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A review by xkrow
Dune by Frank Herbert
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Being the bestselling science fiction book of all time, Frank Herbert’s Dune is a tale full of themes that have resonated with readers for generations. It has produced two films I considered to be terrific adaptations, one other that I think not so much, a documentary about a failed production, a TV show, and many, many other references that have permeated the media landscape for decades. All in all, the point is thus: Dune needs no introduction. But providing one will be my hope in this short review of the many facets that make this my favorite novel of all time. I also hope that, even if you have seen one of its adaptations or been spoiled about its elements in some other manner, you will be intrigued (or, more strongly, convinced) to check out the source material. Of course, do keep in mind that this is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of Dune – I don’t think I could add anything that has not been said better by someone smarter than me before.
(Also, PLEASE ignore typos.)
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.”
Summarizing the plot of Dune is a simple task, or a mighty one, depending on the approach one takes to it. At its core, there is a story that has intrigued cultures all over the world – one of revenge. Shakespeare wrote of Hamlet taking vengeance for his father’s death; Herbert writes of Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, and his journey to avenge his father’s murder at the hands of the Baron Vladamir Harkonnen (and by extension, the emperor Shaddam IV). It is a tragedy of man beset by hubris and wisdom. It may seem a bit prudent that I am spoiling all these elements here, but fear not: for Herbert built within his story a device against this sort of spoiling. In the second chapter, the villain of the book lays out his entire plot – who will betray whom, who is funding the fight, and what exactly will be at stake. But I’m getting ahead of myself – let us return to the summary. So, what I offered above was the simpler explanation, what is the more complex one? Well, it is that Dune is a story about, well, Dune. The titular planet (known properly in the book as Arrakis) is as much a main character in this story as any other. The story is about the precious resource cultivated solely on this planet, the types of people that have grown to call this home, and the types that hope to take it. It is about the multiple factions at play on the Galactic scale, the politics that have played out over millennia, the dark shadows of well-laid plans, and much, much more. “Desert takes the weak,” the Baron says, and therein lies the conflict: what happens to the ones who survive? This is that story.
“Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery - as though his mind dipped into a timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.”
When one begins the book, maybe unaware of its style, the first thing that strikes the reader is the point of view that Herbert uses. It is not the usual first-person or third-person limited, but rather a third-person omniscient. It is jarring to begin the chapter in the head of Paul, then swap to Gaius Mohaim, and then back and forth again throughout. But, if it is overcome, this specific style becomes one of Dune’s biggest strengths. It is a book deep in the minds of its characters (to be touched on later), so it would be extremely limiting to the scope of the book to position ourselves in the mind of a single character all throughout. We need to see what each character thinks of the other, the feints they throw out in conversation, and the traps they set for the other to reveal their motives that are clear to us. But that does not mean that no scene holds within it any tension. Though Frank is open to hopping between the heads of his character, he is not careless with it. We rarely find ourselves in the head of a Fremen, for example, because keeping their thoughts and purposes hidden is important for the revelations and discoveries the characters make. And, even when he does reveal everything to us, there is tension to be had. There is a great dramatic irony to the conversation between Lady Jessica and Yueh, for example, because we are privy to the deadly secret that he keeps and are wishing for Jessica to discover it, but she, in trusting a friend, overlooks the strangeness in his behavior. It makes for an entirely stressful read in parts. So, Herbert is not sacrificing suspense for his style; rather, he is being more deliberate in where he chooses to take advantage of it to offer instead a broader and more nuanced picture of each scene.
“If wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets.”
This takes me to a broader point about Herbert’s prose. Across the internet, in many book circles, there seems to be a sentiment that: “Yeah, Herbert had great ideas, but he wasn’t a very good writer.” And that drives me absolutely insane. Entrenched within this review you’ll come across just a few of the lines that I marked on my re-read. Yes, this is book driven primarily via its ideas. Herbert had much to say about politics, religion, war, and even ecology, and that is what the plot revolves around. But none of the profound statements he makes would be possible if it were not for a careful pen. You heard me describe above the care he puts into the usage of PoV. Believe me when I say there is a similar care that comes through his prose. He was not someone who wished to dally onto a particular description more than necessary – if he could describe the sunset in two sentences, that was all he would do. But when he wanted to dwell on an idea, he could fill pages describing (and redescribing) the same ideas, adding a new perspective to it each time. I will not spoil it specifically, but I find the last chapter of Part One (the book is split into three parts) and the first Paul chapter of Part Three to be the best examples of this, alongside the Kynes chapter (you’ll know which one). No one writes that opening line (and epigraph) without a good head on their shoulders.
