Dune by Frank Herbert: Book Review

(Book Review--Science Fiction)

Started: January 8, 2023

Finished: January 14, 2023

(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.) 

Background Information

According to Wikipedia, this book was originally serialized in 1963-1964, and then published in 1965.

Famously, the author Frank Herbert had a really difficult time getting this book published.  The only publisher that would take it was Chilton Books, which mainly published automobile manuals.  And the first printing of this book did not do well.

However, this book slowly amassed a following due to word of mouth, and eventually became quite popular.

It has been called by many people the greatest science fiction novel of the 20th century, and it's claimed that this book influenced everything from Star Wars to Star Trek.   

It's also been filmed multiple times (1984, 2000, 2021).

The version I read is the 2021 movie tie-in edition.  (The one pictured at the top left corner of this blog post, with the words "Now a Major Motion Picture").  I haven't actually seen the 2021 movie, but the movie tie-in edition just happened to be the only version being sold at my local bookstore here in Vietnam, so that's what I bought.  This version is 884 pages long, but it also has really big print and large margins at the side of the pages.   (It's formatted like the kind of mass-market paperback that you would commonly find in supermarkets and airports.) According to Wikipedia, the original version of this book was 412 pages, so I'm assuming that in that version there was smaller print and smaller margins.

My version also includes, four appendices, a map, cartographic notes and  a glossary of terminology at the back--yes, it's one of those kind of books--and an afterwards by Brian Herbert, the son of the author Frank Herbert.

My History With this Book / Why I Read This Book

For the longest time, I didn’t know this book existed.  Then, once I found out it existed, I started to hear about it everywhere.  (Perhaps a classic example of what is called the Frequency Illusion.  Or, perhaps this is because the rise of the Internet has made geek culture more accessible nowadays than ever before. What do you guys think?)

The first time I ever heard of Dune was when the David Lynch movie was being shown on the Disney Channel in the late 1980s.  I didn't actually see the movie--I just saw pictures for it in the Disney Channel magazine.  But that was my first awareness that this thing called Dune existed. (*1)

If memory serves, the first time I ever realized that the movie Dune was connected to a book was the 2010 review of the movie that Lindsay Ellis did.  The impression I got from Lindsay Ellis’s review was that both the movie and the book that it was based on were not all that great.  So for a few years after that, I was aware that Dune was based on a book, but I was under the impression that the book wasn’t that great.  (*2)

But recently, the past 5 years or so, it seems like I’ve been hearing about Dune everywhere on the Internet. Everyone has been talking about how great Dune is.

Whisky Prajer's mentioned the book a couple times within the past 5 years --HERE and HERE.  (If you read those posts, you'll notice that they are somewhat tempered in their praise.  But it was enough to get me interested nonetheless.)

And then, there's all the chatter this book has been getting on Booktube.  I've seen a number of booktubers talk about this book in the past couple years, but, as readers of this blog know, I'm particularly influenced by Steve Donoghue, from whom I've been taking a lot of my reading cues lately.

Steve has a lot of praise for Dune.  He frequently calls it the greatest science fiction of the 20th Century--example here. And then, a few months ago, he talked about it on CPL Radio's Book of the Day.  

...and after watching that video, I was completely sold.

I wrote in the comments: "Okay, you guys have talked me into it.  I'm going to track down this book now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9vXB0mNeSE&lc=UgznX151tPPPMkGDORR4AaABAg

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm frequently complaining about how I can't track down specific books in Vietnam.  But in the case of Dune, I knew it was available.  I had often seen it here in bookstores before. 

A few weeks later, I was in the bookstore in SC Vivo City, saw this book on the shelves, and snatched it up.

The Reading Journey

I spent 3 weeks trapped up in the countryside with my wife’s parents for Tet holiday, and this was one of the books I brought with me.  It was raining for several days, and with no TV, limited Internet, and nothing else to do, so I relied on this book as my sole source of entertainment for the week I was reading it. I finished the whole book off, all 884 pages, in one week.  Which is pretty good for me.  

In fact, the week I read this book, the week of January 15, is my highest number of pages read in one week since I started keeping track.  Now, granted, this was on a book with large print and large page margins. But still, a pretty good week of reading, if I don't say so myself. 

The Reading Experience

The first thing I noticed about this book was how clunky the writing style was. And the dialogue!  The dialogue was so cheesy and unrealistic.

In those first few chapters, the dialogue really interfered with my ability to immerse myself in the story.  I kept thinking to myself, “But people don’t actually talk like that!” instead of immersing myself in the plot.

Now, clunky prose has always been a feature of pulp science fiction novels.  So if this had been just another cheesy pulp adventure novel, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye at some bad writing.  But cheesy pulp novel is not what I had been sold.  This was supposed to be the greatest science fiction novel of the 20th century.  What was up with this terrible writing? (*3)

I do have to say, though, that the more I read, the less the prose bothered me.  By the time I was a couple hundred pages in, I had altogether stopped noticing the bad dialogue and the stilted prose.  Maybe this is one of those books where the writing style just grows on you as you read it?  Or maybe Frank Herbert’s prose actually got better as the book went on?  I don’t know. (*4)

At any rate, I suppose it couldn’t have been that bad, because after all I did finish off all 883 pages in just one week.

This is also one of those books where you are constantly going to the glossary at the back to look up all the new words.  This Youtuber here nails it when he says: “I'm spending more time in the glossary in this book than the actual book itself.”

As I read the book, I was constantly debating with myself whether or not to go to the glossary.  Does Frank Herbert intend for me to go to the back and look this word up?  Or is he trying to get me to guess the meaning from context?  Is this word even in the glossary?  Or is this just a normal English word that I should know?

[There are some fantasy books where the glossary at the back is meant to be used only as a crutch, and new terms are explained in the story as they come up--The Wayfarer Redemption is a good example of this.  But in the case of Dune, I got the impression that Frank Herbert does intend for his readers to be constantly referring to the back of the book as new words come up.]

The constant flipping back to the glossary, and the constant thinking about whether or not I should flip back to the glossary, gave me a bit of a headache as I was reading this book.  And, needless to say, took me out of the story.  

And yet, the terminology, annoying as it is, does contribute to the world building.  It does contribute to the illusion that this is its own complete world which does exist on its own terms.  (Every reader knows what I’m talking about here--the feeling of immersion in a fantasy world that is created through a unique terminology.  So I won’t belabor this point.)

The plot of this book is… Well, what can I say?  The plot is truly epic.  This book may be 884 pages long, but man you are really getting your money’s worth for those 884 pages.  So much happens over the course of this book.

(This is one of those books that, when you finally finish, you look back and marvel at just how much the characters have changed since the book began.  So much has happened that it’s strange to think where these characters started out compared to where they ended up.)

There’s a number of surprise plot twists in this novel, and, if at all possible, it’s best to go into this book without any advanced knowledge of the story.  Avoid spoilers, in other words.

Although the good news is this is a book that’s very hard to spoil.  It’s not the type of book that you could spoil by simply yelling out something like “Snape Kills Dumbledore.” So much happens in this book that there’s no way someone could spoil all of it unless they were sitting next to you for 30 minutes straight.  Think of all the plot machinations in Game of Thrones.  It’s kind of like that.

Actually it’s like Game of Thrones in more ways than one.  Just like in Game of Thrones, there are multiple noble families that are scheming against each other.  Just like in Game of Thrones, there are also multiple subordinates within each great family, all of whom have their own agendas and character arcs.  So you have both the drama of the great houses maneuvering against each other, but you also have the drama of the conflicts between individuals within these great houses. It is, in many ways, kind of like Game of Thrones set in outer-space.(*5)

The characters in this book are very conniving, and there’s a lot of scheming and plotting going on.  There are plenty of chapters where two characters will just talk for pages on end laying out all their schemes.  These conversational scenes are often written in that cheesy dialogue style that I complained about above, but they’re still good fun.  If you like books that have complicated plots (and I do), then it’s fun to see all the various schemes that are being laid out, and I appreciated the amount of thought that Frank Herbert had put into all the different plans that different characters have.

However, in my opinion not all these schemes have suitable pay-offs.  A few times, there’s a plan that characters will spend a whole chapter talking about, and I expected this plan to evolve into a major plot point later in the book, but then we never hear about it again.  It seemed to me like there were some plot threads which were elaborately set-up, but then not adequately paid-off.

