Lana Reviews: Dune - Frank Herbert

Dune by Frank Herbert was the sixth book I read for my reading challenge, and will be the third book that I review. I chose to read it because, although I did not know anything about Dune or its universe beforehand, I did know that it has been an important book for both science fiction and the fantasy genre. (Plus I hoped it would help me understand the Dune-related spice jokes that sometimes pop up on my Facebook feed.) When first picking it up, however, I got a bit worried as the first thing it tells me on its front cover is that the only thing Arthur C. Clarke knows that is comparable to it, is The Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong, - I quite enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, at least on my reread, but I always felt it was a relatively difficult read so thanks to this Clarke fellow I kind of expected Dune to be the same. It wasn't.

Young Paul Atreides is a member of a noble family who has just been offered the stewardship of the planet Arrakis - also known as Dune. As part of an interstellar feudal society where all noble houses owe their allegiance to the Padishah Emperor, his father, the Duke, has little choice but to accept the offer, fully aware that it is little more than a trap he and his family is walking into. Arriving at Arrakis, they find a desert planet where every drop of water is worth a fortune. But what makes the planet so valuable to the rest of the Galactic Empire, is that it is the only source of melange, the 'spice of spices.'

When the story begins, Paul is 15 years old and described as small for his age. Those who meet him first think of him as a child, only to discover as they interact with him, that he thinks, speaks and acts like a grown man. From his mother, Lady Jessica, he has received Bene Gesserit training giving him, among other things, heightened senses and knowledge of martial arts. He has also received training in how to use weapons from some of his father's trusted men, and in being a mentat - a human computer. When his family is betrayed on Dune, he and Jessica escape into the desert where they find shelter with the Freemen, the extremely hardy inhabitants of the planet. Being thought dead, the House of Atreides believed to be nothing more than a memory, gives Paul the opportunity to gather his forces and resources, and take back what is rightfully his.

For anyone familiar with the monomyth, (or the hero's journey,) it is quite obvious from the very first few pages of the book that the young boy Paul Atreides has a great destiny ahead of him. Even those unfamiliar with the above pattern are unlikely to miss Paul's own feelings of having a terrible purpose, feelings he has even before he receives the visions revealing what exactly that purpose will be. Like with most heroes written in this way, he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, but rather has unfortunate circumstances forced upon him, changing his life from the normal to the unknown. Some heroes will survive the unknown thanks to powers they suddenly acquire at this point; Paul survives because of the years of training he has received when things could still be considered normal. For those that are familiar with the pattern of the hero's journey, Paul's story will most likely be extremely predictable, - I guess that would be true even for those who have simply read similar stories based on the same pattern, without knowing that there is such a pattern. It is okay though, it was how the author meant for it to be.

The future interstellar feudal society of Dune does not seem to have come very far when it comes to gender roles. The galaxy is, based on what we are told in this book, dominated by the male gender, and even the exclusively female Bene Gesserit, a religious group, want nothing more than to bring about a male Bene Gesserit among them; it has been their goal for thousands of years. The women that do not have any special powers, are hardly ever seen or mentioned, and seem to stick to the traditional female duties and roles in society. Those that have special powers, like the Bene Gesserit, are feared and hated, and often referred to as witches. In addition, it seems their powers are only meant to be used to serve the men around them. This is not really criticism though, more of an observation.

As I was reading Dune, I sometimes wondered what kind of reception it would have gotten had it been written and published now, and not back in 1965. How would the world today have reacted to a book where the hero adapts into a society of fighters that have Arab-sounding names, Arabic and Islamic terms in their language, and won't hesitate to spend their own lives if it means taking out their enemies along the way? And what about the immoral and corrupt enemy who will do anything to get their hands on the one valuable thing on the desert-planet that these fighters inhabit; the substance that makes space-travel/transportation possible? In a way, I wish I had read Dune when I was in my early or middle teens, so that my reading experience would not have been colored by what has happened in the real world in the last 15 years. I do not think it made me enjoy the story any less, but it did add thoughts and feelings to it that I do not think Herbert had ever intended.

I really liked Dune. For a science fiction story, it resembles my favorite genre (fantasy) a lot more than I thought it would. Keeping most of the focus on the story and the characters made it more enjoyable and available for me than science fiction that focuses more on science or technology. I also felt that it is an easier read than many other books because of the language itself. Sure, Herbert uses a lot of words that is not actually English, but there is a glossary in the back for that, and the rest of the story flows nicely enough. I would definitely recommend this, both for science fiction and fantasy fans.

