Dune. Book discussion. (Spoilers welcome) KJA’s fanfiction sucks… right?

[SeanF]

12 minutes ago, .H. said:

This series of blog posts has been posted on the board numerous times, but I guess some might not have come across it before, but it covers the trope that the Freman seem to operate under pretty well.

Brett Devereaux is recommended by so many people, and of so many different political persuasions.

The only other person who can explain operations, battles, tactics as well as he does is Bernard Cornwell.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

The only other person who can explain operations, battles, tactics as well as he does is Bernard Cornwell.

Except when it comes to the US War of the Rebellion.  Brett is weak there too -- it's so far in time beyond his interests and researches.

It's not only we 'modernists' who love the 'freeman' ideology -- 14th C Ibn Khaldun went into great detail with it, supporting his cyclic philosophy of history -- yah, Spengler didn't invent it.  Nor was Ibn Khaldun the first by any means.

This cyclic, wheel turning, as historical concept is embedded in many Asian religions.  Whereas, in contrast, for instance, christianity embeds the idea of moving from a fixed point to the future, when history ends with the Second Coming and every person who has ever lived or is living goes to heaven or goes to hell.

Edited April 15 by Zorral

[Jerol]

Herbert's prose hasn't aged well for me but the story, especially in the first book, is quite strong. I reread it just before Villeneuve's first film and enjoyed it thoroughly. However I did not go any further. I remember as a young man noping out in the later books when Paul went full worm. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 4/15/2024 at 5:47 PM, Jerol said:

Herbert's prose hasn't aged well for me but the story, especially in the first book, is quite strong. I reread it just before Villeneuve's first film and enjoyed it thoroughly. However I did not go any further. I remember as a young man noping out in the later books when Paul went full worm. 

Paul never does that.

[Maithanet]

Does Dune Messiah get better?  I loved the first book and I am shocked at how much less interesting this book is.  I'm 70 pages in and we've had:

 - A meeting of conspirators to kill Paul

 - Paul and Chani having a discussion about whether he should impregnate Irulan

 - A second meeting of conspirators, this time on Arrakis

 - A meeting of Paul's inner circle in which...nothing much is decided.  I haven't finished this chapter, so maybe they actually do something later.  

I can slog on for a bit longer, but WTF?  I was really impressed with how tight Dune was, almost every scene had a bunch of worldbuilding, character development and plot movement woven together.  Thus far everything is stagnant and dull. 

[A wilding]

In my opinion?

There is a big drop off in quality between the first book and the second, and each subsequent book is then a little worse. You can stop reading after the first book, or after the second, or after the fourth to get a coherent ending, so up to you how long you want to keep going..

[williamjm]

8 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Does Dune Messiah get better?  I loved the first book and I am shocked at how much less interesting this book is.  I'm 70 pages in and we've had:

 - A meeting of conspirators to kill Paul

 - Paul and Chani having a discussion about whether he should impregnate Irulan

 - A second meeting of conspirators, this time on Arrakis

 - A meeting of Paul's inner circle in which...nothing much is decided.  I haven't finished this chapter, so maybe they actually do something later.  

I can slog on for a bit longer, but WTF?  I was really impressed with how tight Dune was, almost every scene had a bunch of worldbuilding, character development and plot movement woven together.  Thus far everything is stagnant and dull. 

My main memory of Dune Messiah is that there are a lot of people having meetings, I think it gets a bit less dull towards the end but it's still nowhere close to the original book. Children of Dune was better than Messiah but still not at the same level as Dune.

[Calibandar]

I have to say...at the risk of big backlash , but I dont think that most recent prequel trilogy they did, ( Duke of Dune, Lady of Dune, Heir of Dune) is bad at all. I found that quite an interesting prequel set just before the events of Dune, something I have always wondered about.

[Werthead]

On 4/25/2024 at 3:30 PM, Maithanet said:

Does Dune Messiah get better?  I loved the first book and I am shocked at how much less interesting this book is.  I'm 70 pages in and we've had:

 - A meeting of conspirators to kill Paul

 - Paul and Chani having a discussion about whether he should impregnate Irulan

 - A second meeting of conspirators, this time on Arrakis

 - A meeting of Paul's inner circle in which...nothing much is decided.  I haven't finished this chapter, so maybe they actually do something later.  

I can slog on for a bit longer, but WTF?  I was really impressed with how tight Dune was, almost every scene had a bunch of worldbuilding, character development and plot movement woven together.  Thus far everything is stagnant and dull. 

Dune Messiah is a delayed coda to Dune itself, it's a bit weird as a book (not much happens when it's the shortest book - by far - in he series).

Children of Dune is certainly a longer, better book with more consequential action. God-Emperor is fucking weird, and easily the most divisive book in the series (some think it's the best thing Herbert ever wrote, many the worst). Heretics and Chapterhouse are much more conventional, with a stronger action-adventure element, and probably (very relatively) the closest he gets back to the feel to the original Dune. Unfortunately, the story's not as interesting.