But I don’t know.  It could be that the reason we never hear about that plot point again is because we don’t need to.  The characters have already explained everything that they’re going to do.  Maybe it would have been redundant to narrate them actually doing it?  Like I said, I don’t know.  What do you guys think? 

The other problem is that the narrative momentum of the book lags in the second half of the book, when the spiritual element of the story takes center stage.  Frank Herbert starts to devote a lot of time to describing mystical trances--these are sections that I thought got a bit weird, and they were also very repetitive.

I’m also not entirely sure everything in the story was 100% consistent.  Paul's ability to see the future, for example, seemed to turn on and off depending on when it was convenient for the plot.  I know there was some attempt in the novel to explain away the instances in which Paul couldn’t accurately see the future, but… I don’t know, what did you guys think?  I’m not sure it entirely made sense.  I also thought that Jessica's ability to control people with her voice also seemed to come and go depending on plot convenience.

And then, there was the ending.  

In some ways the ending was very satisfying.  It gives the reader a thrilling climax packed with action scenes that appear on the surface to hit all the beats that the climax to a story like this needs to hit, even if it is a little bit overly dramatic.  (In this interview--courtesy of Whisky Prajer--Frank Herbert says that the huge action scene at the end was deliberately written to be high camp.)

But then at the end, we are left with so many unanswered questions.  Everything is left ambiguous.  Are we supposed to feel good about Paul’s triumph, or worried about it?  What is going to be the long term implications for the future of the Messianic cult that surrounds Paul?  Is it going to be a religion of peace and love, or is it going to unleash wars of religious conquest?

To be fair, the uncertainty is intentional.  Uncertainty of the future is a major theme in Dune. It’s something that the novel had been hammering home all along, so the uncertainty of the ending did kind of fit with the rest of the novel.

In the same interview, Frank Herbert says he deliberately left things unanswered in the ending of the book, because he thought that leaving unresolved questions would cause the story to remain in the reader’s imagination.

Not to mention, all of these unanswered questions at the end leaves plenty of room for writing sequels.  And write sequels Frank Herbert did.  He published 5 more Dune books in his lifetime, and then his son kept publishing more books after he died.

I haven’t yet read Dune Messiah, but just based on what I’ve picked up on the Internet, I’m given to understand that this book fully takes on the problems of Messianic cults, problems which are only just hinted at in Dune.

The Setting

Last year, when I reviewed The Return of the King, I had a bit of an epiphany, which is probably incredibly obvious, and yet also strikes me as really interesting--my mood changes depending on the setting of the book that I’m reading.  When I’m reading about nice, beautiful places, I feel happy.  When I’m reading about barren and desolate places, I start to feel depressed.  In other words, the power of the imagination has an effect on my mental happiness. 

The barren desert planet of Dune would not have been my first choice to spend 884 pages.  If I’m going to spend so much time imagining landscapes, I would much have preferred to read a story set in a lush and beautiful tropical forest.  (Once again, this Youtuber here, who jokes about how thirsty he feels when reading Dune, does a good job of capturing the feeling of what it’s like to read this book.)

And yet, once again, I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something.  After all, this book is really beloved by a lot of people.  And as Whisky Prajer points out, film makers love this book.  I guess maybe some people might love the whole "Lawrence of Arabia" awe and majesty of the desert.  (Watching the trailer for the new movie, I can see that they're definitely trying to sell the beauty of the desert angle.)

But it's never been my cup of tea.  As I wrote in my review of King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard:

the real meat of the journey takes place crossing a desert. And then it becomes a desert story—men wishing for water—wishing they had water again—complaining about not having water, et cetera. (I don’t care for desert crossing stories all that much. They tend to be one note songs.)

The scorching of the desert, and importance of water is also a very big theme in Dune.  So just as this theme bored me in King Solomon's Mines, it also tested my patience in Dune.  But maybe that's just me.  

The Chosen One

I believe that in recent years, there’s been a bit of a backlash against science fiction and fantasy stories that make use of trope of “the chosen one”, mostly in response to all the Harry Potter inspired fantasy stories that came out about 10 years ago. (At least that’s my take on the online discourse.  What do you guys think?)

If you’re sick of stories that follow The Chosen One narrative trope (W)…, well, bad news.  Dune is definitely a Chosen One narrative.

I mean, you have to cut it a bit of slack because it came out all the way back in 1965, before this narrative was done to death in the Harry Potter-inspired Y.A. market.

But still, consider yourself warned.  This is another Chosen One trope. 

The Themes of this Book

Oh my god, where to even start with the themes of this book?  It’s about spiritualism, it’s about religion, it’s about feudalism, it’s about ecology, it’s about free will and predestination, it’s about drugs, it’s about artificial intelligence, it’s about…

…it’s about just about everything, really.

We could sit here and talk forever about all the themes in this book.  

It definitely is an ambitious book.  You do have to give it that.  It wants to tackle everything.

Now, does it actually tackle all of these themes successfully?  

…I don’t know, man.  What do you guys think?

(Sorry, I know I’m dodging all of the big questions in this review.  But then, I’m not a professional book critic, and no one’s paying me for these reviews.  I’m just a guy with a blog. And I feel like the casual reader can’t help but come away from this book a little shell-shocked.  Like, yeah, there was really a lot in here.  Did it all work?  Did it make sense?  Does it deal with all of its themes successfully?  I’d probably need to re-read this book and spend a lot more time thinking to answer those questions.)

I'm also not going to try to give my thoughts on the various themes in this book.  I mean, I definitely do have my own thoughts on religion and my own thoughts on ecology--just to mention two of the themes that are prominent in Dune.  But we'd be here all day if I started getting into all my own thoughts on this book's themes. Better to just say it has a lot of themes, and then move quickly on.  (This book review is long enough already.)

Connections to Other Books I’ve read

* The Dune series is frequently compared to The Lord of the Ring series.  One is supposed to be the greatest fantasy series of the 20th Century, the other is supposed to be the greatest science fiction series of the 20th Century.

Although Tolkien actually didn’t appreciate the comparison, because he wasn’t a Dune fan.  See this video HERE.

* The protagonists of this book are named Atreides, after the House of Atreides from Greek Mythology--specifically Menelaus and Agamemnon--who featured in both The Iliad and The Odyssey.

I was able to immediately recognize the allusion because of Andrew Lang.  You see, a couple years ago I got annoyed when Andrew Lang used the word Atrides to refer to Menelaus without any explanation, and took the trouble of complaining about it in my review of Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang.  Ever since then, though, the nomenclature of “Atrides” has stuck in my mind.  (I think “Atrides” and “Atreides” are interchangeable.  I’ve googled it just now, and can’t seem to find any difference in how the terms are used.  But let me know if I’m missing something.)  

* The historical story of Lawrence of Arabia was one of Frank Herbert’s inspirations in writing Dune. Lawrence of Arabia is also the translator of my edition of The Odyssey, which I reviewed last month.

* Robert A. Heinlein has a blurb on the opening pages of my edition, praising this book for being “Powerful, convincing and most ingenious.”  For my review of some of Heinlein’s books, see HERE, HERE and HERE.

* This book was one of the inspirations for Star Wars.  The desert planet of Tatooine especially was influenced by Dune.

* This book was also one of the inspirations for Star Trek, or so Brian Herbert claims in his afterward.  The machine like logic of the Vulcans in Star Trek are based on the Mentats from Dune.  (It could be true.  This book came out in 1965.  The first episode of Star Trek didn't air until 1966).

* There’s also the theory that Dune is a response to Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

Extended Quotation

It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings. The globe sat on a freeform stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes and reels. Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.

An ellipsoid desk with a top of jade-pink petrified elacca wood stood at the center of the room. Veriform suspensor chairs ringed it, two of them occupied. In one sat a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes. The other held a slender, short man with effeminate face.

Both youth and man stared at the globe and the man half-hidden in shadows spinning it.

A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: "There it is, Piter - the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke's headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?"

"Assuredly, Baron," said the man. His voice came out tenor with a sweet, musical quality.

The fat hand descended onto the globe, stopped the spinning. Now, all eyes in the room could focus on the motionless surface and see that it was the kind of globe made for wealthy collectors or planetary governors of the Empire. It had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest cloud-milk diamonds.

The fat hand moved, tracing details on the surface. "I invite you to observe," the basso voice rumbled. "Observe closely, Piter, and you, too, Feyd-Rautha, my darling: from sixty degrees north to seventy degrees south - these exquisite ripples. Their coloring: does it not remind you of sweet caramels? And nowhere do you see blue of lakes or rivers or seas. And these lovely polar caps - so small. Could anyone mistake this place? Arrakis! Truly unique. A superb setting for a unique Victory."

