Book Review: Dune

Dune

Written by Frank Herbert in 1965

Synopsis: When House Atreides is tasked with governing the desert planet Arrakis, they walk into a trap. For the duke’s prescient son Paul, the move will test the limits of his training as he struggles against an uninhabitable environment and the nightmarish destiny that awaits him if he survives.

Review: Wow.

Dune’s narrative voice is third-person omniscient, meaning we get multiple characters’ thoughts in each chapter. This choice has fallen out of fashion recently, especially in stories with young protagonists. Herbert proves that, when done right, having more characters’ perspectives can be really rewarding in nonviolent climactic scenes, like the high-stakes negotiation at the end of the novel. In a story characterized by both backstabbing and deep loyalty, witnessing everyone’s thoughts as they carry out their independent actions made the book easier to follow and much more interesting.

Perhaps the best outcome of this choice is how much development we get in both Paul and his mother Jessica. Jessica is brilliant and strong, but it would be all too easy to sideline her in a chosen-one story. Herbert thankfully gives her just as much of the action, and it’s fascinating to see each character’s evolving view of the other as they face challenges together.

Zooming out, the worldbuilding in Dune is strong overall. The culture of the Fremen comes through clearly, the workings of the interstellar government are boiled down to just what readers need to follow the plot, and the worms are adorable. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Strengths:

• All the unique ideas that went into the Bene Gesserit. Individuals from this school can make people instinctively obey commands by speaking in the exact right tone/impersonation tailored to make that person listen, and the group as a whole has planted entire religions for distant future strategic advantages.

• The best way I can put this is that Paul earns his role as the main character. It’s not just that Herbert orders us to follow him; the author crafted a dynamic, magnetic character who’s super fun to watch.

Weaknesses:

• There was a weird, happy tonal shift in the appendices, and the cost of their awkwardness outweighs the benefit of the extra context they provide.

• The Baron is a caricature villain. His every appearance on the page is accompanied by another description of his obese ugliness and his gay pedophilia.

• This is a personal preference, but the line between natural skills/training and supernatural abilities should have been made clearer, because the increasing importance of the latter continually chipped away at all the awesome aspects of the former.

Rating: 19/20 names for one guy

Ideal Setting: Read this when you need another hero to look up to whose abilities you could theoretically learn to match.

 

Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea

Written by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1968

Synopsis: The beginning of the saga of Ged, a young prodigy in a world where knowledge of the Old Speech gives wizards power over their environment and one’s true name is their most vulnerable secret. 

Review: Le Guin published this novel in 1968, and I worry that a lot of what I found dull here was original at the time and has since been done to death. The most off-putting example was a chapter about one year of Ged’s education at a renowned magic school. Students are sent to an isolated tower, with a professor who barely speaks except to deliver one profound quote and monitor the students’ assignments—they will spend the year memorizing tens of thousands of true names, a mind-numbingly dull task that will nonetheless make them almost instinctive experts. I still found this idea really cool, but it would’ve hit harder if I hadn’t previously read basically the same chapter in Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, published in 2009.

So the correct interpretation ought to be that Earthsea has an inventive language-based magic system and an approach to wizard education that will tickle any Harry Potter fan. However, I wish I’d seen more of it. The narrator takes an overt storytelling stance at the beginning and end, and that telling-not-showing tone keeps insidiously cropping up throughout the book. Events also happen rather quickly, with climactic encounters taking no more than a handful of pages. A Wizard of Earthsea told me a worthwhile story from the rocking chair opposite mine, but other authors have encouraged me to hold fantasy to the standard of living these stories, while Le Guin was content to keep some distance.

Strengths:

• Ged is fighting against an evil that he himself is largely responsible for, which was refreshing in a high fantasy good vs. evil novel. This antagonist also had a very interesting nature that Le Guin utilized well.

• Sentient dragons are hard to mess up, but Le Guin nonetheless created a fun secondary antagonist with a unique voice.

Weaknesses:

• Though the novel lacks a love interest, the other archetypes for female characters are as well developed as you might expect from a ‘60s fantasy novel.

• A wizard transforming into an animal for the first time should not have enough mastery over his body to defeat real versions of that animal in combat.

Rating: 16/20 improvised boats

Ideal Setting: Read this just after you mistakenly get scared by a shadow.