Articles tagged with: Books

Book: Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah

The first Dune book got me even more interested in Frank Herbert's universe, so I had to keep reading. I recently finished the second physical title (according to the "internal" numeration, it would be the fourth book), so here comes a small review.

Again, the first half of the book was very slow-paced. There are many moving pieces, at times unclear exactly to what purpose, and very detailed conversations and explanations of the state of things (12 years have passed since the first book's events). But then, everything begins to connect; events, plots, and characters advance.

It is a different book, not a mere continuation. The main character, Paul, feels tormented by his foresight; his close friends doubt him, and people question his decisions or directly conspire against him. And some new characters are disturbing, specially the "gholas", clones of deceased humans with metallic eyes and reprogrammed memory (but recalling most of their past).

You won't find here the same positive and encouraging story of the rising of a hero against oppressors. But it gets fascinating, with a thrilling "last act" finishing with an ending that makes you want more.

Posted on 2023-11-25

Book: Frank Herbert's Dune

Dune is a science fiction story set in a distant future where noble houses rule different planets, alongside an Emperor and his elite Sardaukar troops, and a powerful trading guild that controls space travel. The plot follows a young Paul Atreides and his family as they take charge of Arrakis, a desert planet that is the only source of a valuable substance called melange or 'spice'. The spice extends life and enhances mental abilities, and it is crucial for space travel. The Atreides arrive to Arrakis to control it by the Emperor's orders, but things won't be as easy. The story explores complex themes of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotions as different factions in the empire clash over control of the planet and its invaluable spice.

Yet another timeless classic that I had pending and decided to go for. In this case, even more so because Dune 2 is one of my all time favourite videogames, so I felt I had a pending debt to settle. And I like both the old and new movies, so needed to see the source of it all.

I've enjoyed the book so much so as to plan to keep reading at least one more book (potentially until God Emperor of Dune, included). I knew it was good but didn't expected to hook me in so much. At times it felt like The Lord of The Rings, providing long and detailed descriptions of seemingly trivial characters, scenarios and details. Then, the "characters thinking" technique (you read what they think at times, not only what they say) is different and interesting, providing with additional details and more insight on how and why different characters act the way they do.

It is also different from what I expected: The scarce technology (the Ornithopters, meelee shields, spice harvesters, and some "laser weapons", but not much more) was a surprise to me; In the strategy videogame there are tons of vehicles, troops with different long range weapons, but in the book fuel is scarce and vehicles at times deteriorated, combats are mostly melee, and in general everything feels not as futuristic as you'd imagine. Reading at Wikipedia I saw that the author wanted to replicate a feudalism-like setting, much more focused on the human and politics side of things, and it is clearly there.

The only thing that I can complain about is that the pacing begins very slow, but speeds up and actually jumps ahead years by the end (few, but still), giving the sensation that you missed something in the middle. It is a long book, and yet I expected more things to happen in the kind of "final story arc", instead being a bit short. But maybe was just me wanting to read more about the intriguing Fremen, the Shai-hulud, and Arrakis itself.

A sci-fi must read.

Posted on 2023-09-17

Book: Siege of Terra: The End and the Death: Volume I

The Horus Heresy Warhammer 40,000 novels have always been about expanding some basic lore concepts known since long: The Emperor created 20 space marine primarchs, the forces of Chaos spread them through the galaxy, The Emperor reunited them, at a certain point some, led by the favourite and warmaster primarch Horus Lupercal rebel, and although in the end are defeated, slain some loyal primarchs and leave the emperor heavily wounded and destined to sit forever in the golden throne.

After more than 50 books on the general story arc, Games Workshop/Black Library (their editorial wing) decided to elongate the money making machine a bit more, and divide the final confrontation (the Siege of Terra) in apparently another further 9 titles. Don't get me wrong, lore is the single best thing about the Warhammer 40k universe, but at times is clear the lore expansion is secondary to adding more volumes.

Although this novel is the 8th title on the Siege of Terra series, I wanted to begin with it because it's the most critical point: Loyalists are losing the war, the enemy is almost at the palace gates, reinforcements are not going to arrive in time, and the Emperor must do a final gambit to turn the tides: Go out and fight Horus.

So I'm probably missing a lot of context on some of the characters, and I indeed felt some of the side-stories felt a bit lacking information, so that's on me. But being a long book (more than 650 pages according to my eReader), and considering there will be a second volume (I sincerely hope they don't go too far and make it 3 parts), while reading I got the impression that there was a significant amount of fill content. The story advances, but at slow and very deliberate steps, also leaving you with a multi-faceted cliffhanger everywhere.

The writing is excellent, and having a lot of small chapters, each focusing on one of the characters or "groups" helps to keep clarity, but my impression was that it is intertwining, twisting together both three really important story lines (the Emperor, Malcador, and Horus) with lots of, at least for now, weird secondary quests and adventures, some of them a bit odd and even a tad silly.

Still, I think it's a good read, and combined with the remaining volume will become the new expanded lore about that truly important moment in the WH 40k universe. It could simply have contained the whole story in a single title.

Posted on 2023-06-05

Long ago I reviewed Diablo III: The Book of Cain, and as you might guess, Diablo III: The Book of Tyrael continues on similar grounds, expanding the lore and adding some new beautiful drawings into the mix.

This title is not as appealing as the first one, because it picks most of the texts and notes from the Diablo 3 and often merely expands them, decorating the content but not really adding anything new. It does however fill details only vaguely hinted at in the game, such as the witch Adria's background, and a lot of filling around the factions, clans, character classes and cities seen and mentioned in the game.

Having notes from multiple sources (Leah, Deckard Cain and Tyrael), at times feels a bit chaotic, but in general works nice and makes it feel a bit more "casual", a collection of notes joined together instead of a real book. I disliked a bit that the font is a bit small and the background is not bright enough, so at times is not easy to read the text, I get that the illustrations are great but legibility should come first.

Sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, that's my general feeling about it.

Posted on 2023-04-06

The Thing is one of my all-time favourite movies. After watching it again recently, I spent hours inside IMDB's trivia and fact sections, and when one comment mentioned "the novel", I had to dig deeper. I then found not only that there is a novel about the movie, but the even more interesting fact that the novel is based on the movie script, but not on the movie itself. This means that there are a few differences between both, making the book a nice addition. After reading it, here are my thoughts.

First of all, the book contains way more dialogue and background details about the party members. In some cases would still feel like redundant information in the movie, but at times the dialogs provide better explanations, like why folks act as they do, or we learn that Macready is a Vietnam veteran (not just a badass pilot). I must say that the movie still was able to compress and distill the most relevant parts of the conversations, it is still quite comprehensible. Just not as detailed.

There are also a few scenes totally missing from the film and a few others that were shortened, especially during the second half of the book. The last chunk, without spoiling anything, is very similar in concept, but with a few notable changes in execution.

And of course, there are a noticeable amount of changes: While "the thing" in the movie is very shape-changing, the book tends to attempt to revert to its original form (or at least a preferred form), resulting in many of the scenes involving the creature playing differently. The expedition voices way more of their thinking on how they guess the monster thinks and acts, providing more context on why they later do other actions. MacReady's character feels a bit different too, maybe having too many angles inside a not-too-long book (around 200 pages).

Overall, the reading felt like a very curious experience, something very familiar and known, and yet new and different. Recommended if you enjoyed the movie.

I wonder if there are more similar cases of books written before the movie was filmed...

Posted on 2023-01-22