preamble at the beginning of each chapter is a bit of foreshadowing that may be resolved several hundred pages later.
Also, it is necessary to consult outside sources / internet sites to explain (for example) why did the house of Arrakis have to leave Caldan?
8. A lot of the biology of this book does not go together. They have a sparsely populated planet with no water, but they have scavenging birds? Do the birds wear water recovery suits?
If the planet is so dry, that nothing can live on it...... Then from what did these gigantic worms (mouths with 80 m wide) evolve, and what was the selective process?
9. Whither the obsession with the Middle East?
-The exotic vocabulary in this book is mostly Arabic (jihad/dar al-Hikma, etc)
-Much of the action takes place on a desert planet.
-With warlike and tribal people that are bound by all manner of tribal codes.
-With everyone wearing burnooses
-in the afterward, Frank Herbert's son says that this was meant to parallel Lawrence of Arabia. (A foreigner comes and unites a bunch of warring Arab-like tribes.)
∆∆∆There are lots of strange resonances in this book to current/historical times:
1. Some °°universal°° religion that is associated with a °°particular°° people. Islam is supposed to be universal, but the language of God is Arabic. And Arabs are native speakers and a source of authority. Bene Gesserit is a priestly class of people that seem to be related to each other.
2. A messiah will come from some place, and they will be from this race of people. Paul will be the Savior for the Fremen/Kwisatz Haderach, and he is the son of a Bene Gesserit. The Messiah will come for the Jewish world, and he must be from the house of David. Muhammad was the first prophet, and he was from a particular Arab tribe.
Also, קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ, is a fairly obscure Jewish term that I found that most people even in an Orthodox synagogue did not know.
3. All these religions freely borrow from each other. In this dystopian novel, it seems like Buddhism / Islam / Christianity have amalgamated into something different. (They may have even taken elements from Buddhism or Hinduism, but I don't know very much about them and could not recognize the allusions.) In current times, Judaism is a source religion (that borrowed some number of their ideas from neighboring tribes that did not survive). Christianity takes selected bits of Judaism and the concept of sacrifice and creates something new. The Muslims do cut and paste from the first two and create something still different.
So that's how we get to Sunni ancestors fleeting from Nilotic-Ourouba (p.568).
4. Some governance system is backed by a series of corrupt feudal lords that have incessantly shifting alliances. (The Japanese emperor was theoretically the head of Japan, but he required the allegiance of fairly independent) daimyos.
5. (p. 182) "The imperial Court is, indeed, a long way off." Chinese proverb: "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." （“山高皇帝遠”）
6. Bene Gesserit= Jews (self interested/ invisible/destructive/purveyors of self-serving but influential ideas that they themselves don't believe). (p. 811), Fourteen Sages ≈ 12 caliphs of the Shia Twelvers. Or the 4 Rightly Guided Caliphs/ "Rashidun" of the Sunni.
7. Some dynasties that are at war with each other, but also related to each other and actually trade people among themselves. (The British royal family is actually German-- Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Alex Feodoranova of Russia started out as Alix Hesse [of later Germany].) The Atreides against The Harkonens.
8. Gladiator killing for sport, like in the corrupt Roman Empire (p.521).
9. Desert dwellers killing each other / not being afraid to die, and wives being immediately remarried to the survivors. Launching "jihad" (p. 562). Just like historical Arabs!
∆∆∆It seems like the events in this book were foundational for several books that were written later:
1. Some future dystopian planet where everyone is drug addicted, and corrupt overlords control the people by control of this drug. (Nancy Farmer. "The House of the Scorpion.) In "Dune," everyone is addicted to spice.
2. Dynasties that live in outer space are fighting each other, and they find out that they are related to each other. Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Baron Harkonen was the father of Bene Gesserit Jessica.
3. The grouching about planets managed under evil corporations was redone later in the movie "Total Recall." (That phrase actually shows up in this book.) Also, Arrakis could have been turned into a planet fit for easy human habitation, but evil supraplanetary corporations wouldn't allow it. The same way they would not start the reactor to turn Mars into an oxygenated planet in "Total Recall."
4. The theme about Scary Underground Worms was repurposed into the movie "Tremors," starring Kevin Bacon.
5. Burnooses all over the place! It seems like this has been a theme in so many movies that I've lost count. (These types of clothing are Arab; why they hold so much sway over the Western imagination, I have no idea.)
Verdict: NOT recommended. Watch the movie instead. (For the record, I don't plan to even do that much. Because this book has already taken up way too much of my reading time. And I can't get any of it back.)
One good quote (p.651): "you cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the Orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Orthodox ethic.