“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
On a minor, but similarly important point, I would also like to touch on Herbert’s sparseness when it comes to explaining the terms and ideas he incorporates in the book. It is part of the “great wall” that stops a lot of readers that start the book – the daunting mountain of Arabic, Hebrew, Chakobsa, and invented words that spill out of pages. There is little I can say to this other than to admit the challenge, but I also hope that everything else I say here will make it clear that overcoming that initial hurdle is absolutely worth it. That briskness with which he treats these ideas makes for a fantastic re-reading experience, as I discovered this time around. You can propel through these pages without being bogged down by explanations of things you already know and that makes the world feel all the more natural.
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man – with human flesh.”
Up until now, I’ve alluded to the characters, dropping names here and there, but let me now take up the task of describing them fully. I will leave Paul for later. Lady Jessica is one of the first characters we meet in the book, and she is also appropriately one of the most complex. She is a Bene Gesserit – an order of mystical witches that learn to control their body and voice at the most fundamental level, to the point of being able to reconstitute poisons and choose the sex of their children – but she is also a concubine of Duke Leto Atreides. These dual roles color the way she sees the world. Throughout her mental training, she understands why Leto never married her, but she nonetheless feels the pangs of betrayal sometimes. She coaxes her son, Paul, into becoming the “Chosen One”, but is also fearful of the path she has taken. She recognizes the faults in controlling the Fremen but makes use of her training to achieve her way. She is thus a character defined by her duality and it is fascinating to see it play out. Another of my favorite characters is Dr. Yueh, a “name black in treachery”, but whose inner life we see laid bare, showcasing the pure reasons behind his actions. There is also Kynes, the planetologist, whose dreams for Arrakis are a joy to discover and tragedy to read, and Leto, Hawat, Gurney, Chani, Stilgar, and many, many more. This is a book filled with a menagerie of characters, arriving from different walks of life to the “affair” on Arrakis and playing a part in history.
“You never talk about likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
Let me now discuss Paul. Since the novel’s debut, he has been a controversial character. In some sense, he is the archetypal hero – son of a Duke, product of a great prophecy, who has his birthright taken from him and must venture out on his own to take back what he sees as his. He is also young – only fifteen when the book starts. Makings of a sympathetic underdog that rises to defeat his enemies. But that is only part of Paul’s character. The other is a boy who has been raised to be all sorts of modified, taught to have utter control over his body and mind. He can win fights because that is all that he has been trained to do since birth, and because he is helped by others around him. He takes advantage of a false prophecy to control the Fremen and uses them for his own purpose. But even this negative take is not a true rendition of his character. In all this, he is only a partially willing agent. He is haunted by dreams of jihad, a holy war that spreads out from him. His prescience shows him only possibilities and there lies a great wall past which he cannot see anything but fire. He gains control of the Fremen, but he also sees himself as one of them, changing and conforming to their customs. He mourns the loss of those around him, but also sees the cold calculations that lie in war. He is a child forced to grow up fast and take on responsibility that others far older would be unable to handle. All in all, Paul is a fascinating character who is the utter embodiment of nuance – to sum him up in any word other than “complex” would be doing him and Herbert’s writing a great disservice.
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
How does the story hold up? That is, after all, the backbone that props up everything else discussed previously. In my opinion, Dune’s story is not its greatest asset, but it is a good one, full of twists and turns despite the writing style. I discussed before that the Baron lays out the plot in the second chapter, and that is true for the first third of the book. After that, with Paul and Jessica plunged into the desert, the story unfolds in a mystery-box style approach. Seeds are laid constantly that hint towards an eventual answer. Who is Liet? How does Arrakis’ complex ecology come together to create spice? How do Fremen avoid the worms? What is their aim? Dune’s plot is filled with questions and answers that keep you hooked. It unfolds and explores “plans within plans within plans”, a phrase Herbert is seemingly very fond of. Each character is trying to outplay the other and the plot comprises of how each of their plans intersects with the others. Ignorance and arrogance are the greatest dangers on Arrakis and even those with the ability to see through time fall victim to them.
“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
In many ways, Dune is a product of its time. But, also, its themes speak to humanity in general. Let me touch on just a few of them.
Politics: Herbert is extremely critical of politicians in his story. Even the Atreides, the supposed “good guys”, do not shy away from propaganda. “The people must learn how well I govern them,” Duke Leto says. “How would they know if we didn’t tell them?” The book is filled with such remarks, highlighting how much of politics is control – over resources, over information, over people.
