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Title: Children of Dune
Series: Dune Chronicles #3
Author: Frank Herbert
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 420
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
Paul is dead, Alia is ruling as regent and conspirators to topple the Atreides Empire are crawling out of the woodwork.
Paul’s children, Leto and Ghanima, are 10 years old and must begin to take on the trappings of power. They must also avoid the path of Abomination that has overtaken Alia [she’s given in to the inner voices and allowed one of them to take control at times] while fulfilling the vision that Leto has of the human race. A vision that apparently Paul saw and couldn’t bring himself to commit to.
So all the children have to do is: survive their aunt who wants them dead, survive their grandmother who wants them as pawns for the Bene Gesserit, survive a rogue group of Fremen who want all Atreides dead, survive the other Houses who want to ascend to Imperial status and finally, survive the lives inside of them who want to take over.
Easy-peasy.
| My Thoughts: |
Overall, my thoughts haven’t really changed from my ’12 read. There were places that still bored me to tears. I suspect some of that is because the underpinnings of Dune have an islamic cast to them and so I couldn’t follow all the half-sentence, unfinished, thoughts.
This time around I realized that Leto had seen the Golden Path before he was dosed with spice, so what he was seeing was not a prescient view of the future. So how did he see it? He makes a point of calling it a vision instead of prescience, but where did it come from? Paul’s “visions” were him looking into the future when he was high on spice. Leto couldn’t take the chance of taking spice because the inner lives would overwhelm him during that time. The only thing I can think of is that he was able to see everything his father saw because of his preborn condition.
The other thing I noticed was that most of Herbert’s speculation about viewing the future and such were all predicated on there NOT being an Omniscient Being. Which is interesting because the Dune mythos is built on the whole idea of prophecy and gods, albeit humanity ascendant. Prophecy, or visions of the future, are something that come from God. He is an omniscient, omnipresent Being and hence is not bound by time or space. Herbert’s idea of The Future was where humanity was not constrained by ANY force, within or without. He was writing about humanity without a guiding hand. Which is the antithesis of what I believe as a Christian. And yet the questions he asks are just as intriguing and eye opening as any I could think to ask. And THAT is why I like the Dune Chronicles so much. The questions about humanity.
Completely satisfied about this re-read. While I had re-read it back in ’12, I hadn’t read it before then since at least ’99. This is one series I am very glad to own in hardcover as well as in digital form for my Oasis.
★★★★ ½
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
I’m not sure anymore if I first read Dune in English or Portuguese, but I do remember that it was the most difficult book I had ever tackled in English at that point, borrowing it from my good old hometime library, a cut above everything I had read up to that point. For a few years I totally immersed myself in Dune and its sequels, as others have done with Tolkien. Haven’t read it in yonks though. The funny thing was, I never felt the need to read any of Herbert’s other stories. He loomed so large in science fiction, but what else of his you need to read apart from Dune?
One important but completely unintended thing Dune ended up the inspiration for was the computery real time strategy game genre. First you had Dune, a not very good role playing game-ish game and then Dune 2, the direct ancestor of all rts games — the makers of Dune 2 went on to do this little game called Command and Conquer, you see…
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Sadly, I have to concur with your assessment of his non Dune books. I’ve read the White Plague twice, but that was because I’d read it in highschool and didn’t really remember anything about it.
Dune2 was before my computer time. I was just getting in when C&C was coming out. And honestly, at the time I was more into games like Doom2 and Quake and other first person shooters. React and shoot. None of this silly thinking stuff 🙂 Then I got hooked on Warcraft2 and man, that was just fun. Did Starcraft and that killed rts for me. Even on easy I couldn’t complete the missions of the last species.
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The whole series in hardcover? Man.. That has to be beautiful on your bookshelf. Do you also have the whole Wheel of Time series as hardcovers too? 😛
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I have the Dune stuff in hardcover from the sciencefiction book club. So they’re slightly smaller, but a lot more affordable. They do look nice 🙂
And I also have the WoT books in hc as well. All in sfbc edition, but am about halfway through converting them to first edition hardcovers. THOSE are monstrous books!! I have to put them on a bottom bookshelf because they bow the shelf otherwise 😀
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I can soooo imagine hahaahh I’d totally try to do the same if the WoT/Dune series manages to seduce me. 😛
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