Book Details
Title: Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 609
Year: 2007
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-575-08150-5
First published: 1965

Lana Reviews: The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg

Deciding to do Worlds Without End’s 2014 Masterworks Challenge, and not having my own book blog for posting reviews (I do not really do reviews so I have never really needed one,) Val here kindly offered that I could post my reviews on his blog. Hopefully there will be at least six of them during 2014, since else, I will lose the challenge! 

Online I call myself Lana; I was born in 1981, and while I live in the Netherlands now, I am quite Norwegian. I love to read, although all the forced reading I did at the university for many years kind of took the pleasure out of it for a while. I prefer fantasy I guess, authors like Anne Bishop and Robert Jordan have been read and reread over the years, but I have read a few classics too (my bachelor is in English Literature,) and lately, I have added a lot more science fiction to my ‘have read’ list. I especially enjoy Nancy Kress and in particular her short story fiction. 

 As I hinted at above, I do not typically do reviews. I might very well focus on the wrong things and completely miss the big picture, but I’ll do my best to write honest and informative pieces without spoiling too much of whichever book I’m reviewing at the time. My aim is simply to complete the challenge I’ve signed up for. It shall be fun, I’m sure!

Robert Silverberg’s The Book of Skulls (1972) is a story about the journey taken by four young men after one of them finds an old manuscript that promises its reader eternal life. Not only does their search for immortality take us across the United States of America, but also through their minds, their past, and the past of the world itself. When Silverberg wrote this book, he had already produced countless novels and short stories; science fiction as well as other genres. Still, for someone who has read as little science fiction as I have, this is not what I would typically think of when I think of that genre. There are no aliens, no spaceships, and no futuristic tools or machinery; there is only the promise of immortality. This promise, and the criteria for achieving it, however, was what caught my interest and why I chose to pick up this book.

When we meet the four main characters, all in their early twenties, they have already left the college they attend together in New England and started their journey south-west in search of a secretive sect living in Arizona; the sect they believe once wrote the manuscript they have recently found. They also already know that in order for two of them to attain eternal life, the manuscript says that two of them must die. As they make their way from city to city and from state to state, we get many glimpses into their thoughts and feelings, Silverberg using this time to build up their personalities and backgrounds by writing first person chapters from the different characters’ points of view. And when they reach their goal, a different journey begins, revealing that what we have learnt so far might only be a part of the whole, and that nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Silverberg has created four different characters with four relatively different backgrounds for his story, however, none of them comes across as very likable and I never felt sad about the prospect that two of them might have to die before the end. This made the story a bit poor to me, as, to truly enjoy a book I need to care a bit more about the characters I read about.

Another thing I noticed as I worked my way through these young men’s heads was all the knowledge they seemed to be in possession of at any given time, and all the big words they knew and always were in complete control of how to use. Granted, they are supposed to be students and students are supposed to be knowledgeable, plus things might have been different back then compared to when I attended university and all knowledge was a Google-search away, but I have never met one person that age carrying that much and diverse knowledge around in his or her head. In fact, the further I read, the more I felt as if the author himself, through his characters, was showing off his own wealth of knowledge, and in that way only managed to make his characters more unrealistic, less real.

I also had an issue with how female characters were written and described in this book. Again, it might have something to do with differences between the time during which this story takes place, and the time I grew up in. Or perhaps it is a difference between the author’s country of birth and my own. Might even be that being a woman, I do not truly know how males that age really think about women – maybe it simply is as crude and contemptuous as Silverberg implies.

While The Book of Skulls might not be my new favorite book, or the best book I have ever read, one can tell that the author has put a lot of thought into his story, and he certainly tells a tale that one wants to know how ends. In spite of big words and longwinded monologues of self-reflection and existentialism, it is not a particularly difficult read either. There were a lot of little things that I didn’t like that much about it, but the main idea; the search for immortality, and four friends choosing to go ahead with that search although knowing from the start that two of them might perish before the search is over, was one that I found quite appealing. So while I might have a lot of issues with how Silverberg chose to tell his story, I still think it is worth the read and would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a thoughtful story surrounding the search for eternal life.  

Book Details
Title: The Book of Skulls
Author: Robert Silverberg
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 222  
Year: 2004
Language: English
Format: Mass market paperback
ISBN: 978-1-85798-914-4  
First published: 1972