A smile touched Piter's lips. "And to think. Baron: the Padishah Emperor believes he's given the Duke your spice planet. How poignant."

"That's a nonsensical statement," the Baron rumbled. "You say this to confuse young Feyd-Rautha, but it is not necessary to confuse my nephew."

The sullen-faced youth stirred in his chair, smoothed a wrinkle in the black leotards he wore. He sat upright as a discreet tapping sounded at the door in the wall behind him.

Piter unfolded from his chair, crossed to the door, cracked it wide enough to accept a message cylinder. He closed the door, unrolled the cylinder and scanned it. A chuckle sounded from him. Another.

"Well?" the Baron demanded.

"The fool answered us, Baron!"

"Whenever did an Atreides refuse the opportunity for a gesture?" the Baron asked. "Well, what does he say?"

"He's most uncouth, Baron. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen' - no 'Sire et Cher Cousin,' no title, nothing."

"It's a good name," the Baron growled, and his voice betrayed his impatience. "What does dear Leto say?"

"He says: 'Your offer of a meeting is refused. I have ofttimes met your treachery and this all men know.' "

"And?" the Baron asked.

“He says: ‘The art of Kanly still has admirers in the Empire.’ He signs it: ‘Duke Leot of Arrakis.’” Piter began to laugh. “Of Arrakis! Oh, my! This is almost too rich!” (p.21-23) 

***END QUOTE**** (This conversation / exposition dump goes on for another 10 pages, but I can’t quote the whole chapter.  You get the idea.)

I know it seems like I ripped that out of context, but I didn't.  At least not by much.  This is only the second chapter, and this is our first introduction to the Harknonnens.  (Some of this stuff is alluded to in the previous chapter, but you're not missing much context.)

This is a perfect example of the clunky prose and cheesy dialogue I complained about earlier in the review.

It's also a great example of the all the terminology.  As you're reading this, how much should you stop and go to the glossary in the back?  How much should you just read on and hope it makes sense later?  

(From the passage I just quoted above, filmbooks, suspensor, elacca, Arrakis, spice, and Kanly are all in the glossary.  But some other words, which feel like they should be in the glossary, are not, like ellipsoid and Veriform.  So if you went back to the glossary for those words, you'd be wasting your time.)

Future Reading Plans

The Rest of the Series?

This is the first book in a whole long series which has 5 sequels written by Frank Herbert, two more sequels written after his death, and currently 14 prequels written by his son.  (The most recent of which was just published last year, so I expect more books will keep coming out.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)

 

Steve Donoghue seems to be of the opinion that the Frank Herbert books are must reads, but the Brain Herbert sequels are passable.

Whisky Prajer, however, cautions me about even continuing with the rest of Frank Herbert’s books.

When I asked him if I should continue with the sequels, he replied bluntly:

Don't do that -- Herbert only gets worse! I think I made it as far as Dune: Messiah. Herbert was now in the habit of grinding out a book a year , and his hunger for the yearly paycheck could not be denied, except by readers like you and me saying "no!" and refusing to read further. 

And yet, part of me feels like I should continue with this series, because I’m lead to believe (from what little research I’ve done) that Frank Herbert’s vision for this whole saga is to show how the messiah figure is actually an antihero.  And I don’t believe that comes through clearly until the sequels. (As Whisky himself seems to indicate in his post here)

So I feel like I should really continue with the sequels.

And, it looks like they are actually available in Vietnam.  So I could continue with them this year.

And yet, part of me doesn’t want to. At least not yet.  I’ve got a lot of other plans for my reading list this year, and I’m just not ready to tackle a massive series like this.  (These books, after all, are not short.)

Maybe I’ll wait a few years, and then try to come back at this series.

Maybe I’ll even re-read Dune, and then just keep running with the rest of the series.  Maybe.

If I am going to do this whole series, I could probably do with a re-read of Dune.  (It’s now been over 2 months since I finished this book, and I hate to say it, but I’m already starting to forget a lot of the plot details in the second half of this book.  Which characters died at the end again?  I don’t even remember.  So maybe best to just step away from this series for a few years, and then come back and try to tackle the whole thing at once.)

Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov

As I mentioned above, some people say that Dune may be a reply to Foundation.  

Also, in the same comment I quoted above, Whisky advises me to just re-read Foundation instead of Dune.

That time was better spent (for me) reading Asimov's Foundation series. Asimov was also hungry for the paycheck, but at least he could write -- or more likely could spot someone who knew.

I read Foundation back in high school, but don't remember it very well at all.  But I do remember the general feeling of being fascinated by it.  So I'm overdue for a re-read of it.  And I never read any of the other books in the series, so I'd like to read those as well.

Links

For Whisky Prajer's thoughts, see:

* In search of lost books, and

* Revisiting DUNE

Whisky writes:

Dune was finally, to my eyes, a hippie book. I bought it in a hippie used-book shop on the west coast. The only people discussing it were long-hairs who stank of patchouli and something faintly skunky. Thus: hippie book.

I had this in the back of my mind while I read Dune, and as I was reading Dune I could totally see why the hippies would love this book--Dune is very influenced by Eastern mysticism, and also has descriptions of mystical trances that are brought about by the aid of drugs.  Since this book was published in 1965, right as the hippie movement was beginning, no wonder the flower child generation loved it.

Also, I'm sure the themes about ecology must have seemed very prescient in 1965, and as the environmental movement began in the late 1960s and early 70s, that no doubt also helped the popularity of this book.

More links (also courtesy of Whisky):

* Willis E. McNelly interviews Frank Herbert on February 3, 1969 at Herbert's house.  (There is a lot in this conversation.  But it's all fascinating.)

*  Haris Durrani’s Twitter thread: “Do you think #Dune is a white saviour narrative? Well, you’re wrong.”  (This thread is also referencing stuff that happens in the sequels, which is another reason I might be sort of tempted to pick the sequels up someday.)

Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.  It's a really ambitious story, but the prose is clunky, and, on first reading at least, I'm not entirely sure the story makes complete sense.

Weekly Reading Vlog: 

January 15, 2023 p.1-884 

Footnotes (docs, pub)

(*1) My siblings and I grew up almost exclusively on the Disney Channel because my mother disapproved of regular network TV.  This is something I've mentioned before HERE, HERE, HERE,  HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE,  etc.

I’m not quite sure why the Disney Channel was airing Dune.  I don’t believe it had any connection to Disney? (Someone correct me if I’m wrong).  But back in those days, every once and a while the Disney channel would show some random stuff.

I remember photos for the movie Dune appeared in the monthly Disney Channel magazine.  (I used to pour over every inch of that magazine when I was a kid, looking for exciting stuff to watch.)  And I remember seeing the photos of the giant worms.  And also I remember Patrick Stewart’s face appeared prominently in one of the photos, which got my attention, as I was a huge Star Trek fan during those days, and this must have been right after Star Trek: The Next Generation first premiered.

I never bothered to actually watch the Dune movie--I don’t remember why not. I guess I just wasn’t that interested, and it must not have been on at a convenient time.  

(*2) Lindsay Ellis's Dune review is not currently on Youtube.  Apparently she later took down this review because of all the hate it received--see HERE.  However it can still be viewable on other sites--like this copy at the Internet Archive.  It's primarily a review of the 1984 movie, but it does reference the book as well. If you haven't watched the video, Lindsay Ellis thinks that both the book and the movie  have an uninteresting plot because they rely on a MacGuffin to move the plot along.  She also criticizes the writing style of the book, and says that the book is constantly telling you what all the characters are thinking in a style that is really annoying.

(*3) Whisky Prajer and I are on exactly the same page on this, by the way. 

In his 2018 post on Dune, Whisky writes:

Amalgamated linguistics aside, Herbert could hardly be called a “stylist.” He believed in sturdy narrative architecture, and laid down words like so much bricks and mortar. 

When I started this book, Whisky commented:

I wanted to like Frank Herbert, but Geez-Louise his prose is stilted!

(*4) Steve Donoghue is of the opinion that the prose of this book gets better after the first 200 pages.  In one of his (many) Dune videos, DuneTube 2019: Dune, Part 2!, Steve says that the problem was that the first 200 pages went through so many drafts that Frank Herbert just became inured to it, and lost the ability to see the problems with his prose.  Steve thinks that this is a problem that's limited only to the first 200 pages, and contrasts that to the subsequent 200 pages, which he says were written by "a complete master in absolute control of what he's doing."

I didn't watch this video until after I had already finished Dune, but it does square with my experience as a reader.  The first 200 pages struck me as really clunky.  After about 200 pages, I stopped noticing the problem.  But like I said above, it could also be that I just got used to Frank Herbert's prose.  I don't know.  I definitely know I've heard other people who criticize Frank Herbert's prose style generally.

Once again, I guess I'll throw the question out to you guys.  Let me know in the comments what you think.

(*5) But of course I shouldn't say that Dune is Game of Thrones set in space, because Dune predates Game of Thrones.  

Also, admittedly it's not an exact analogy.  In Game of Thrones, we see several Noble Houses plotting against each other.  In Dune we know other Great Houses are out there, but we really only see 2 of them: House Harkonnen and House Atreides.

Video Review:

Dune by Frank Herbert: Book Review

The Odyssey by Homer: Book Review

Translated by T.E. Lawrence

(Book Review--Rereads, Classics, Greek Mythology)

Started: November 20, 2022

Finished: January 01, 2023

(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.) 

Background Information

Along with The Iliad, this is the other epic poem from the 8th Century B.C. attributed to Homer.  So, much of what I already said about The Iliad is going to apply here as well.

The Iliad was an epic about the Trojan War.  The Odyssey takes place after the Trojan War, and is about the long journey home of Odysseus, one of the Greek heroes of the war.  (Odyssey in ancient Greece means “The Story of Odysseus”).  So it’s a sequel, of sorts, to The Iliad, and features many of the same characters.

Although it’s not a direct sequel.  When The Iliad ends, we are still right in the thick of the Trojan War.  When The Odyssey begins, the war is over, and all the heroes are going home.  So there is a notable jump forward in time.  

This was not a problem for the original audience.  Both The Iliad and The Odyssey emerged out of an older oral tradition, so the ancient Greek audience would have already known all about the events between The Iliad and The Odyssey that weren't cover by Homer.

According to Wikipedia, The Iliad and The Odyssey were at one point part of an Epic Cycle of poems, which told the whole story of the Trojan War and the return of the heroes. 

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle#Contents

...but, if I'm reading Wikipedia correctly, the other poems in the Epic Cycle were written at a later date. 

In other words, first there was the oral tradition.  Then, The Iliad and The Odyssey emerged.  Then later, the other poems in the Epic Cycle were written to fill in the gaps that were left by The Iliad  and The Odyssey.  But unfortunately, the rest of the Epic Cycle was lost to history, so now we are once again left only with The Iliad and The Odyssey.  (Fortunately we know much of what was in those lost epics from other sources--e.g. Posthomerica, etc, so we can still piece together the rough general story of the whole Trojan War.)

Of the two Homeric epics, I believe The Iliad was more influential in the ancient world.  (Someone correct me if I'm wrong).  For example, when he was on his campaigns, Alexander the Great famously carryied The Iliad around with him--not The Odyssey.   

However in the modern world, The Iliad is seen as too violent and warlike for modern readers, so The Odyssey has become more widely read in today's society.  Nowadays if you're ever looking at a school curriculum, you're far more likely to see The Odyssey on the reading list than The Iliad.  (Although upon rereading The Odyssey, I've got to say, I was surprised by how brutal some parts of it could be.  But more on that below.)

Also, in contrast to the convoluted plot of The Iliad, The Odyssey is a straightforward journey story, so that's another reason it's more accessible to modern audiences.

...except it's not that straightforward, because The Odyssey starts out in when Odysseus's journey is almost over, and then all the adventures that Odysseus had at the beginning of his journey are told in flashback.  

This is what's known as in medias res (W), and, if I remember my high school literature teachers correctly, it subsequently began a convention of epic poetry.  That is, because Homer started out The Odyssey using in medias res, this established the tradition that all epics had to start in medias res.

T.E. Lawrence Translation

I'm reading the T.E. Lawrence translation, just because this happens to be the translation currently in bookstores in Vietnam.  

And in case you're wondering... yes, it is that T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia (W).  

Did you know that in addition to becoming a messianic figure in the Middle East, and leading an epic Arab rebellion, Lawrence of Arabia also found time to do a translation of The Odyssey?  What a guy, huh?  T.E. Lawrence's translation was published in 1932.

 (I'm not sure why the publisher switched translators.  The editions of The Iliad  and The Odyssey currently being sold in Vietnam are published by Arcturus press.  They used the Samuel Butler translation for The Iliad, and Samuel Butler also published a translation of The Odyssey, so I'm not sure why they didn't just stick with Samuel Butler.   Maybe because Lawrence of Arabia is much more famous? I don't know.)

My History With This Book

My history with The Odyssey is much the same as my history with The Iliad.  I first learned the story by reading retellings designed for children and young adults.  (I couldn’t now tell you the name of it, but my school library had an illustrated retelling of The Odyssey that I read in 6th grade.)  

After having read The Iliad in 7th grade, I then moved on to The Odyssey.  Just like The Iliad, I initially tried out a verse translation, just because this was the version that was in our school library.  And, just like The Iliad, I soon gave up on the verse translation, returned it to the school library, and bought a prose translation instead from a local bookstore, which suited me much better.

Unlike my copy of The Iliad, I never saved my copy of The Odyssey.  So I cannot now tell you the name of the translation I read in 7th grade.  It may actually have been T.E. Lawrence version.  I don’t remember.

I do, however, remember not being quite as enthralled by The Odyssey as I had been with The Iliad.  

You see, The Iliad was packed full of battle scenes from beginning to end.  So even though I had thought I already knew the full story of the Trojan War from various modern retellings, there were so many more stories in The Iliad--more battles, more stories of heroes fighting each other etc.

With The Odyssey, however, I didn’t feel like I got much more out of the original book that hadn’t been in the retellings.  Odysseus’s adventures with the sirens, or the cyclops, or Circe, et cetera, were all pretty much the same in the original Odyssey as they had been in the young adult retellings that I had read.  The only difference in the original, it seemed to me, was that there were a lot more boring speeches.  Plus, I also have a memory of the end of the story, the confrontation between Odysseus and the suitors, being really drawn out in the original Odyssey.

In the years since, I've read another retelling of The Odyssey in Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang.

Why I Reread This Book

Well, once again, it's the same as with The Iliad.  Steve Donoghue's Western Canon Starter Kit (video HERE) puts Homer alongside The Bible as one of the cornerstones of Western Literature.  So I thought it would be good for me to reread The Iliad and The Odyssey.  I picked them both up at the same bookstore, and then after finishing The Iliad, I decided to continue on to The Odyssey next.  (If you're going to reread The Iliad, you pretty much have to follow it up with a rereading of The Odyssey, don't you?)

The Rereading Experience

So, I mentioned above that my memory of reading The Odyssey is that if you already know the basic story, reading the original epic doesn't really enhance the story at all, and it just adds a bunch of boring extra details and lots of speeches.

And that's pretty much my experience rereading it.

Steve Donoghue in his videos on The Odyssey remarks frequently that people who only know The Odyssey from the storybook version are frequently surprised to realize that the iconic parts of this story (Circe, the Cyclops, The Sirens, Scylla and the Charybdis, etc) actually make up only a small portion of the book.  And this perfectly describes my reading experience.

If you've not read The Odyssey (or if you, like me, have been overdue for a reread), you will be surprised to learn that the journey portion of the story, where Odysseus goes to all the strange lands and meets all the strange creatures, is actually only 4 chapters (books 9, 10, 11, 12) out of 24.  Or less than 20% of the story.

So what makes up the other 80% of the book?

The bulk of the book is building up to the confrontation with the suitors. 

Again, this is different than most modern retellings.  In modern retellings, the battle with the suitors is usually just a coda to the journeys of Odysseus.  But in The Odyssey, it is very much the central conflict of the book.  And, oh man, is there ever a lot of build up.

Odysseus finishes telling the story of his strange adventures in book 12, and the battle with the suitors doesn't happen until book 22.  During that time, there's a whole lot of talk about how Odysseus is going to get his revenge on the suitors, but actual events move forward at a snail's pace.

