Children of Dune

Dune is one of those series that I feel I have to respect, if I'm gonna call myself a sci-fi fan, rather than one of those for which I have strong and personal feelings.

This isn't a bad read, there's plenty of plot twists, action, and some interesting characters. My medium to warm rating it may just be me.

There were numerous schemes at play here, and while the stakes were all life and death, I never got a sense of what anyone's endgame or drive actually was. The theme of characters overly influenced by their ancestors could be taken figuratively but is a literal concern for the title characters.

Thinking through the plot, it's all kind of batshit crazy, but not in a way I found fun. Drug trips, possession, big worms, big tigers, revenge, kidnappings, and so on. Sounds fun but since I wasn't feeling the character motivations/goals, it was just a lot of stuff. Could be a lack of careful reading on my part since I was less than fully engaged.

Of the original trilogy, I liked Dune Messiah the best, for subverting expectations after the triumph of the heroes in the original book. There's also a central point made there, about the danger of mixing up your religion and your political leaders.

Children of Dune picked up from there, with the children and others still standing left to pick up the pieces. I enjoy the ideas expressed on politics, religion, and society but I wish they were mixed with a story that entertained me more.

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune