Review: Children of Dune

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On first look, it kind of surprises me how polarizing the reaction to this book seems. A number of fans of the original Dune (and perhaps less-so Dune Messiah) seem to hate on this book and the rest of the series, whereas others would see it as just as good if not better than before - one of my friends went so far as to tell me that Children is actually the REAL Dune. So I went into this book curious of that prospect, mentioning last time that the previous sequel, Messiah, felt significant but incomplete in some senses.

Having finished it, I would say that I appreciate Dune Messiah more now after reading this, as I realize now how that book could stand alone without this one. It really was meant to be a more introspective look into Paul's character post-Dune, whereas Children of Dune for the most part feels very different without Paul as the central narrative focus. As the title would suggest, the attention in this book is on his children who were born at the end of the previous book, the twins Leto and Ghanima, although the attention goes more towards Leto- particularly so in the latter half as the story progresses towards him confronting the issues that his father was unable to deal with at the end of Messiah. Children is effectively Leto's coming of age story just as Dune was for Paul, but with much different results, and as such it feels like the beginning of a new arc as much as it does a conclusion to Paul's story.

The plot here is better balanced between action and talking/plotting than Messiah was, which I think is partly due to the longer length of Children. I guess a Dune book wouldn't be complete without lots and lots of competing factions and interests and political machinations going down, and there's plenty of that to be had here. Alia's internal conflict as a pre-born "Abomination" serves as one of the driving forces of the events in this book, and combined with Leto's rise to power, it makes for a rather engaging story overall. However, none of the characters really reach up to the same level of depth or interest as Paul did in the previous books, to be honest (although I'm glad Jessica is back, after missing her in the last one). Leto probably comes closest, but his (and Ghanima's) unusually precocious nature as a 9-year-old makes him come across as infinitely more creepy than Alia ever did, and that makes it rather harder to appreciate him as a main character in the same vein as Paul.

In addition, one of the major events in this book doesn't really make much... narrative sense, to me anyway. I won't say what it is for risk of spoiling, but the book claims the presence of foreshadowing in Messiah that I felt was vague enough in that book to potentially have been anything. So when this moment does come, it feels very out of the blue, and from my understanding is part of the reason why some of the other reviewers on goodreads feel that the Dune series went off the deep end with this book. And I can sympathize with that, because to be frankly honest, the manner in which this event resolves most of the of the plot threads in this book and its influence on future ones feels almost like a deus ex machina. If it weren't for my interest in the conflicts themselves, it would've made my eyes roll.

So at the end of it all, I'd say that Children of Dune has a lot of interesting ideas, but as with its predecessor, the execution feels a little off, but in the opposite sense from before. Where Messiah lacked in plot and pacing, it made up for it thematically in its handling of Paul's story arc, whereas conversely Children has a better plot but comes with some questionable design decisions in the story/characters and even in the context of the overall series. As before, I feel like I have to read the next book to really get the overall message here, but to be honest I don't really feel as interested or invested in doing so (or should I say, ugh... more Leto). It'll probably be a long while before I get to next one, if I ever do.