The translator of my edition, Lawrence of Arabia, thinks that this was deliberate padding.  In ancient Greece, these epics were sung by a travelling bard, who likely song one chapter every night at dinner, so delaying the climax for 10 more chapters meant ten more free dinners.  As Lawrence puts it:

"Perhaps the tedious delay of the climax through ten books may be a poor bard's means of prolonging his host's hospitality." (Translator's Introduction, p.9)

For a counterview, see Steve Donoghue, who believes that this long build up is just a way of expertly priming the reader (listener) so that when the hammer does finally drop on the suitors, their comeuppance is all the more satisfying because we've been primed to hate them for so many chapters.

As for me personally, I tend to side more with Lawrence of Arabia.  

I have to admit, I found the whole conflict with the suitors to be a bit boring.  And upon rereading this book, I was fully reminded of why this book never stuck with me the way The Iliad did.

I know, I know, I'm a philistine.  This is one of the foundational works of Western Literature, and through the centuries it has been praised by many men who were a lot smarter than I am.

So I don't want to give the impression that I was completely incapable of understanding it.  There were a number of things I enjoyed about the book.  So let’s talk about the positives.

The Positives 

* I mentioned above that the fantastic journey part of this book is surprisingly short--only 4 chapters out of 24.  But, short though they were, those 4 chapters are a lot of fun.  

I suspect that most people are already familiar with all the major events that happen in these chapters--Cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, the journey to the land of the dead, the land of the lotus-eaters, etc.  Most of us hear these stories in childhood, and remember them well even as adults.  I mean, I already knew what was going to happen with Odysseus and Circe, and I already knew how Odysseus was going to defeat the Cyclops.  But I still enjoyed reading through it again anyway.  Some good stories are just so much fun that you don’t mind hearing them again and again.  

[If by some chance you haven’t yet heard these stories, you’re in for a treat.  Be sure to check them out.  Only don’t start out with Homer’s Odyssey.  Just like The Iliad, just like anything from ancient Greek literature, the author is already assuming you know the basic story because in ancient Greece you would have already grown up in a culture where all these stories were already familiar because of the oral tradition.  So Homer isn’t going to waste any time getting you up to speed on the background information you need to know to understand the story. Instead start with the Classics Illustrated version, or Andrew Lang, or Bulfinch or any other modern retelling.  But do check these stories out.  They are so much fun.]

* In my review of The Iliad, I mentioned that one of the really fun things about that book was seeing how interconnected the whole world of Greek Mythology  was.  And this is definitely true of The Odyssey  as well.  The very first chapter starts out with Zeus talking about the story of Orestes, Agamemnon and Aegisthus.

Now, none of those characters are in The Odyssey.  To find out their story, you have to read a completely separate set of stories--the Oresteia.  (This is yet another reason why you wouldn't want to jump straight into The Odyssey before you've read a few books on Greek mythology generally.)  But I find the tapestry of Greek mythology--the web of individual, yet interconnected stories, to be fascinating.

The Odyssey isn't quite as interesting as The Iliad in this regard.  The Iliad was constantly throwing references back to the age of heroes--the generation right before the Trojan War.  The Odyssey, by contrast, only has a few references back to the age of heroes.  But although it's not quite as impressive as The Iliad, it's still fun to see.

* The scenes with the gods and goddess were also fun.

Again, this is something that was better in The Iliad.  In The Iliad, we had a lot of scenes of the gods and goddess squabbling with each other on Mount Olympus.  The Odyssey has much fewer, but the scenes they do have are still fun.  (The Greek gods were a very colorful bunch.)

One scene that I remember reading in 7th grade, and which stuck in my head very clearly in the subsequent years, was when Ares and Aphrodite were having sex together, and the god Hephaestus (the husband of Aphrodite) devised a metal net to fall down on them and trap them in the act, and then while Ares and Aphrodite were trapped in this compromising position, all the other gods gathered around to view and make jokes.  (I grew up in a very sheltered environment, so this was one of the first cases I remember of sex being referenced in literature.)

* Lastly, The Odyssey can be very interesting for its description of daily life in ancient Greece.

The Iliad, which took place almost exclusively on the battle field, didn't give us very many descriptions of what normal domestic life was like.  But The Odyssey is full of descriptions of what the dining halls were like, what kind of clothes people were wearing, what kinds of food they were eating, et cetera.

I'm reminded once again of the George R.R. Martin quote I've used a couple - times before on this blog--"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."  Through the magic of reading this book, we get some glimpse into what life was like for people 3,000 years ago.

Speaking of which, anyone who reads The Odyssey will be immediately struck by the theme of hospitality.  This is actually not something I had remembered from my first reading, but reading it again, I was struck by how over and over again the book emphasized how important hospitality was in the ancient world.  (Characters are constantly giving speeches about the importance of hospitality.  You absolutely cannot miss it as a theme.)

On the Homeric Question

As you probably know, although tradition assigns The Iliad and The Odyssey both to Homer, there’s been a long debate about whether Homer wrote both poems, or whether Homer even existed.

Lawrence of Arabia, the translator of my edition, believed that the author of The Odyssey did not live at the same time The Iliad was composed, but was of a generation that grew up in the shadow of The Iliad.   Speaking of the writer of The Odyssey, Lawrence writes:

"His generation so rudely admired The Iliad that even to misquote it was a virtue" (translator's introduction, p.9)

For a contrasting view, see Steve Donoghue, who argues that: "when you read them, I don't think there's any doubt in the world that The Iliad and The Odyssey were both written entirely by one person."

As for me, I've got to say that after having now re-read The Iliad and The Odyssey both within the same year, to me they certainly feel like they were written by different authors.

But then, of course, I was reading the work of two different translators.  So of course these books would feel different.  Those of us who can't read the original ancient Greek really shouldn't attempt to have an opinion about the Homeric Question.

But... since this is my blog, and everyone can spout off their own two cents on their own blog, I do feel like pointing out some differences I've noticed.

The author of The Iliad went to great lengths to make us feel sympathy with both sides of the conflict.  It was not a story of good guys versus bad guys--there were good men on both sides of the war.

The Odyssey, by contrast, definitely has a set of bad guys.  The author of The Odyssey emphasizes over and over and over again how awful the suitors are, and when they all get killed at the end, we are meant to feel that they are only getting what's coming to them.

Extended Quotation

From the end of Book 1:

Eurymachus son of Polybus then put in his word. ‘Telemachus, the question of which Greek shall reign over this island lies on the lap of the Gods. Yet assuredly you shall possess your belongings and have the lordship in your own houses: nor against your will shall any man come and strip you of them forcibly while Ithaca holds an inhabitant. But my good lad, let me question you about that visitor of yours who slipped away so suddenly that none of us had time to make him out. Yet his face was not the face of a negligible man. Whence came he and what country gave he as his own? Where do his kindred live and where are the corn-lands of his family? Did he come with news of your father, or on some business of his own?’

Discreetly Telemachus reassured him: ‘Eurymachus, the time of my father’s return is long over. I do not now credit any messages regarding him, whatever their source. Nor does any soothsaying take me in: though my mother may at whiles call some noted diviner to the palace and seek sooth of him. As for the stranger, he is a former friend of our family from Taphos called Mentes, whose father was old wise-minded Anchialus. Mentes is a man of authority among the seafaring Taphians.’ So he said: but secretly Telemachus was sure of the immortal Goddess. Howbeit the suitors turned to dance and to the enthralling song, making merry while the evening drew down; and they celebrated until evening had darkened into night. Then the longing for sleep took them and they scattered, each man to the house where he lodged.

The mind of Telemachus was perplexedly brooding over many things as he also sought his bed within his own room, which was contrived in the highest part of the main building, that stately landmark of the country-side. Eurycleia the daughter of Ops son of Peisenor, attended him, lighting his way with flaring slips of pine-wood — Eurycleia the trusted, the adept, who, in the flush of her youth, had been bought by Laertes, out of his great wealth, for the price of twenty oxen. In the house Laertes had esteemed her even as his beloved wife, but never dared have intercourse with her, fearing the temper of his wife. Of all the servants it was Eurycleia who most loved Telemachus, for she had nursed him when he was a tiny child. Accordingly it was she who lighted him to his well-built room.

He flung open its doors and sat himself on the couch. There he pulled off his long clinging tunic, which the old woman received into her skillful hands and folded and patted into smoothness before she hung it on the clothes-peg beside his fretted, inlaid bedstead. Then she quitted the chamber, pulling-to the door after her by the silver beak which served as handle and sliding the bolt across by its leathern thong. And there Telemachus lay all night, wrapped in a choice fleece, pondering in his heart how he should compass the journey enjoined upon him by Athene. (p.24-25)

***END QUOTE***

I know I took that out of context, so the conversations between Telemachus and the suitors may not make a lot of sense.  But nonetheless, notice all the little details here about daily life--the pine-wood torch, the clothes-peg by the bedstead, the sliding bolt on the door, et cetera.  The Odyssey has much more of these details than The Iliad.

Other Stray Observations

* In my review of The Iliad, I was originally intending to write about this weird empathy disconnect that I noticed in the book.  But I ended up cutting my review of The Iliad short once I realized it was getting too long, so I never wrote about it after all.

But briefly, here's what I wanted to write:

The Iliad is a very brutal book, where Achilles and the rest of the Greek heroes relentlessly slaughter the Trojans, even when the Trojans are begging them for mercy.  It's hard to read at times, but as you're reading it, you end up just telling yourself, "Well, these men lived in different times.  Back in those days, a warrior was cold and brutal and heartless."

And if the Greek heroes had been portrayed that way throughout--as cold, unfeeling, killing machines--men whose basic human emotions had just been numbed by the brutality of constant battle--then I think I could have made sense of it.

But the weird thing is--they were all constant crybabies.  Achilles cried constantly about how he was disrespected or dishonored.  At the funeral games for Patroclus, the other heroes cried whenever they lost a contest.

It was a weird disconnect to see them so cold and heartless on the battlefield, but yet so whiny and tearful.

I'm guessing that this over-emoting was done to heighten the drama of the story.  That is, I doubt the ancient Greeks actually acted like this (although who knows, maybe they did), but when you're telling a story, you want to wring as much emotion and drama as you can from it, and one way to do that is by having your characters get super emotional about every single thing.  After all, if the characters aren't emotionally invested in their own needs and wants, then how can you expect the audience to get invested?

But regardless of the reason, that same empathy disconnect was all through The Odyssey.  Odysseus is constantly crying about how he misses his home and his family, and he works himself into a furious rage when he thinks about how the suitors are trying to take away his wife, and are depleting his wealth by eating his cattle and goats.

But then, this same Odysseus feels no remorse about sacking and destroying towns, killing all the men, and taking the women, just because he encounters them on his voyage home.

As Odysseus is retelling his voyages in book 9, he says, 

From Ilion, the wind served me to near Ismarus of the Cicones. I sacked the city and slew them.  Their wives and wealth we took and divided precisely, so that no one of us, through me, should go short of his just share." (p.128)

So Odysseus thinks nothing of depriving other men of their wives and wealth, but whines endlessly when other people do it to him.  What kind of a hero is that?

(Is this a problem with the text?  Or is the author of The Odyssey intentionally trying to play with the irony of making Odysseus a hypocrite.)

* Connected to the above point...

In my review of Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang, one of my many criticisms of Andrew Lang was his use of the title Ulysses, the Sacker of Cities ("Ulysses" being the Latin for "Odysseus").  But I take this particular criticism back.  Several times in The Odyssey, Odysseus is identified as someone who is prone to sack cities.  

*********************************************************************************

As I mentioned above, although The Iliad is generally more violent than The Odyssey, in some ways The Odyssey is more brutal.

Particularly at the end with the slaughter of the suitors.

And particularly when Odysseus and his son Telemachus execute the maids who had been sleeping with the suitors.

CONTENT WARNING ahead.

…but cunning Odysseus forbade her. “By no means call her yet. Bid me in those women who have been disorderly”; and away at his word went the old dame through the house, warning the women and hustling them forward: while Odysseus called to Telemachus, to the stockman and to the swineherd, saying with energy, “Start to clear away the dead, making the women do the work; and then swill down the rich seats and tables with water and fibrous sponges. Afterwards, when you have restored the whole house to order, take these servants outside the stately hall to that spot between the round vault and the courtyard’s strong boundary wall and there slaughter them with your long swords till the last life is spent and their love-passages with the suitors are whole out of mind.”

So he bade them, and the erring women trailed in, all huddled together and crying great bitter tears of woe.  First they bore out the dead and laid them in heaps along the portico of the walled court--Odysseus directing that work himself and driving them, for it took force to make them do it--and then they cleaned down the noble thrones and tables with water and soft sponges, while Telemachus with the swineherd and cattle-man scraped down the floor of the strong house with hoes, the maids carrying for them to a dump out of doors.  When the house was tidy they led the women servants beyond the great hall and penned them in that blind place between vault and boundary wall, whence escape was impossible.  “It irks me,” he said, “to give any sort of clean death to women who have heaped shame on my head and my mother’s, and have wantoned with the suitors.” That was what he said. He made fast a dark-prowed ship’s hawser to a pillar and strained it round the great spiral of the vault, at too great a height for anyone to touch the floor with her feet.  Sometimes in a shrubbery men so stretch out nets, upon which long-winded thrushes or doves alight on their way to roost: and fatal the perch proves. Exactly thus were the women’s all held a-row with a bight of cord drawn around each throat, to suffer their caitiff’s death.  A little while they twittered with their feet--only a little.  It was not long.

Melanthius they dragged through the entry and the court, sliced his nose and ears with their cruel swords and tore out his privates, which they fed raw to the dogs. Their spite made them also cut off his hands and feet…. (Book 22, pages 298-299)

Right, where to even begin with this?  

First of all, The Iliad, for all its violence, never depicted violence against women.  (I’m not forgetting anything, am I?)  So this strikes me as being more brutal than The Iliad on that note alone.

But also, as John Green points out in his video on The Odyssey, there’s a hypocritical double standard that runs all through the book.  These women are executed simply for sleeping with the wrong men.  But Odysseus sleeps with many women throughout his adventures, and not all of those women were angels (Circe, for instance, seems to have had a malevolent streak.)  Plus, as we mentioned above, earlier in The Odyssey, Odysseus had bragged about killing the Cicones and just taking their women for sexual pleasure.

And then that part about poor Melanthius, Odysseus’s goatherd.  That’s really brutal, isn’t it?  And once again, this seems to be even in excess of anything in The Iliad.  The Iliad had plenty of scenes of violence, but no depictions of anyone being tortured.  (Again, I’m not forgetting anything, right?)  And Melanthius wasn’t even one of the hated suitors--he was just on friendly terms with them.  So his punishment seems really excessive.

I won’t lie, the description here haunts me a bit with its casual brutality--for example the way it says they actually “pulled” his privates off instead of just slicing them off.  That’s really sick and twisted, isn’t it?

…but then, I have to remind myself that this is all fiction, and it’s just words on a page and none of this actually happened.  (One of the oddities of the human brain is that sometimes our brain emotionally engages with fictional stories as if they were real events.  There’s probably an evolutionary psychology explanation behind this--perhaps something about how our brain’s desire to hear stories originated as a way to get useful information about people we had to interact with daily in our local tribe, so consequently our brain tends to engage with stories as if they were real. But that’s a digression to explore on another day.)

But anyway… what to make of all of this?  Does the author of The Odyssey just have really sick and twisted values?  Or is the author intending to evoke our disgust and revulsion?  Is the author intending for us to disapprove of Odysseus and his actions?

I had the exact same questions when I was reading The Iliad--as I wrote at some length in my review of The Iliad--and now I’m back here again with The Odyssey.  What are we supposed to make of this book?

Plans for Future Reading (and watching)

* So, after 30 years, I've now finally reread The Iliad and The Odyssey.  I probably shouldn't wait another 30 years before I read them again.

The great Steve Donoghue actually rereads these books every year.  But Steve's a much more prolific reader than I'll ever be.  I'll just aim to read them again in another 5, or maybe 10 years. 

And when I do,  I should really try out some different translations next time around.  

* And speaking of translators, I'm also overdue to rewatch Lawrence of Arabia one of these days.  I've seen it twice--once as an adolescent, once in my late 20s, but I'm due now for another viewing, and then doing a review on my Thoughts after Re-Watching project.

But as I've mentioned before, watching full movies is a bit difficult nowadays.  So it could be a few years before I get around to it.

Links

* In 2006, I thought I had finished my time in Japan, and was anxious to return to my hometown.  However, I extended my stay in Japan for a couple more months because of a girl.  I referred to her on this blog on 2 occasions as “Calypso” (here and here).  The idea being (tongue-in-cheek, of course) that she was preventing me from returning to my hometown and keeping me on island, just like the nymph Calypso had done to Odysseus.  

I thought I was being clever.   

* I've mentioned this in passing above, but see also my review of Classics Illustrated: The Odyssey.

