Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Dune

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Dune by Frank Herbert

5 reviews

entling's review against another edition

Ble distrahert av andre prosjekter, og syntes det var litt mye funky fett- og funkofobi… Når det kommer til disse lange fantasy-seriene, så tror jeg nok Morecocks Elric of Melniboné står øverst på lista mi.

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lqne's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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alexiconic's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The danger with reading a book that inspired many other, newer stories, is that the original just doesn’t seem as revolutionary anymore. I am not the biggest sci-fi fan so my thoughts might be biased by a whole “I’m not super into space” attitude, to be fair.

Dune had things that were absolutely great. It’s clearly a well thought-through world, the environment and the history are very well constructed and it works well. We enter a world where it’s clear the author knows what is what. The mystical elements of the Bene Gesserit, the planet’s ecology, the political factions and their motivations: these are solids.

I’m a bit in the middle on the writing. Having switching POVs and a kind of omniscient narrative is not that popular anymore, and it took some getting used to. But I ended up appreciating it. I didn’t really enjoy the time jump midway in the book: it removed too much buildup and context, and Dune was already going to be a long, long book, which would have been better if we had a little more insight in the “between” period.

What really let the book down for me were the characters. Most weren’t very fleshed out, and while that was the point to a certain extent, it also lessened the impact. I truly didn’t understand why Paul was this great charismatic leader, for example. There were also some tensions in the characters goals:

if Paul wants to stop the jihad, why would this pretty smart dude not consult his mother, who we know is also quite smart? Why would he still surround himself with the exact conditions that make a jihad likely?

And then there are the let downs on the few characters that bring some diversity to the book, especially Jessica and Chani.

They are women, and the book treats them as though they would therefore be perfectly happy taking a side-kick role while the others (the men) are glorious - and really, is being reduced to “mother” and “concubine who maybe if she’s lucky gets to be a wife” even side-kick level? It’s a shame because we see glimpses of these women being incredible, knowledgeable, strong, and well-respected, and the roles they have are in strong tension to these glimpses of power and competence. And then there’s the Harkonnens, who should be evil and fearsome. The Barons portrayal as a gluttonous ruler with a preference for young boys is… less than great. The insistence on this factor and his posture to make the reader disgusted with him doesn’t work out great. His homosexuality is completely irrelevant, and making your villain the only gay (and coincidentally also a pedophilic) character reeks of rather uncomfortable homophobia. His posture is almost a joke. And the worst thing is that it’s discrediting to the great work Herbert does on establishing the Baron as a nefarious, well-planning political actor. The nephew also suffers from the time jump, which makes him transform from a petulant child to a fearsome fighter with some wits in two pages; a shame, because he’s a rather intriguing character.

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macliffe's review against another edition

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adventurous informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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brnineworms's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic.”

I didn’t really know what to expect going in. I knew it was a science fiction classic featuring a young man called Paul on a desert planet that may or may not be called Dune, and I knew that there were big worms and something to do with spice – a rough outline, nothing more.

I think Dune can best be described as sci-fi for history buffs. It’s full of political intrigue, factions and dynasties, empire building, and so on, but also of note are the incessant spoilers courtesy of Princess Irulan. We are told who these characters are and what they will go on to do, to the extent that it sometimes feels like watching a reenactment of what happened or a dramatisation of a well-known legend rather than events unfolding in real time. At first I was thrown off by it but I adjusted and learnt to accept the writing for what it is instead of getting hung up on what I thought it would be.

Dune is, above all else, a story about expectations and adaptation. Having to adjust my own perspective in response to this curveball of a novel meant there was a neat parallel between my own reading experience and the experiences of the characters on the page having to adjust to life on Arrakis – a good avenue for sympathy and connection.

Paul, our protagonist, is entirely shaped by the expectations placed upon him.

He takes on various names and titles over the course of the story (Duke Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, the Lisan al Gaib, Muad’Dib, Usul) and these personas seem to supersede any true sense of self he may have once had. His identity fractures and frays at the climax; not only does he flit back and forth between multiple selves, he also refers to them in the third person and assigns them different motives and personalities (“You have the word of a Duke [...] but Muad’Dib is another matter.”) I don’t know if I’d insist that Paul is plural, but his selfhood is certainly compromised and complicated by all these assumed identities.

Of course, while I’m on the topic of identity, I have to talk about gender – this book is riddled with it. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that women exist in this narrative only as they relate to men, and that they’re portrayed as intuitive, emotional, nurturing, and, above all, passive. I also wouldn’t be the first to note the queerness inherent to the Kwisatz Haderach, a boy with access to powers normally possessed only by women, who can see “both masculine and feminine pasts” – “the male who can truly become one of us.”

Paul has a drug-induced epiphany late in the novel wherein he claims women are givers and men are takers, and that he himself is “the fulcrum” who cannot give without taking nor take without giving.

That moment serves as a good demonstration of Dune’s strange synthesis of essentialism and transgressiveness. And I must say, the fulcrum quote really resonated with me as a genderqueer person.

I’ve talked about Paul, now it’s time to talk about Baron Harkonnen.

He starts off as a vague force of evil that influences the actions of others, only becoming a fully fledged character after the betrayal of Duke Leto.

Herbert could not have made it any clearer that this guy is a villain we’re supposed to loathe. Not only is he a power-hungry capitalist, he’s also an incestuous pedophile and (even worse!) he’s very fat. Yeah, the fatphobia is... not great. And that’s not the only thorny issue here. Dune is inseparable from its Orientalist manner, genocide is treated as set dressing, and eugenics (though criticised) does seem to be granted some legitimacy within the narrative. I don’t want to dwell on these problematic elements but at the same time I can’t disregard them.

Does Dune deserve four and a half stars? Probably not. Am I going to give it four and a half stars anyway? You bet. It’s not beyond criticism (far from it) but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m curious to see where the story goes from here and I’ve already ordered Dune Messiah, but I won’t be reading it just yet because I have quite a backlog of unread books to work through first.

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