The Baby-Face Baron (Dune 'Book 2')

Thinking Man Book Club Week 4

Melissa’s Comments:

I wanted to like it. I really did. However, despite doubling my pace and reading the entirety of Book 2 of Dune, I’m finding myself with shockingly little to say.

There are a couple interesting tidbits here. Paul mentioned his own “terrible purpose” this time (a subtle departure—he’d previously only used this phrase to describe the Bene Gesserit).

And the Bene Gesserit/predetermined nature of events thing remains the most interseting part of the book. Paul is seeing into the future, foreseeing a holy war whose coming he seems to be instrumental in, and realizing that there’s little he can do to stop it.

Admittedly, the coming Jihad was kind of spoiled for me by our old friend Trump Worm.

The book seems to be getting better, though by no stretch of the imagination would I ever recommend it to anybody.

Sorry, Dune fans. The world’s on your side. I, however, am just anxious to wrap up our reading of it next week and never think about it again. 

John’s Comments:

When did we start reading Lolita? That’s a joke, but for a book that looks like it’s heading towards a fight to the death between two 15 year old boys, there sure is a lot of discussion regarding their “sweet bods”—Frank Herbert’s words, not mine.

Book 2 started off pretty rough for me. It was tough to get through at first, but surprisingly picked up quite a bit at the end. The knife fight between Jamis and Paul was fun to read. Jessica’s drug-induced visions were also a nice touch.

But the qualities of the book that I hated have still persisted, and I don’t think it’s going to change. As usual, you can’t get through a moment of Paul doing something cool without Herbert grabbing you by the collar and screaming at you to know how cool it is. We get it, he’s fighting a grown man in a knife fight, we don’t need Jessica stating how mature he is over and over.

After the passing of Leto, my favorite character switched over to Liet-Kynes—who promptly died just as something cool was building with him.

Speaking of Kynes, isn’t it weird that his daughter banged Paul the same day she found out her father died? Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it wasn’t the same day. The passage of time has been the biggest challenge with the book lately. Has it been hours, days, weeks, months? The Baron was just salivating over how in a year or two, once his nephew turned 17, he would have a smoking hot body (weird). And then we’re reading about his 17th birthday gladiator duel where a woman wants to pork him for his bloodline.

Maybe you’re saying, well there’s the two year mark passing. But is it? If it was, it should have been more clear. It seemed like Paul’s story took place over a few days while they jumped forward two years in the Harkonnen portion of it. Do you get my confusion?

Also, the baron’s baby fat face is my new most hated description in the book. How can a grown man described so grotesquely have a baby fat face? It makes me imagine a literal baby head on top of a horribly obese body being held up by suspenders as described, while the baby is also checking out underage teens. It’s weird.

Other than that. I’m ready to see what Book 3 has in store to wrap this puppy up.