History: This is one of my personal favorites. Each of the book’s chapters is epigraph-ed by excerpts from history books written by Princess Irulan in the future. Many times, they are used to set the tone of the chapter, but they are also a glance into how the people of this world will remember the characters and events of this story. We see the wrenching guilt and complexity that plagues Yueh, but he is remembered in-world as simply “the traitor”. Same with Paul and the glorious texts written about him. They will not see the boy hiding in their prophet that we are privy to. Having this mindset about the book also makes the final less a little jarring, as rather than being about the ignorance of history it's about its hindsight: so many things not apparent today will become only clearer with time.
Religion: This theme goes hand in hand with the one about politics. “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way,” writes Herbert in one of the above-mentioned epigraphs, cautioning against the confounding of the two. We see this play out in this book and the following ones – Paul becomes a religious figure, from whom women and men die believing he is leading them down a glorious path. Their faith makes them blind to the flaws in Paul, but that is not entirely their fault either. Paul, and especially Jessica, know the signs and symbols the Fremen are looking for and play into them. We should be cautious against those claiming to be heroes.
“The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”
If you’ve made it this far, it is either the case that you really, really enjoyed my writing (unlikely) or that you’ve been appropriately Dune-pilled. Let me then indulge for a moment in the Appendixes of the book, and how much they add to the worldbuilding. Appendix I is just Herbert showcasing his Ecological research he could not fit into the book. It details the ways in which the various lifeforms on the planet interact with one another, and how exactly they must be changed to fulfill the goal of the Fremen. Read this if you haven’t got enough of the planet in the book. Appendix II is focused more on religion. It details the various religions that permeate throughout the galaxy and how the Orange Catholic Bible came to be. It contains within it a neat history, but also a commentary on the shared values of religions and how much people value the differences that may otherwise seem auxiliary. Finally, there is Appendix III, on the Bene Gesserit and the shortest. It is mostly concerned with detailing the myriad of ways the order was ignorant of how their plan was coming to fruition on Arrakis. To me, it is most poignantly a criticism of “elaborate schemes” that shut their eyes to the real-world effects and changes that weaken their idealism.
“There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
I am now stuck on how to end this barely coherent rambling. I have said something about most of the major elements of the book. In truth, this was more so to satiate my own desires to talk about the book – to put to rest the bubbling thoughts that have permeated my mind since I first read this book back in 2021. In fact, I was a bit fearful that it would not hold up this time around. That I would begin to notice flaws I hadn’t before, see how the seams of the book were tearing where Herbert’s product could not quite match up with his vision. And that did happen. Believe me, I am not blind to the book’s flaws. It’s just that the stronger elements stood out SO much stronger. The prose, ideas, the characters, the themes – I was eating it all up. This truly is my favorite novel of all time, and I couldn’t be happier that this behemoth of sci-fi history stood so strongly.
(Also, PLEASE ignore typos.)
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.”
Summarizing the plot of Dune is a simple task, or a mighty one, depending on the approach one takes to it. At its core, there is a story that has intrigued cultures all over the world – one of revenge. Shakespeare wrote of Hamlet taking vengeance for his father’s death; Herbert writes of Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, and his journey to avenge his father’s murder at the hands of the Baron Vladamir Harkonnen (and by extension, the emperor Shaddam IV). It is a tragedy of man beset by hubris and wisdom. It may seem a bit prudent that I am spoiling all these elements here, but fear not: for Herbert built within his story a device against this sort of spoiling. In the second chapter, the villain of the book lays out his entire plot – who will betray whom, who is funding the fight, and what exactly will be at stake. But I’m getting ahead of myself – let us return to the summary. So, what I offered above was the simpler explanation, what is the more complex one? Well, it is that Dune is a story about, well, Dune. The titular planet (known properly in the book as Arrakis) is as much a main character in this story as any other. The story is about the precious resource cultivated solely on this planet, the types of people that have grown to call this home, and the types that hope to take it. It is about the multiple factions at play on the Galactic scale, the politics that have played out over millennia, the dark shadows of well-laid plans, and much, much more. “Desert takes the weak,” the Baron says, and therein lies the conflict: what happens to the ones who survive? This is that story.
“Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery - as though his mind dipped into a timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.”
