If you somehow made it past Dune Messiah and curious to find out about the fate of Arrakis, Paul Atreides and his kids, then you’d be obliged to pick up Children of Dune. To be honest, I wasn’t even that keen on picking this up, but I found the book on a bargain bin and what other choice is there now aside from finishing the rest of the Dune saga? But I really, really was hoping that this book wasn’t as crap as Dune Messiah. Thankfully, it’s a bit better, but not without glaring flaws and a prose that’s too smart for its own good.
Children of Dune is a better book than its predecessor, but not as good as the original Dune. It matches the ambitions of the original in its scope, and the plot is more fantastical and surreal than the first. There are discussions of the importance of language, customs and traditions, but also the relationship between family and expectations. The Atreides children, Ghani and Leto, are pre-born children, having the knowledge of their history and previous experiences of their bloodline bestowed to them since they were born. Therefore they are not children, but older than the adults around them, but perhaps not as wise. Their bodies cannot keep up with the full intent of their minds, so they need to compromise.
If you haven’t read the first Dune, then why the fuck are you reading this review? You should read the first Dune, if you like it, then read Dune Messiah, and if you find traces of it that you like, then you might consider picking this up, unless you’re on a deserted island by yourself and this is the only thing in the island. Even then, I don’t think you can decipher the events of the past without first reading the first two novels.
We see old characters that we recognise from the original Dune, because we simply just cannot get rid of them, they tend to stick around like sand on Brazilian. Lady Jessica, who’s the oldest and longest surviving character is still flailing about, and we don’t know now where her allegiances lie — with the Atreides or the Bene Gesserit, the cult that bred her and shadows her life. Alia, her daughter, who was also a preborn now manages Arrakis with an iron hand, though she is not the official ruler of Dune. Through her, the Baron Harkonnen makes a comeback as she allowed him to pervade her consciousness. If you like Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho, they’re here too. Not to mention other baggages from the past like Irulan and Stilgar.
As the title suggests, the “children” are the focal points of the book, especially Leto who undertook a quest of his own. Arrakis is changing, Dune is becoming greener, and though the Atreidis family has managed to be the major shareholder of the spice industry, controlling the most important resource in the galaxy, they are still threatened from within. There are plots to kill the successors, with even a wild device of trained carnivorous tigers. Lady Jessica is coming back to the planet, for what nobody knows, perhaps to train her grandkids to the Bene Gesserit ways and still finding the saviour of the planet and maybe to breed a litter of them. Alia is losing her grip on the control of the planet and she manages to sneak in Baron Harkonnen through her consciousness, so that we have a bad guy.
It all seems pretty whack, and maybe a bit too much. In the meantime, the newfound fertile ground that’s turning the desert green is detrimental to the sandworms which generate spice. The planet is dying because of the environmental changes, and hardly anybody notices. Sounds familiar? There is also the threat of nuclear war to keep planets in balance, a sort of oligopoly of the galaxy resources. Sounds familiar? In its peak of philosophical musings, the Dune saga is allegorical, and these musings are littered in pages here and there, in the midst of its complex and sometimes absurd dialogue.
And where Dune Messiah suffered from a lack of sandworms in the story, Children of Dune has plenty of them and HOW. There’s quite a fair bit of sandworm surfing, calling and doing your evil biddings. Leto, who transcended into another form, shows us how the sandwords come to be (which is a bit gross), how it relies on the water found in the desert. Leto throws himself into the evolution of the sandworm to become something else absolutely — a necessary evolution in his “Golden Path” of saving the galaxy. In all this mess, a preacher led by a blind boy is just yammering around undermining Alia’s rule of Arrakis. Some say that this preacher is the Muad’dib — Paul Atreides himself who vanished to who knows where.
There is a lot to digest in this book, and that’s the problem with it — it’s just too much. Hardcore fans can disagree, but Children of Dune might not be the most palatable for the casual fan base. It is best to re-learn the vocabulary of Dune because in my version of the book, the glossary ain’t there. Luckily, I remember quite a bit and can muscle along through the story. Dune borrows a lot of terms from Islam, as the Fremen has many similarities as Middle Eastern nomadic tribes, so some of the terms used may be familiar.
But Dune is a society in decay. The old ways are being replaced by power taken for granted — the control of spice has brought blindness to the land, and the new citizens of Arrakis are not as hardy as they were before. The stillsuits oftentimes don’t even support their own moisture and only become fashion instead of a vital piece of clothing. Much of the inhabitants of Dune live a sheltered lifestyle now, no longer at odds with the land that they reside in. There are pockets of smugglers in the outskirts with sullied reputations. They try to replicate other Dunes in other planets, selling off young sandworms to willing buyers.
So should you pick this up? Only if you’re in love with the whole concept of Dune, or like me, you can’t just leave a series hanging unless it’s really shit. Herbert tends to overcomplicate the plot at times and I do wish he writes in a more direct manner, but hey, the fact that he wrote a few Dune books means that it sells, regardless of the flaws of the book. Looking at other reviews of readers who had powered through all of the Dune universe, their advice is to avoid the latter books as it descends into indigestible smoosh. I think I’ll take their advice.
