Book: Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Publisher: Hodder
Published: 1965
Seeing as the film everyone has been talking about is out today, like many others have clocked, it seems like as good a day as any to post a review of the book. To many, this is to modern sci-fi what Tolkien was to modern fantasy or the Beatles were to pop music. By no means the beginning of the genre, indeed very far from it, but the seminal work from which a vast swathe of subsequent works owe a huge debt of inspiration.
It is a very weird book in places, and its wavy, undulating plot and prose put me in mind a great deal of Moby Dick. There are parts that seemingly serve little purpose other than as worldbuilding, and its third-person omniscient perspective can be quite alien itself to modern readers.
Apart from that it still lives up to its pedigree. The protagonist is the prodigal Paul Atreides, the apparent result of centuries, or millennia of selective breeding being ruined in one generation by a Bene Gesserit courtesan who accidentally falls in love with the man to who she is assigned. His father is put in charge of the planet Arrakis, the one place in the universe from where the ultra-valuable substance which grants interstellar travel is derived. Without a steady supply of Spice, the Empire can’t function, but it is not the high honour it seems. Duke Leto, his prescient wife and son, and indeed almost all his advisers, are fully aware that it is a trap. Just not one they can possibly avoid.
So to survive on Arrakis they must stay ahead of the plots of the Aterides’ rival family headed by the odious Baron Harkonnen. If you haven’t read it I really don’t want to go to much further as it is very much a book of two halves.
Definitely going to watch the film when I can though not sure whether I will get to see it on the ig screen, but we’ll see
Beer: Brithop
Brewery: Buxton Brewery
Style: IPA
Strength: 6.8%
If I rocked up to a desert Oasis and instead of water found a pool of this I would leave with my vision a Blur and die hoppy. In a word, this beer is Lush. Buxton have once again proven they are no Charlatans. No, I will not apologise for those awful puns.
Burch's Books and Beers 