When one begins the book, maybe unaware of its style, the first thing that strikes the reader is the point of view that Herbert uses. It is not the usual first-person or third-person limited, but rather a third-person omniscient. It is jarring to begin the chapter in the head of Paul, then swap to Gaius Mohaim, and then back and forth again throughout. But, if it is overcome, this specific style becomes one of Dune’s biggest strengths. It is a book deep in the minds of its characters (to be touched on later), so it would be extremely limiting to the scope of the book to position ourselves in the mind of a single character all throughout. We need to see what each character thinks of the other, the feints they throw out in conversation, and the traps they set for the other to reveal their motives that are clear to us. But that does not mean that no scene holds within it any tension. Though Frank is open to hopping between the heads of his character, he is not careless with it. We rarely find ourselves in the head of a Fremen, for example, because keeping their thoughts and purposes hidden is important for the revelations and discoveries the characters make. And, even when he does reveal everything to us, there is tension to be had. There is a great dramatic irony to the conversation between Lady Jessica and Yueh, for example, because we are privy to the deadly secret that he keeps and are wishing for Jessica to discover it, but she, in trusting a friend, overlooks the strangeness in his behavior. It makes for an entirely stressful read in parts. So, Herbert is not sacrificing suspense for his style; rather, he is being more deliberate in where he chooses to take advantage of it to offer instead a broader and more nuanced picture of each scene.
“If wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets.”
This takes me to a broader point about Herbert’s prose. Across the internet, in many book circles, there seems to be a sentiment that: “Yeah, Herbert had great ideas, but he wasn’t a very good writer.” And that drives me absolutely insane. Entrenched within this review you’ll come across just a few of the lines that I marked on my re-read. Yes, this is book driven primarily via its ideas. Herbert had much to say about politics, religion, war, and even ecology, and that is what the plot revolves around. But none of the profound statements he makes would be possible if it were not for a careful pen. You heard me describe above the care he puts into the usage of PoV. Believe me when I say there is a similar care that comes through his prose. He was not someone who wished to dally onto a particular description more than necessary – if he could describe the sunset in two sentences, that was all he would do. But when he wanted to dwell on an idea, he could fill pages describing (and redescribing) the same ideas, adding a new perspective to it each time. I will not spoil it specifically, but I find the last chapter of Part One (the book is split into three parts) and the first Paul chapter of Part Three to be the best examples of this, alongside the Kynes chapter (you’ll know which one). No one writes that opening line (and epigraph) without a good head on their shoulders.
“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
On a minor, but similarly important point, I would also like to touch on Herbert’s sparseness when it comes to explaining the terms and ideas he incorporates in the book. It is part of the “great wall” that stops a lot of readers that start the book – the daunting mountain of Arabic, Hebrew, Chakobsa, and invented words that spill out of pages. There is little I can say to this other than to admit the challenge, but I also hope that everything else I say here will make it clear that overcoming that initial hurdle is absolutely worth it. That briskness with which he treats these ideas makes for a fantastic re-reading experience, as I discovered this time around. You can propel through these pages without being bogged down by explanations of things you already know and that makes the world feel all the more natural.
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man – with human flesh.”
Up until now, I’ve alluded to the characters, dropping names here and there, but let me now take up the task of describing them fully. I will leave Paul for later. Lady Jessica is one of the first characters we meet in the book, and she is also appropriately one of the most complex. She is a Bene Gesserit – an order of mystical witches that learn to control their body and voice at the most fundamental level, to the point of being able to reconstitute poisons and choose the sex of their children – but she is also a concubine of Duke Leto Atreides. These dual roles color the way she sees the world. Throughout her mental training, she understands why Leto never married her, but she nonetheless feels the pangs of betrayal sometimes. She coaxes her son, Paul, into becoming the “Chosen One”, but is also fearful of the path she has taken. She recognizes the faults in controlling the Fremen but makes use of her training to achieve her way. She is thus a character defined by her duality and it is fascinating to see it play out. Another of my favorite characters is Dr. Yueh, a “name black in treachery”, but whose inner life we see laid bare, showcasing the pure reasons behind his actions. There is also Kynes, the planetologist, whose dreams for Arrakis are a joy to discover and tragedy to read, and Leto, Hawat, Gurney, Chani, Stilgar, and many, many more. This is a book filled with a menagerie of characters, arriving from different walks of life to the “affair” on Arrakis and playing a part in history.
“You never talk about likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
Let me now discuss Paul. Since the novel’s debut, he has been a controversial character. In some sense, he is the archetypal hero – son of a Duke, product of a great prophecy, who has his birthright taken from him and must venture out on his own to take back what he sees as his. He is also young – only fifteen when the book starts. Makings of a sympathetic underdog that rises to defeat his enemies. But that is only part of Paul’s character. The other is a boy who has been raised to be all sorts of modified, taught to have utter control over his body and mind. He can win fights because that is all that he has been trained to do since birth, and because he is helped by others around him. He takes advantage of a false prophecy to control the Fremen and uses them for his own purpose. But even this negative take is not a true rendition of his character. In all this, he is only a partially willing agent. He is haunted by dreams of jihad, a holy war that spreads out from him. His prescience shows him only possibilities and there lies a great wall past which he cannot see anything but fire. He gains control of the Fremen, but he also sees himself as one of them, changing and conforming to their customs. He mourns the loss of those around him, but also sees the cold calculations that lie in war. He is a child forced to grow up fast and take on responsibility that others far older would be unable to handle. All in all, Paul is a fascinating character who is the utter embodiment of nuance – to sum him up in any word other than “complex” would be doing him and Herbert’s writing a great disservice.
