Just Finished Reading Books by Frank Herbert and Stephanie Garber

I just finished reading a couple more books: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert, the second in his Dune science fiction series, and Caraval by Stephanie Garber, a fantasy/romance novel targeted at a young adult reading audience...

Dune Messiah, which came out in 1969, four years after the introductory Dune, continues with the saga of Paul Atreides as he struggles...with his prescient vision...to achieve the best possible future for both the universe and himself.  This series has a curious mixture of fantasy and science fiction...not that much removed from the formula used in the apparently never-ending Star Wars movie series.  Dune combines a highly technologically-advanced society with a stagnant, medieval-like social structure featuring rule by nobles, shamanistic priesthoods, and legalism run rampant...it can get pretty tedious plowing through all this stuff. I got the feeling that Herbert used the game of chess, with the powerful pieces as well as the pawns...along with the various strategies to achieve victory...as a model on which to base the flow of his story.   Each character seemed very intent on self-examination as well as minutely analyzing every nuance and implication of whatever those around them were saying...frankly, I think the author grossly overdid it in this area.  Still, I'm planning to continue with the series, at least with those Dune books that Frank Hebert wrote on his own...

Caraval is set on Earth, apparently several centuries ago when Venice ruled much of the Mediterranean and fought maritime wars there.  Stephanie Garber's tale places her heroine protagonist Scarlett in a tough family situation with a widower father who brutally tyrannizes over her and her little sister Tella.  There is a traveling magical show/carnival called Caravel, led by an enigmatic man named Legend. For years Scarlett had written him, asking him to perform in her restricted home city of Trieste, but to no avail.  Finally, after an arranged marriage engagement she writes him again and he finally replies, sending her tickets for the show to be held on a not-too-distant island.  How Scarlett gets away to attend Carnaval, along with the circumstances concerning Tella and a mysterious, problematic sailor named Julian, sets the tone for the rest of the story...which turned out in the end to be a pretty fun book to go through, with a thoroughly twisted ending.  I got the feeling, however, that the author intended its primary readership to be young teenage girls...especially with regard to the "romance" passages.  I selected Caraval at random from my local public library, but first I checked to see if this novel, published just last year, was part of a series...turns out it may well be the first book in a new one, which works for me...