Dune: Middway

Dune, so far, is both entertaining and slow. I am about halfway through the book, and it has taken me a while to get into it. It is a great world and has great characters, I will give it that, but it is like many other science fiction books that I have read. Yes, I am going to connect this book to the others, like I did in my last post, because I think it is really hard to make a science fiction book readable. By having a new world with new environments, rules, and standards, it is hard to actually tell the story without just completely writing a paper about how this made up world works.

SPOILER ALERT

Dune follows the story of a boy named Paul who is the son (and heir) of the Duke of the Atreides (a house or powerful family under the the emperor who rules over the planet system). They have just settled on Arrakis (ordered by the Emperor to take power there) and are trying to make peace with the Fremens who live there, when the Harkonnens (another house who was previously in control of this planet and wants to get rid of the Atreides) attack and take over, killing the Duke. Paul and his mother Jessica are currently trying to hide from the Harkonnens, while Paul is realizing his full potential with these powers that he sort of has.

Anyway, what I was going to say from before this spiel was about the plot. This part of the book is in a state of high action, though not really rising, and I’m not sure when it will get to the climax. I was surprised that the most climactic event so far came pretty early in the book. That is when the Harkonnens take over and basically start killing people. However, since then, the book has been on a mostly horizontal course, not really getting better or worse.

Also, I thought it was more interesting that even though the story was following Paul and the Atreides, the second chapter just cuts directly to the Harkonnens and never shows them again until they attack. The author writes in the second chapter, “‘There it is, Piter-the biggest man trap in all history. And the Duke’s headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?’”(Herbert 14). After reading farther into it, I realized the purpose of this chapter. It was to add suspense and make the reader interested (though Frank Herbert probably realized that his beginning was slightly boring so he added this to make up for it in hopes the reader continues). We know that the Harkonnens have a plan, but we are not exactly sure what yet. So we read on.

Though there are probably many themes that Herbert is throwing at me and I am not catching, one that I did catch was the fact that everyone has something to lose and something to gain. The riskiness of everything in life controls you and your actions. This is shown through all the characters in the book, most prevalent in Dr. Yueh (I will probably go more into depth about this in my next post). Overall, Dune is entertaining, but if the book weren't so long and slow, I would probably pay more attention while reading it.