Dune (Frank Herbert)

Dune
(The Dune Chronicles, Book 1)
Frank Herbert
Ace
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:  The sandswept world Arrakis, where even the most rarified desert creatures struggle to survive on the storm-swept surface, would be an interstellar backwater save for one thing.  It, alone of all the planets in the Imperium, produces the spice known as melange.  With it, human lives and mental capacities are extended to phenomenal levels.  But gathering spice is no simple feat.  Great sandworms devour the massive harvesting machines.  Rebellious Fremen, humans gone wild in the harsh landscape, harry efforts at expansion.  Standard weaponry and energy shields are useless at best and worm-bait at worst.  Many who come to Arrakis never leave... at least, not in this life.  For years, the brutal House Harroken has ruled with iron fist and bloodied sword, reaping the profits of the spice, but now their archrivals, House Atriedes, have been granted Arrakis.  The gift is a viper in a velvet box, for Arrakis is perhaps the perfect place to do away with a lord grown too ambitious in the eyes of the Emperor.
Paul, fifteen-year-old son of Duke Leto Atriedes, has trained all his life with both sword and mind.  His father sees that he learns the arts of combat from his top assassins, while his mother introduces him to the mental disciplines of the Bene Gesserit, the mystery cult with roots extending back nearly to humanity's Terran origins.  None of his teachers can prepare him for Arrakis.  Here, Paul finds strength, courage, a destiny beyond any he could have dreamt of... and dangerous truths that could rock the Empire to its very foundations.

REVIEW: Another classic sci-fi book I've been meaning to read for ages finally makes it to my reading list.  Herbert creates a memorable future universe in the Imperium and a harsh yet beautiful world in Arrakis.  Some of his ideas - the biochemical life-cycle of the spice, the millenia-long effort to manipulate human DNA, et cetera - grew a bit too big and convoluted to fit into one book.  He adds appendices to deal with these, but I confess I couldn't make it through them.  I generally liked the characters (save the ones I wasn't supposed to like), even if now and again personality developments seemed to jump in from offscreen action.  Once again, most of the women are concubines and arm candy; only the Bene Gesserit seem capable of rising above the status of property, though they often get branded as witches for their temerity.  Still, that bone is more than gets thrown to my gender in many sci-fi stories, so it didn't bother me quite as much as it probably should have.  The plot moves decently, bogging down once in a while with politics and cultural history lessons and such.  For some reason, the ending felt raw-edged to me, as though Herbert had planned for another chapter or two but wound up chopping the story short for unknown reasons.  Whether or not I read further in the series, I'm not sure, but overall I liked what I read here.