I have decided to reread all 6 of the Dune books as my next reading adventure. I have read the first 3 several times, and the last 3 only once, but with my more advanced understanding of writing and craft, I am hoping to learn from this epic which inspired so much of my own world building over the years.
This book is set 12 years after the events of Dune. It continues with political intrigue and a plot to unseat the emperor Paul Maud’dib Atredies. Long story short, it does not go well for the plotters, but it also does not go well for Paul and Chani.
I have to say, I just don’t like this book as much as Dune. I am curious to remember how the story unfolds because I love the world so much, but this book feels much less deep then Dune did. There are still layers of intrigue, but nowhere near as much depth as in the first book. As I wrote a few days ago when I finished Dune, that book just feels deep. You can pry the lines of text apart and see the worldbuilding below… and that just isn’t the case here. It is a good story but I didn’t feel as drawn in.
The book is still written in omniscient third, and POVs shift within a section. There was one section in particular near the end of the book where we see the ghola Hayt looking down at a kid bouncing a ball, and Aila is also watching the kid and the POV shifts smoothly from Hayt to Alia within a sentence. It works, and I don’t think you could get away with it nowadays. I certainly can’t remember reading anyone currently writing (at least in the subgenres of space opera and hard SF that I read) doing this. The trend now is absolutely close third, or first, and not omniscient. It is archaic, which does make it interesting. I find it somewhat amazing that I never had noticed that before this time, but then again, I was not attuned to POV even just a few years ago like I am now.
Next up is Children of Dune. Leto and Ghanima will grow up and I vaguely recall what happens here to set up the next set of three books that ends with Chapterhouse. I also know that the unwritten ”book 7” has since been written by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson (I think I called him Paul Anderson in my last blog post) as a set of two books. I may read that, which will be new, because I remember being very confused by the ending of Chapterhouse and feeling like it wasn’t done. It will be good to complete this series and see the end of Frank Herbert’s grand vision at last—at least for me.