Some stories just feel… enormous. Huge. Heavy. Expansive. Epic is a genre, but it’s also an adjective - and some epics are just so epic.
That’s how I feel about Dune, the first installment of Frank Herbert’s famous saga of the same name.
There is so much happening in this book - from cutthroat political dueling and backstabbing to literal cut throats, duels and stabbed backs; from intergalactic space travel to fighting pits and feudal power struggles; from cold science to mystery and mysticism. Every step, every word, every turn of the page feels like it’s yanking on the strings of a massive web of fates and consequences, and you don't want to miss a second of it.
In a word, Dune is just so rich. When you’re in it, the story feels all-encompassing, and the air is charged with anticipation. The cast of characters is diverse, complex, and intriguing. The history, power structures, people and physical landscapes of both Arrakis (the desert planet for which Dune is named) and the entire universe of Dune are original, imaginative and absorbing.
Reading Dune is an ambitious endeavor. The history, people, places I mentioned? Well, not only are there a ton of them, but they’re also all introduced with little exposition or backstory for the out-of-world reader. You have to do the work to piece together the history of this universe, to collect tidbits from offhand mentions and allusions by characters who already live in and know these stories and have no need to explain them to each other.
That might sound off-putting, but it’s actually part of what makes Dune so fascinating and rewarding to read. Herbert builds a world more rich and complex than you can even believe - and then he disassembles it, hands you the pieces, and lets you painstakingly put them back together one by one, revelation by revelation.
[Note: there is actually a very useful glossary at the back of the book, so you’re not completely helpless. Unfortunately, I was - because I didn’t realize the glossary existed until I was 500 pages in. But I’m actually glad I didn’t find it earlier, because it forced me to work harder to do the detective work on my own, and it made it more satisfying when I put everything together.]
Reading Dune necessarily involves a level of engagement and investment whose equal I have seen only in the Brobdingnagian world of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, which I’ve written about before and own a literal atlas for. And that parallel is fitting, given Dune’s rank as the best-selling science fiction novel of all time and A Song of Ice and Fire’s place alongside The Lord of the Rings as one of the pillars of fantasy. Perhaps it says something about what makes for good epic fiction.
Anyway, Dune has more than lived up to a half century of hype, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the saga (and earning my sci-fi nerd stripes in the process). With A Song of Ice and Fire I was tentative in continuing my reading, buying the books one at a time, but now I know what the beginning of a fantastic epic series looks like, and I see it here. I’ve already ordered all five remaining books in the original Dune series.
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