Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were mediocre

 

    

                                                                   Spoiler warning

I will be honest; I was disappointed by Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I understand why the second book, Dune Messiah, wasn't as good because it was leading up to the "finale" of the series. The second book was essentially 200 pages worth of fluff were almost nothing happened. There was all this lead up of covert people meeting behind emperor Paul's back, but what happens? A bomb goes off that burns through his eye tissue. They had all of the buildup through secretive meetings and there is no satisfactory conclusion. We know something is going to happen, but through all their planning it leads the reader to believe that they will do a religious uprising or some subtle political maneuver. Instead, they set off a bomb. The book can be summarized into secretive planning, Paul Atreides loses his eyes, then disappearing into the dessert. That tiny source of plot was stuffed into around 300 pages.

There was more plot in Children of Dune, but it still feels prolonged. The plot was definitely denser, but the way it was written made it seem like everything was droning on at a snail's pace. The story follows Paul's children, Leto and Ghanima as they discover their aunt, Alia, has been possessed and is now an "abomination". Alia gets progressively more paranoid, and she plots to get rid of her mom and her niece and nephew. It sounds interesting at first, but I feel like they spent more time worldbuilding than actually writing about what is happening. It makes sense to world build because the world has changed a lot since Paul's time, but they spent way too much time on worldbuilding. No one is going to be entertained if you mention how lax the current society is on water use. They had "the prophet" appear at the temple like 5 different times and he kind of just sways people. It was a few too many times. I think it would be better if it happened once or twice and a bigger impact. It wasn't until halfway until the inciting action even happens. 

Main complaint: Too slow

The 3rd book, Children of Dune, is the type to win awards for "amazing worldbuilding" and "great subtle messaging". As a lot of books, award winning authors don't always write entertaining books. The entertainment value of the second and third book in the series was just way too slow to be enjoyable.


-Jonathan Chen









Comments

  1. Eve AndersonOctober 17, 2022 at 1:41 PM

    Mission accomplished! I will not be reading book 2 and 3 of Dune. Your sarcastic yet monotone voice made this review of the non-engaging books very engaging. Looking forward to blog 4 on the dune series!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MichaelNovember 4, 2022 at 5:42 PM

    I've definitely read books before that were over-inflated to the point that the story becomes slow and watered-down. I haven't read the original Dune, but I enjoyed your take on this phenomenon in writing fiction.

    ReplyDelete

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