Book Review: Dune

Finally, I've had the chance to read Dune. I actually have time to read now, and it's amazing. I'll have even more now that hours are being cut since July is slow for hardware store/garden centers.

In reverse of my usual habit, I saw the movie before I read the book. And I'd say that the movie is true enough to the book that I wouldn't have been angered if I had first read the book and then watched the movie. Sure there are scenes that the movie doesn't include, but there's so much going on in this book that there's no way they could have managed to successfully cram it all into a movie. There's also a few things the movie outright changed, but not in the plot-changing way that some movies are in the habit of doing.

And now to speak of the book itself. In short, it was quite excellent. The characters were extremely well-developed through many means. We get to hear their thoughts and view event through their eyes, learn how others interpret their actions from their point of view, and also get the usual third person narrator descriptions. Perhaps one of the book's greatest strengths is its shifting point of view. Herbert seamlessly shifts from the vantage point of one character to another for maximum understanding of the situation and, as was already mentioned, stellar character development.

I must also applaud the success with which he builds a new universe and drops us into it. The societies, politics, and technologies are skillfully and realistically crafted. I could spend a good deal of time admiring it. My paragon example of society creation is Richard Adams' Watership Down, and I consider Dune worthy to sit alongside it. The readers are dropped into this world, given just enough facts to figure the rest out on our own. He doesn't waste time tediously describing his world to us foreign onlookers. Rather, it's as if his book is written to an audience that lives there. The reader is neither patronized nor overwhelmed.

The plot, too, is worthy of praise. But I feel that this is obvious enough without explanation.

One thing I disliked about Herbert's style was the repeated use of a few descriptions and phrases. I don't need to know a million times that Stilgar's eyes are a deep blue sunk into dark pits, or whatever exact phrase he uses over and over. He also has a habit of saying that a glance or gesture "contained an entire conversation." While this is true several times throughout the book, he could come up with different ways of expressing the same idea every once in a while. But I really have no other complaints to make.

In summary, Frank Herbert's Dune is quite an excellent book in all respects. Go read it. It's long, but you'll zoom through it because it's so fantastic.