* In preparing this review, I watched a lot of booktube and Youtube videos on The Odyssey:

Steve Donoghue: Homer-Along: The Odyssey Part 1! https://youtu.be/WeQRWGKRzvE

Steve Donoghue: Homer-Along: The Odyssey Part 2! https://youtu.be/BWa92jahXnI

Steve Donoghue: Homer-Along 2018: The Odyssey Part 3! https://youtu.be/OI62yUzn2MU

Steve Donoghue: Homer-Along 2018: The Odyssey Concludes! https://youtu.be/ZKm7u6Abxeg

Steve Donoghue: Mayberry Book Club: The Odyssey - Part 1! https://youtu.be/VMfSTZQPSDY

Steve Donoghue:  The Mayberry Book Club: The Odyssey - Part 2! https://youtu.be/3Y0z2tkMGbA

Mayberry Bookclub: The Odyssey, by Homer | Books 1-6 https://youtu.be/47-sDvCFrxI

Mayberry Bookclub: The Odyssey, by Homer | Books 7-12 https://youtu.be/PWUkQfZrRhs

A Long and Difficult Journey, or The Odyssey: Crash Course Literature 201 https://youtu.be/MS4jk5kavy4

Rating:

7 out of 10 Stars.  I gave The Iliad 9 out of 10 stars, in spite of all its many problems.  The Odyssey is in a similar category.  Massively problematic, and yet also massively fascinating.  But, for my money at least, not quite as impressive as The Iliad.

Weekly Reading Vlogs:

November 20, 2022 The Odyssey p.1-116

November 27, 2022 The Odyssey p.116-168

December 4, 2022 The Odyssey p.168-192 

December 18, 2022 The Odyssey p.192-204

December 23, 2022 The Odyssey p.204-212

January 1, 2023 The Odyssey p.212-320

Video Review (Playlist HERE)

The Odyssey by Homer Translated by T.E. Lawrence: Book Review

The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass: Book Review

(Book Review--Fantasy)

Started: May 8, 2022

Finished: October 5, 2022

(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.) 

 Background Information

As I’m sure you can deduce from the cover, this is a pulp paperback fantasy.  My edition was 613 pages of story, plus another 17 pages of glossary.  (This is one of those fantasy novels with a lot of worldbuilding, so a glossary is provided in the back to help the reader keep track of all the names and places.  Although I’ve got to say, while I was reading this book,  I only ended up flipping back to the glossary once or twice.  Things are explained clearly enough in the narrative that you don’t really need the glossary.)

This book was originally published in 1995, and is the first book of a 6 book series.  (Because of course it is.  It’s impossible to find a mass-market paperback fantasy book that isn’t part of a longer series.)

The author, Sara Douglas, is Australian, and from what I can gleam from Wikipedia, it looks like this book was first published in Australia, and then based off of its success in Australia, republished on the global market.  In Australia and the UK, this book was published as Battleaxe (W), but in the US it is The Wayfarer Redemption.  

Why I Read this Book

I have a soft spot for pulp fantasy.  It’s one of my guilty pleasures.

I doubt this confession will surprise regular readers of this blog.  (I suspect it is very obvious from the contents of this blog that I’m a huge geek, and what could be more geeky than pulp fantasy?)

Plus, whenever I dabble in writing fiction myself, it’s almost always in - a - fantasy - setting.

And yet, looking back over my reading list, I realize that I’ve read very few fantasy books over the years.  I’ve read a handful, sure, but not a lot.

I’ve been doing some thinking recently to try to figure out what the disconnect is between my love of the genre and my paltry reading record.  The short version (and I am trying to keep these things short) is that I’m a very slow reader, and I only get through a handful of books every year, and within that small handful of books I’m also - distracted - by - a - lot - of - other - interests.

(My pace with this particular novel is a case in point.  It took me 7 -  months to finish it.  Other reviewers claim to have whipped through this book in a couple of days.)

That, plus I’ve been living abroad for the past - 20 - years, and the lack of access to English books out here makes it very difficult to read a whole series.  I’ll occasionally stumble across a fantasy book in a second hand bookshop out here, but then I’ll realize that it’s only one book in a series, and it seems pointless to start the book when I know I’ll never be able to finish the series.

Also, it does sometimes seem a waste of time to read trashy fantasy novels when there are so many classic books I haven’t read.  

Actually, what I want is to be is an omnivorous reader--someone who finds time to read plenty of great classic novels, and also plenty of trash (much like the great Steve Donoghue).  I’m not that.  (I read much too slowly).  But sometimes, when I go into a bookstore and look at all the options there, I have a tendency to forget what a slow reader I am.  And I’ll get this idea that I have time to read both my quota of trashy pulp and my quota of great classics.  And then I’ll be quite tempted to pick something like this up.

Such was the case several months ago, when I was perusing the selection of books on Bookstreet here in Saigon, and I stumbled upon a rather battered copy of this book in one of the used book stalls.

The edges of the pages were already discolored and spotted.  (The tropical climate here in Vietnam isn’t always kind to old books.)  But to a certain extent, that all seemed to add to the atmosphere of the thing--if you’re going to get a trashy fantasy novel, it helps if it looks a bit trashy as well.

I noticed, of course, that this book was the first part of a longer series, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find the other books in the series out here in Vietnam.  So if I started this, I would never get closure.  And yet, I thought it might be fun nonetheless to just dip my toes into this series--just get a little bit of a taste of the worldbuilding and the imagination, even if I couldn’t see it through to the end.

And so, on a whim, I bought it.

I decided to start reading this book in May.  I already had several books I was busy reading at the time, but I needed a new portable book--something to take with me to read when I travelled around the city, or needed something to read at work during lunch breaks.  (None of - the - other - books I was then reading were very portable).

My Reading Journey

I started this book in May 2022, and have been using it as my “lunch break” book ever since.

With a couple exceptions.  When we went travelling to visit my wife’s hometown back in June, I swapped out this book for The Iliad as my travel read.  (Just because I was in a classical mood).  And because I only got halfway through The Iliad when I was traveling, after returning I then spent a couple weeks finishing up The Iliad during my lunch breaks.

Plus, one day I forgot to bring this book with me to work.  And so I went to the school library and got Diary of a Wimpy Kid instead.  And then I forgot to bring this book with me again, and so I got Animorphs out from the school library, and read that for a couple days.

But, aside from those brief distractions, I’ve been carrying this book around with me at work for the past 7 months.

One of the disadvantages of carrying books around at work is that it puts on full display what a low reader you are.  “You’re still reading that?” people would say when they saw me at lunch.  “You’ve been reading that book for months now.”

The Story

I’ve already established that this book is fantasy, but it occurs to me that there are really two different types of fantasy.

There’s fantasy that makes use of already established mythic or folkloric elements (e.g. dwarfs, elves, goblins, fairies, dragons, etc).

And then there’s fantasy that completely does it’s own thing, and makes up entirely new fantastic creatures.

This book is the latter.  It’s got a recognizably medieval setting (swords, arrows, kings, castles, etc).  But it exists in a completely original world with completely original creatures.  There are, for instance, the Icarii, a type of birdman type creature.  And there are the Avor, a type of horned people.  And then there are the Skraelings, a type of carnivorous ghosts.

In the beginning of the book, I was getting strong Game of Thrones vibes.  Just like in Game of Thrones, this story takes place in a kingdom which has a northern border with a snowy ice-land, and just like in Game of Thrones, this story opens up by hinting that a mystical ancient evil has awakened in the snowy north.  Down in the capital city, the characters are only hearing rumors of this ancient evil, but they are becoming aware that the wild men in the snowy wilderness are being forced to flee south because something even more savage than them has appeared.

And, just like in Games of Thrones, while this threat is looming in the North, the kingdom to the South appears to be on the brink of a succession crisis and civil war.

“Borneheld is the child of Priam’s only sister, Rivkah, who married Borneheld’s father Searlas, the previous Duke,” Devera explained.
  Faraday paused in her contemplation of Borneheld to glance back at Devera. For a moment she thought that there was some hesitation, or some darker shadow, behind Devera’s words, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “So, if Priam has no children, Borneheld will become king.”
Devera shrugged and took another sip of wine. “Probably, unless the other Earls and Barons decided to fight him for the privilege.”
“But that would mean civil war! Are you suggesting that our fathers would be so disloyal?” Faraday valued loyalty above most other virtues.
 “Well, the prize would be worth it, wouldn’t it,” Devera snapped, the wine she had drunk making her tongue dangerously loose. (p.30-31)

I’d be tempted to accuse Sara Douglass of ripping off Game of Thrones, except that this book was published back in 1995, way before The Game of Thrones TV show, and ****quickly checks Wikipedia**** even one year before the first Game of Thrones novel.

And while I’m comparing this book to other science fiction franchises, there is also a strong Avatar vibe going on in this story.  

As with Avatar, this story involves the main characters having their worldview completely changed during the course of the story.  They start out believing that they are the forces of civilization defending the world against the savage creatures of the wilderness, but then along the way they discover that everything they’ve grown up believing is wrong, and that they are the bad guys and it is actually their civilization which has been responsible for brutalizing the other creatures. 

Oh, and you remember that sacred Hometree in Avatar?  There’s a similar sacred tree in this book.  And just like in Avatar, there’s a key scene in which the sacred tree is attacked.  The outcome is different in this book--the sacred tree isn’t destroyed.  But nonetheless, reading this book I felt very strongly reminded of Avatar.  

I’d be tempted to accuse this book of ripping Avatar off, except that (again) this book came out all the way back in 1995, and Avatar didn’t come out until 2009.

But then again, as I pointed out in my 2010 review of Avatar, Avatar itself was a combination of previously existing tropes from different franchises.   So perhaps Sara Douglass and Avatar share a common inspiration?

Actually speaking of previously existing tropes, The Wayfarer Redemption is full of them.  
--The ancient prophecy  
--The chosen one 
--The forces of good versus the forces of evil
--a good brother fighting against an evil brother  
--The “I am your father” moment
etc.  

(After finishing this book, I read a few different reviews online, and every other single reviewer also seemed to pick up on the fact that this book was loaded with cliches and tropes.  But then again, it’s genre fiction, so I guess you come to expect the tropes of the genre.)

The Reading Experience / Evaluation

The good news is, the prose is very readable.  This book flows.

This is something almost every reviewer of this book seems to agree on. 

Now, I personally took 7 months to get through this book, but that’s not really saying anything. I’m a slow reader, and I’m easily distracted.

What I did notice is that whenever I picked this book up, I had no trouble getting back into it.  Even when I was coming back after a break of a few weeks, I had absolutely no trouble getting back into the flow of the narrative.

Considering how much world building is going on in this book, Sara Douglass is doing an impressive task to do it all in very readable prose.  (When I was reading Lord of the Rings, I complained that I often couldn’t understand Tolkien’s landscape descriptions.  But I had no such problem with Sara Douglass.  She takes the reader to many different exotic locations, but she always describes the locations in perfectly readable prose.)

The big problem, however, is that the characters are flat.  

There are characters, like Gilbert and Borneheld, who start out as unlikable.  At the very beginning of the book, I was initially expecting they might have a character arc where they learn to grow more compassionate, and eventually redeem themselves.  But no.  It quickly becomes apparent that their only purpose in the narrative is to be as unsympathetic as possible so that the reader can enjoy hating them, and then take satisfaction when they get their eventual come-uppance.

The good characters, on the other hand, are simply portrayed as good and pure-hearted.

This is not one of those books that embraces the infinite complexity of human nature.  Instead, good guys are good, and bad guys are bad.

Again, it's a fantasy genre, and this is one of the tropes of fantasy, so I guess I shouldn’t complain about this too much.  But such characters can be a bit boring to spend 613 pages with.

But on the other hand, the plot beats for this novel work.  Although this book has the “chosen one” trope several times over, (not just one character, but actually several characters, are revealed to be special chosen ones of various sorts during the narrative), I still found the various revelations and plot twists to have the desired emotional effects.  

I read some other online reviewers who complained that they found this book incredibly predictable--that they could see every revelation coming a mile away.  I didn’t really have this problem though.  I suppose I might have been guilty of turning my brain off while I read this book (in retrospect, I guess I should have seen a number of these plot twists coming, but I didn’t).  It’s also possible that these plot twists are more obvious to people who read much more fantasy than I do.

But regardless of whether or not the plot is predictable, at least the pacing is good.  All the plot beats come at the right places to keep the momentum of the story going, and hold your interest as you read.

Extended Quotation

Right from the opening pages of this book, I was impressed by Sara Douglass's storytelling ability.  So, I figured, what better place to quote than the very beginning of the book.  Here it is, from pages 1-3:

The woman struggled through the knee-deep snow, the bundle of dead wood she had tied to her back almost as great a burden as the weight of the child she carried in her belly. Her breath rasped in her throat before frosting heavily in the bitterly cold southerly wind. She was short and strong, her legs and shoulders finely muscled by twenty-eight years of hard-won survival in her harsh homeland. But she had always had the help and company of her people to aid her. Now she was alone, and this, her third child, she would have to bear without assistance.

This would be her last trip across the valley. The severe winter storms of the past few weeks had kept her iced into her shelter so that her supply of the precious hot-burning Timewood was almost exhausted; if she did not have enough wood and dry stores remaining for her confinement, then she would die and her child would die with her. Only in the past day had the weather broken sufficiently to allow her to struggle through the snow to reach the Timewood trees. Now the wind was growing harsher and the snow heavier and she knew she had only a short time to reach her shelter. The knowledge that once the baby was born she would not be able to travel far from her shelter drove her on.

Although her current solitude was a path she had chosen freely, worry ate at her bones.

And worry about her child also gnawed at her. Her previous two pregnancies had been uncomfortable, especially in the final weeks, but she had borne those children with little fuss. Her body had recuperated quickly and had healed cleanly each time. With this child she feared her labour more than the lonely winter ahead. It was too large, too…angry. Sometimes at night when she was trying to sleep it twisted and beat at the sides of her womb with such frantic fists and heels that she moaned in pain, rocking herself from side to side in a futile bid to escape its rage.

She paused briefly, adjusting the burden of wood on her back, wishing she could ease the load of the child as easily. Last night it had shifted down into the pit of her belly, seeking the birth canal. The birth was close. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. She could feel the bones of her pelvis grating apart with the pressure of the child‘s head each time she took a step, making it hard to walk.

She squinted through the snow to the thick line of conifers about three hundred paces ahead. She had done her best with her camp. It was sheltered well behind the tree line in the lee of a rocky hill that, jutting above the peaks of the trees, was the first in a long range of hills leading into the distant Icescarp Alps. Well before her pregnancy had begun to show, she‘d slipped away from her friends and family and travelled the Avarinheim to reach this lonely spot far to the north of her usual forest home. From the first of the autumn months, DeadLeaf-month, she had occupied her days with gathering and storing as many berries, nuts and seeds as she could. As hard as she searched, however, she had found only small amounts of malfari, the sweet fibrous tubers that provided her people with most of their winter sustenance. She had been forced to go without, and fears of what malnourishment might do to her and the child kept her awake at nights. The remains of a few scrawny rabbits, dried into leathery strips, were all she had for meat. She sighed and absently rubbed her belly, trying to ignore the fiery ache in her legs and pelvis, desperately wishing for a few chickens or a goat to supplement her diet. (p.1-3)

Other Notes

* So obviously, I won't be continuing with this book.  Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn't be able to get the other books in the series out here in Vietnam.

There are some indications that this is all just as well.  One of the commenters on my youtube channel wrote: Ah, Wayfarer Redemption.... I enjoyed the 1st book but then just felt like the series got a little too weird for me with very little character development! 

This was a view I found confirmed in a few other places.  When I checked the Internet for reviews of this book, a few of those reviews talked about the series as a whole, and then general consensus is that it just gets weird as it keeps going.  

* I'm reminded of Steve Donoghue's Youtube Video: The Seven Signs of Classical Fantasy!  Steve is defining classical fantasy as pre-1971, which The Wayfarer Redemption is not.  And yet, so much of the cliches that he talks about in this video also apply to The Wayfarer Redemption.  

Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.  (For all its faults, it's incredibly readable).

Weekly Reading Vlogs: 

May 15, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.1-26 

May 22, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.26-44 

June 19, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.44-78

June 26, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.78-124

July 10, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.124-154

July 17, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.154-186

July 24, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.186-212

July 31, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.212-234

August 7, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.234-270

August 14, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.270-320

August 21, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.320-382

August 28, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.382-392

September 4, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.392-402

September 11, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.402-454 

September 18, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.454-488 

September 25, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.488-528 

October 2, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.528-564

October 9, 2022 The Wayfarer Redemption p.564-613

Video Review (playlist HERE)

The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass: Book Review