The captivating sands of Arrakis and the clash of families
I happened to read Frank Herbert's landmark work "Dune" relatively recently. This is a truly epochal work, a book that has created an entire universe with its own laws and rules of existence. The presented world that comes out from the author's pen seemed to me to be viscous, like the very sands among which the main events of the work take place.
Dune was rightfully appreciated in the world of fiction. This is evidenced by two prestigious awards: Hugo and Nebula 1965 for the best novel. The novel has come a long way over many years before it found its familiar form today. Initially, these were the parts that were published from 1963 to 1965 in the science fiction magazine Analog Science Fiction. The path to world fame was not easy, but now the work is a classic.
"Dune" is especially memorable to me for the unusual world that exists on the pages of the work. One of the empire's worlds, where feudalism is clearly visible, but the action takes place in the future, where people have managed to abandon robots and computers. You notice for yourself a clear turn of history, which you either discarded in the times of the past, or simply returned to a certain stage in the development of society, after which another flourishing of civilization will surely occur. It was these circumstances of the world of the future that clearly made me think that the development of mankind may well be regressive. It is clearly visible in this work. At the same time, Herbert masterfully combines technology and magic in his world.
The unhurried narration and sweeping text conceal an interesting plot in which each of the characters appears in one light or another. The Emperor sees the development of relations between the two families — the Harkonnens and the Atreides — in his own way, creating conditions under which a whole confrontation breaks out. Brutal, bloody, memorable.
Frank Herbert gradually reveals to readers a three-dimensional world in which there are laws, different creatures live, and there are foundations that have been familiar to people of this world for a long time. And because of this realism in the work, you especially believe in the existence of an entire empire, a vast cosmic world. Even if the events are concentrated on the planet Dune. This ability to colorfully describe and saturate the described world is a clear success of the creator of the work. The mythology that Herbert introduces us to is deep and draws inspiration from many cultures of the real world.
"Dune" is a difficult enough work to read. Yes. To master the book, it is necessary to be prepared for the author's drawling style, to be open to understanding philosophy in this fictional world. However, those who take the trouble (exactly the trouble) to read this story to the end will certainly be pleased to see for themselves another fantastic world of the author, which has already become a classic and has presented more than one film adaptation.
7 out of 10