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
How does the story hold up? That is, after all, the backbone that props up everything else discussed previously. In my opinion, Dune’s story is not its greatest asset, but it is a good one, full of twists and turns despite the writing style. I discussed before that the Baron lays out the plot in the second chapter, and that is true for the first third of the book. After that, with Paul and Jessica plunged into the desert, the story unfolds in a mystery-box style approach. Seeds are laid constantly that hint towards an eventual answer. Who is Liet? How does Arrakis’ complex ecology come together to create spice? How do Fremen avoid the worms? What is their aim? Dune’s plot is filled with questions and answers that keep you hooked. It unfolds and explores “plans within plans within plans”, a phrase Herbert is seemingly very fond of. Each character is trying to outplay the other and the plot comprises of how each of their plans intersects with the others. Ignorance and arrogance are the greatest dangers on Arrakis and even those with the ability to see through time fall victim to them.
“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
In many ways, Dune is a product of its time. But, also, its themes speak to humanity in general. Let me touch on just a few of them.
Politics: Herbert is extremely critical of politicians in his story. Even the Atreides, the supposed “good guys”, do not shy away from propaganda. “The people must learn how well I govern them,” Duke Leto says. “How would they know if we didn’t tell them?” The book is filled with such remarks, highlighting how much of politics is control – over resources, over information, over people.
History: This is one of my personal favorites. Each of the book’s chapters is epigraph-ed by excerpts from history books written by Princess Irulan in the future. Many times, they are used to set the tone of the chapter, but they are also a glance into how the people of this world will remember the characters and events of this story. We see the wrenching guilt and complexity that plagues Yueh, but he is remembered in-world as simply “the traitor”. Same with Paul and the glorious texts written about him. They will not see the boy hiding in their prophet that we are privy to. Having this mindset about the book also makes the final less a little jarring, as rather than being about the ignorance of history it's about its hindsight: so many things not apparent today will become only clearer with time.
Religion: This theme goes hand in hand with the one about politics. “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way,” writes Herbert in one of the above-mentioned epigraphs, cautioning against the confounding of the two. We see this play out in this book and the following ones – Paul becomes a religious figure, from whom women and men die believing he is leading them down a glorious path. Their faith makes them blind to the flaws in Paul, but that is not entirely their fault either. Paul, and especially Jessica, know the signs and symbols the Fremen are looking for and play into them. We should be cautious against those claiming to be heroes.
“The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”
If you’ve made it this far, it is either the case that you really, really enjoyed my writing (unlikely) or that you’ve been appropriately Dune-pilled. Let me then indulge for a moment in the Appendixes of the book, and how much they add to the worldbuilding. Appendix I is just Herbert showcasing his Ecological research he could not fit into the book. It details the ways in which the various lifeforms on the planet interact with one another, and how exactly they must be changed to fulfill the goal of the Fremen. Read this if you haven’t got enough of the planet in the book. Appendix II is focused more on religion. It details the various religions that permeate throughout the galaxy and how the Orange Catholic Bible came to be. It contains within it a neat history, but also a commentary on the shared values of religions and how much people value the differences that may otherwise seem auxiliary. Finally, there is Appendix III, on the Bene Gesserit and the shortest. It is mostly concerned with detailing the myriad of ways the order was ignorant of how their plan was coming to fruition on Arrakis. To me, it is most poignantly a criticism of “elaborate schemes” that shut their eyes to the real-world effects and changes that weaken their idealism.
“There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
I am now stuck on how to end this barely coherent rambling. I have said something about most of the major elements of the book. In truth, this was more so to satiate my own desires to talk about the book – to put to rest the bubbling thoughts that have permeated my mind since I first read this book back in 2021. In fact, I was a bit fearful that it would not hold up this time around. That I would begin to notice flaws I hadn’t before, see how the seams of the book were tearing where Herbert’s product could not quite match up with his vision. And that did happen. Believe me, I am not blind to the book’s flaws. It’s just that the stronger elements stood out SO much stronger. The prose, ideas, the characters, the themes – I was eating it all up. This truly is my favorite novel of all time, and I couldn’t be happier that this behemoth of sci-fi history stood so strongly.