Dune is very much a weird outlier in that it's almost certainly the best book in the series, and the rest of the books are wildly different in tone and characterisation to it and to one another.

Not coincidentally, I heard a publishing figure recently that the Dune sequels dropped off hard in sales, but because Dune sold so massively, even the later books' sales were still very healthy: Chapterhouse Dune has sold around 2 million copies since release, which is healthy, but only 10% of Dune's 20 million sales.

That's not quite as insane as the alleged drop-off on Tolkien (down from ~200-300 million for LotR and 120 million for The Hobbit to ~2 million for The Silmarillion) but it's still steep.

[Kyll.Ing.]

22 hours ago, Werthead said:

Dune is very much a weird outlier in that it's almost certainly the best book in the series, and the rest of the books are wildly different in tone and characterisation to it and to one another.

Not coincidentally, I heard a publishing figure recently that the Dune sequels dropped off hard in sales, but because Dune sold so massively, even the later books' sales were still very healthy: Chapterhouse Dune has sold around 2 million copies since release, which is healthy, but only 10% of Dune's 20 million sales.

That's not quite as insane as the alleged drop-off on Tolkien (down from ~200-300 million for LotR and 120 million for The Hobbit to ~2 million for The Silmarillion) but it's still steep.

That makes me wonder what the numbers must be for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There too, I found the first book to be miles above the others, especially in the plot department. I guess the fact the first book ended with a comma more than a period made more people check the next ones out, though.

Edited Sunday at 10:19 PM by Kyll.Ing.

[Werthead]

34 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

That makes me wonder what the numbers must be for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There too, I found the first book to be miles above the others, especially in the plot department. I guess the fact the first book ended with a comma more than a period made more people check the next ones out, though.

The first book is on a par with Dune (about 20 million), but I think the sales generally held up better. Restaurant at the End of the Universe is almost as well-known. I think the other three are not as popular but they were still relatively big.

[SeanF]

On 4/26/2024 at 4:56 PM, Calibandar said:

I have to say...at the risk of big backlash , but I dont think that most recent prequel trilogy they did, ( Duke of Dune, Lady of Dune, Heir of Dune) is bad at all. I found that quite an interesting prequel set just before the events of Dune, something I have always wondered about.

Duke of Dune reminds me too much of Duck of Death in Unforgiven.

[SeanF]

On 4/25/2024 at 3:30 PM, Maithanet said:

Does Dune Messiah get better?  I loved the first book and I am shocked at how much less interesting this book is.  I'm 70 pages in and we've had:

 - A meeting of conspirators to kill Paul

 - Paul and Chani having a discussion about whether he should impregnate Irulan

 - A second meeting of conspirators, this time on Arrakis

 - A meeting of Paul's inner circle in which...nothing much is decided.  I haven't finished this chapter, so maybe they actually do something later.  

I can slog on for a bit longer, but WTF?  I was really impressed with how tight Dune was, almost every scene had a bunch of worldbuilding, character development and plot movement woven together.  Thus far everything is stagnant and dull. 

Likewise, I found Dune Messiah pretty dismal.

And, Children of Dune is better, by quite a long way, if not as good as the original.  I've never read beyond that, as the musings of a giant worm never struck me as particularly gripping.

[Heartofice]

I barely consider Dune Messiah a book on it's own. I don't think I really enjoyed reading it, but it's a bridge to Children of Dune which was better. I don't think either book are all that great. I feel like I read them out of completeness, and wanting to know the story to the end. I guess I could have saved time and just read the wiki. 

Reading the wiki was what I did with God Emperor

[Durckad]

I quite enjoyed Dune: Messiah (*coughmorethanDunecough*) but I do have to agree that, structurally, it occupies some weird, mid-point between coda to the original novel and standalone novel and satisfies neither. I will also say, having the jihad happen off screen is certainly a choice, but that happens all the fucking time in Dune so it's not entirely surprising.

[mcbigski]

On 4/28/2024 at 6:19 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

That makes me wonder what the numbers must be for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There too, I found the first book to be miles above the others, especially in the plot department. I guess the fact the first book ended with a comma more than a period made more people check the next ones out, though.

I sort of feel like Restaurant is pretty much a straight up continuation style wise.  Life, The Universe, and Everything, and even more so So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, was probably more of Adams starting to write for longer form.  Overall they have the same sensibility, but those two seem more like consistent stories instead of just going gag to gag a ludicrous speed.  Not sure myself which style I prefer, but it's probably the difference between getting paid to adapt some radio scripts versus writing mostly new material.

Read Mostly Harmless about when it came out and not since, so really can't comment on that.

[polishgenius]

On 4/29/2024 at 12:54 AM, Werthead said:

The first book is on a par with Dune (about 20 million), but I think the sales generally held up better. Restaurant at the End of the Universe is almost as well-known. I think the other three are not as popular but they were still relatively big.

 

I don't know at all but if I had to guess I'd hazard that Hitchhiker's sales were held up by Adams' enormous popularity in the UK.