Re-reading the chronicles / Tolstoy
Posted: 26 May 2014 16:47
So over the last 2 years I re-read, in the following order:
Dune
Dune Messiah
God-Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapter House Dune
Biggest pleasant surprise: how much better Dune Messiah was than I remember.
Second biggest pleasant surprise how much better God-Emperor of Dune was than I remember.
Dune and Heretics of Dune were just as good as I always recalled.
Chapter House. Well, it needs a re-edit - the middle 150-so pages are very dull. As with all the FH Dune sequels, Chapter House tries to balance i) plot, ii) characters and iii) socio-geo-politico-philosophical discussion. Sometimes element iii) is just tedious to read. However, the final 100 pages of Chapter House are excellent and are a satisfying end to the chronicles that leave the readers' imagination free to wander [whilst avoiding the 'other' books].
It's interesting that Tolstoy gets name-checked in Chapter House. Having read Anna Karenina for the first time recently I can see that FH's ambitions to weave socio-geo-politico-philosophical discussion, and exploring what it means to be human, into the Dune novels may have been partly fed by reading Tolstoy, the master of this art. The difficult task is to knit these discussions seamlessly into an engaging story. Failure to integrate the discussion just leaves you with annoying interruptions to a wonderful story.
Frank, I salute your efforts. I will continue to read then until my no-ship makes the jump to fold-space.
Dune
Dune Messiah
God-Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapter House Dune
Biggest pleasant surprise: how much better Dune Messiah was than I remember.
Second biggest pleasant surprise how much better God-Emperor of Dune was than I remember.
Dune and Heretics of Dune were just as good as I always recalled.
Chapter House. Well, it needs a re-edit - the middle 150-so pages are very dull. As with all the FH Dune sequels, Chapter House tries to balance i) plot, ii) characters and iii) socio-geo-politico-philosophical discussion. Sometimes element iii) is just tedious to read. However, the final 100 pages of Chapter House are excellent and are a satisfying end to the chronicles that leave the readers' imagination free to wander [whilst avoiding the 'other' books].
It's interesting that Tolstoy gets name-checked in Chapter House. Having read Anna Karenina for the first time recently I can see that FH's ambitions to weave socio-geo-politico-philosophical discussion, and exploring what it means to be human, into the Dune novels may have been partly fed by reading Tolstoy, the master of this art. The difficult task is to knit these discussions seamlessly into an engaging story. Failure to integrate the discussion just leaves you with annoying interruptions to a wonderful story.
Frank, I salute your efforts. I will continue to read then until my no-ship makes the jump to fold-space.