DUNE

I've juz finished my 2nd reading of Dune yesterday. After my 1st reading a few years back, I dun seem to enjoy it, due to its overtone of bleakness, harsh brutality and lack of romance (not lovey-dovey romance, but heroism, nobility, honour... u know wat I mean). But now that I've read it again in a more matured level, I must say that I'm very very impressed by the book.

A critic said that the only comparable literature with Dune is The Lord of the Rings, but personally I think Frank Herbert constructed an even more detailed world than J.R.R. Tolkien's. Everything, from the characters (The Atreides, Gurney Halleck, Liet Kynes), the organizations (Bene Gesserit, The Guild), the politics (The Great Houses, the Imperium), the culture (Fremen), the philosophy, and even the planet itself, Arrakis aka Dune. It's an amazing feet of sub-creation (A term invented by J.R.R. Tolkien), and really, I can think of no words to describe how good it is.

Nevertheless, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, both by J.R.R. Tolkien, still remain my favourite books of all time. This is simply bcuz as much as I like the painstaking detail of the world of Dune, and the deepness of its philosophy and politics, it is juz simply not as stirring and heroic as The Lord of the Rings. In fact, I still remember how caught up I was when I was reading The Ride of the Rohirrim that I seriously felt like riding into war with all of them!

Therefore I guess Dune will now be 2nd (or should I say 3rd) on my favourite books list after J.R.R. Tolkien's works, and Isaac Asimov's immediately after it. So the problem now is... should I continue reading the Dune saga? All the reviews I've read seem to pointed that none of the books following Dune is as good as it is (with the possible exception of Book 4, God Emperor of Dune). So for now, I guess I'll juz stop reading fiction for the time being and start focusing on Marieb's Human Anatomy and Physiology! Heehee...