Book Review: "Children of Dune" by Frank Herbert

Children of Dune (1976)
Frank Herbert (1920-1986)
609 pages

[Note: although I make it a point to avoid spoilers in my reviews, this is the third in a trilogy, and it's not possible to write about it without including some context from the earlier books, Dune and Dune Messiah. So, if you haven't read those first two yet, I suggest you jump back to my reviews of them, linked to from the titles.]

At the end of the second book of the Dune trilogy, Dune Messiah, the Emperor Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, wanders off into the desert to die, having been blinded during an uprising against his rule. Shortly before, he learned that his wife had died while giving birth to twins, who he has named Leto and Ghamina.

The third book, Children of Dune, opens with the twins now nine years old. Though still children in appearance, both are pre-born – filled since in their mother’s womb with awareness and access to the lives and knowledge of all their ancestors, going back to long-forgotten Earth. Beyond that, they also share the profound connection that exists between so many twins.

Though young, the pair already face a host of dangers. Their aunt, Alia, has succeeded her brother to rule Dune for House Atreides, and schemes to keep her brother’s progeny from weakening her position on the throne and eventually taking it for themselves. Their grandmother, as representative of the Bene Gesserit order, arrives back on Dune for the first time since her son’s death, wishing to be reunited with her grandchildren, though her true intentions remain a mystery. In a distant star-system, the House Corrino, which Paul had overthrown in his rise to become Emperor, looks to restore their leadership, targeting the twins as an impediment to their desires. And, finally, a mysterious, blind preacher wanders the capital of Dune, questioning the ruling order.

Unsure of whom they can trust, and witness to the chaos that has begun to grow around the rule of Alia, the twins have their own plans for the future of Dune and the Empire. But, can they survive the forces arrayed against them to make their visions a reality?

This third book in the Dune series lies somewhere between the first two in terms of the balance of action and rumination. In the opening novel, Paul grows into his powers amid a heady mixture of intrigue and war that eventually lead to a decisive victory and his assumption of power as Emperor of the federation of planets. This sets the stage for the second book, in which Paul struggles as Emperor with the choices he has made and the violence they have wrought, as well as with the delicate, seemingly impossible task of using his prescience to navigate the Empire toward a peaceful future, even as conspiracies, plots and general human inconstancy complicate his task. Largely foregoing the action-adventure elements of the first book, Herbert spends significant portions of the second taking readers inside Paul’s head, reflecting on, and grappling with, the inherent and profound challenges of rulers from time immemorial.

Now, in Children of Dune, with power up for grabs after Paul’s departure, the action picks up again a bit. Nonetheless, with the palace intrigues and groups grasping for power – whether the twins themselves, their aunt Alia, their grandmother Jessica, or the heads of House Corrino – Herbert again has readers inside the heads of a variety of conspirators, as they consider the ends they wish to achieve, and the perilous paths they pursue.

Ultimately, the action and adventure present in all three of these books serve mostly as a vehicle for Herbert’s true goal: exploring the challenges of leadership, the complex and ever shifting motivations of those who pursue it, and the ceaseless struggle they have to hold on to it once they have it. These stories may be set in a distant future, when humanity has spread far from their Earthly home, but the tale Herbert tells goes back to the earliest kings – and resonates strongly too with the power struggles we witness in the present day.

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Other notes and information:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Palimpsestos" by Christina del Río Fuentes

Palimpsestos: Las Huellas del Tiempo en la Arquitectura (2022)
(Palimpsests: The Traces of Time in Architecture)
Christina del Río Fuentes
Prologue: Alfonso Carvajal
93 pages

If when you wander down a street, whether in your hometown or somewhere half a world away, you tend to find your attention captured by evidence in the buildings of earlier structures or uses – incongruities in facades along a block, differences in the style from the street level to higher stories, or fading, wall-painted ads for former stores – then architect Christina del Río Fuentes has written a book that will speak directly to your heart. Her marvelous essay Palimpsestos: Las Huellas del Tiempo en la Arquitectura (Palimpsests: The Traces of Time in Architecture) invites us to seek out such accumulations of architectural changes in a place, and to consider what they reveal about that location’s inhabitants and the evolution of their hopes and dreams.

She opens by explaining her use of the word Palimpsests, describing it as coming from the Greek palimpsestos ‘scaped again’, originally meaning a writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) that has been used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased. But the word has also come to mean, quoting from Merriam-Webster, “something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.” Del Río Fuentes ultimately finds both of these meanings applicable, as the diverse layers of architectural style in a place often result from earlier structures that have been repurposed or built over.

After first acknowledging the evidence of lasting human impact on the natural world (we do, after all, live in an age that some have labeled the Anthropocene), del Río Fuentes focuses for most the book on the kinds of palimpsests found in the evolution of cities. She describes three types of such impacts on a city’s architectural style: scars, “vestiges of the past that have remained present,” (36) say after a place has been rebuilt in the wake of a catastrophic fire; strata, groups of architectural elements that have become integrated with other groups that come before or after, as cities evolve to reflect changes in their inhabitants’ needs and desires; and, collage of time, in which buildings remain from the past but have been renovated to reflect a changed cultural vision of a city’s inhabitants, for which she provides a particularly vivid example of the present-day Roman-catholic cathedral in Cordoba that was originally a mosque build by the Moors. She closes her essay with examples from cities that exhibit each of these architectural histories.

By integrating cultural and historical considerations with the physical reality of the architectural styles, del Río Fuentes brings cityscapes alive in her essay. What at first glance appear as mute collections of buildings reveal themselves as

[not] a constructed territory, but rather an accumulation of distinct transformations. They appear as dynamic cities in which their development, their changes, give rise to unforeseeable models. (47)

By demonstrating that these transformations have analogues in the work of artists, she reveals how the evolution of the structure of a place is driven by its inhabitants, and that the dynamism of the architecture comes out of their evolving cultural norms and priorities.

After reading Palimpsests, you’ll surely see your hometown differently, becoming attuned to the mixture of styles present, the scars sometimes left as new replaces old, and the variety of surprising layers hidden often in plain sight.

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Other notes and information:
While I was in the middle of Palimpsests, I happened to read Jacinto Antón’s interview of the photographer Isabel Muñoz in El País Semanal (9 July 2023, The Dawn of Civilization, Pictured at Night) LINKLINK regarding her stunning pictures of the Turkish site Göbekli Tepe, which triggered a direct connection. Göbekli Tepe is described as “a meeting place built by groups of hunter-gatherers in the dawn of the Neolithic age (Neolithic preceramic, 9600-7000 BC), during the transition to the first permanent settlements.” In the article, a Turkish archaeologist, Necmi Karul, comments that 

They are spaces of socialization and memory. In the pillars, we see images, for the large part of animals, that must have formed part of a collective memory. The buildings are architecture living and renewable (we see that the reliefs were replaced), they are living constructions, that indicate to us a new style of living. (italics mine)

To my understanding, Palimpsests is only available in Spanish. But it’s a relatively short essay, and if one knows some Spanish, and is willing to proceed with a dictionary at one’s side, it can be tackled. (Translations of the quotes above from the book, as well as from the magazine article, are mine.)

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf