Just Finished Reading Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

Children of Dune is the third book of the science fiction Dune series by Frank Herbert, first published in 1976.  It continues the saga of the Atreides family of planetary rulers as they try to avert a future containing human extinction.  The planet Dune, also called Arrakis, is once again the story's main setting as Paul Atreides' two children, the girl Ghanima and the boy Leto, have the same gift (or curse depending on how one views it) of possessing the collective memories of all their ancestors...just like Paul's sister Alia.  How the siblings differ from their aunt in handling this situation, which each of them had even before birth, determines the flow of this often difficult-to-follow tale...

It can be a bit tricky trying to review a book that is down the line in a series...even describing the beginning events, characters, and setting can give away the intended suspenseful endings of the previous volumes.  I may have already provided some information that someone who has started the Dune series doesn't need to know at this juncture...but I did mention at the beginning that Children of Dune is the third book, didn't I? Still, I will go no further with specifics...and believe me, there are an incredible amount of them packed into this book...

One element of the Dune series that bears discussion is the fictional spice melange, a highly addictive substance that can produce visions...sometimes prescient...in its users as well as extend life spans and provide other benefits.  The giant worms on Arrakis are the universe's only source of melange, and it is crucial to those engaging in interstellar travel.  That Arrakis has a monopoly on it makes it the focus of interstellar intrigues and wars, a clear analogy to nations on Earth that possess a superabundance of oil.  Also, Herbert though his character Leto lays down the supposition that autocracy based on a structure of nobility is the natural result of the progression of society...not exactly the kind of thing we want to hear in our world that touts democracy as an ideal, albeit one which is often very elusive...

I've already begun reading the next book in the series, titled God Emperor of Dune. I admit that this is not by any stretch one of my favorite book series, one of the reasons being the author's tendency to go off on long ramblings of a dubious metaphysical nature.  One of the problems is that he makes all kinds of statements about the nature of time, but injects prescience (the ability to foresee the future) into it all, creating a paradox unless the one seeing "ahead" has a choice between alternate futures.  But by doing this, Frank Hebert...maybe unwittingly...lifted an idea put forth earlier by Philip K. Dick in his 1955 short story Captive Market.  Well, I'm still plodding along...if I can get through Thomas Pynchon's overly tedious and confounding Gravity's Rainbow, I suppose I can get through the Dune  series as well...