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‘Children of Dune’ Is a Very Philosophical Book

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Children of Dune, the third ebook in creator Frank Herbert’s Dune sequence, explores the lives of Leto and Ghanima Atreides, the dual youngsters of Paul Atreides, the hero of the primary novel. TV author Andrea Kail was impressed by the ebook’s considerate examination of advanced concepts.

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“This is a very philosophical book, much more so than Dune was,” Kail says in Episode 559 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “The number of historical and philosophical references in this just blew my mind.”

Science fiction creator Matthew Kressel agrees that Children of Dune is a brilliant, well-researched ebook. “I was trying to figure out all the religious references,” he says. “I have Buddhist, Hindu, obviously Christian, Jewish references, ancient Egyptian. There’s also Jungian psychology. I mean, there’s so much in there.”

Children of Dune excels in relation to concepts and worldbuilding, however the pacing and characterization can really feel a bit dated. Science fiction creator Rajan Khanna warns that the ebook is typically pointlessly obscure. “A lot of stuff gets revealed right before it becomes relevant, and it could have been woven throughout a little bit better,” he says. “And there’s a lot of playing coy with the reader. ‘Oh, I’m going to talk about this stuff that nobody else knows,’ and that bugged me.”

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley admires the ambition and imaginative and prescient of Children of Dune however didn’t essentially take pleasure in studying it. “It seemed like an intellectual exercise,” he says. “It didn’t seem like [Herbert] was that interested in the characters. He had all these ideas he wanted to explore, and he was sort of going through the motions with the characters is how it read to me, because the ideas were what he was really interested in.”

Listen to the entire interview with Andrea Kail, Matthew Kressel, and Rajan Khanna in Episode 559 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And try some highlights from the dialogue beneath.

Matthew Kressel on worldbuilding:

I discovered myself at occasions simply blown away by how deep and resonant and highly effective the concepts are, and simply the depth of thought that Herbert put into this, and simply going again and reviewing all of the plot threads and the way they match collectively, and the way he needed to plan that from the start, and simply the philosophical undertones of it. … I nearly really feel like Herbert himself is taking spice and seeing the way forward for humanity. This ebook feels actual. It feels prefer it’s a lived-in world. When you learn this ebook you expertise it together with the characters, and it’s so vivid and so actual in my thoughts. I believe it’s pretty much as good as the primary ebook.

David Barr Kirtley on character motivation:

Far and away my primary drawback with this ebook is that I discovered it continuously irritating that I didn’t know: ‘What side is this person on? What do they actually want? Are they a double agent? Are they telling the truth in this scene or are they hiding something?’ I’m OK with a few characters the place you’re unsure what their agenda is, however I felt like there was simply no person right here that I may establish with and that I used to be with emotionally. So usually characters have plans and there’s a throwaway line to elucidate their motivations that was like 100 pages earlier or 100 pages later, or doesn’t seem in any respect.

Andrea Kail on Jessica Atreides:

Jessica is a villain. She’s extremely egocentric. She’s egocentric when she offers delivery to a son when she’s supposed to provide delivery to a daughter, resulting in all of this. She’s egocentric when she takes the Water of Life when she’s pregnant. She is aware of what it’ll do and she or he does it anyway. She sacrifices her daughter to avoid wasting her son. And then she ran out on her two-year-old daughter and left her there to deal alone with the implications of her actions as an alternative of staying on Dune and being the information that she wanted. Alia’s downfall is particularly due to Jessica, and I got here out of this horrified by what a horrible individual Jessica is.

Rajan Khanna on Leto Atreides:

The second greatest factor I hated about this ebook was superpowered worm-flesh Leto, as a result of he simply begins throwing doorways and punching worms and leaping off cliffs. I’m like, “How does that happen just from wearing the sandtrout on your body? How is this organism which is supposed to be very primitive giving you super strength?” I suppose if you wish to slide by the desert they’re designed to do this, however how is he tremendous sturdy from that form of stuff? I don’t get it. … I like superhero comics and flicks and all that stuff, but it surely felt like all of a sudden a comic book ebook hero jumped into this Dune novel that I used to be studying, and it was jarring.

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