Dune: House Harkonnen (Mini-Review)

Dune: House Harkonnen is the second book in the Dune Prequel Trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The ruthless Baron Harkonnen is having trouble holding onto his power. He learns that the Bene Gesserit woman he raped has cursed him with an incurable illness. In a different part of the galaxy Abulurd Rabban has started to realize the duty to his people is greater than his duty to the Baron.

House Harkonnen is shown to be utterly deprived in this book. At least Baron Harkonnen and Glossu Rabban. All those two monsters care about is pushing everyone under their feet. Neither seem to understand the benefits of inspiring loyalty through kind acts and only using cruelty when absolutely necessary. At one point Glossu kills fur whales without caring about doing it properly. Thus ensuring that it will become harder for decades to hunt the valuable creatures.

Though the book is titled after House Harkonnen, I found the Atreides storyline my favorite parts. Leto finally takes Kailea Vernius as his concubine. He takes his father's advice about never marrying for love and only political advantages to heart. While everything is fine at first, their relationship eventually leaves both parties distant. One reason is that Kailea feels that Leto should marry her and finds it a slight that he doesn't. At one point I had to flip ahead to see how things ended because the anticipation was too much for me.

Ever since Dominic Vernius fled into exile, he has kept a low profile. He does have various bases throughout the galaxy and performs small acts of sabotage. So it is extremely stupid that at any point he would talk about his plans to anyone outside of his small group. But, for some reason, he does just that. He doesn't reveal a small act of sabotage, instead he talks about the grand finale of his rebellion. I understand that the authors needed his character arc to end a certain way. However, the end of his character arc seems clumsily done.

Baron Harkonnen decides to try and intimidate the Bene Gesserit into giving him a cure. It is amusing to see him try and bludgeon his way with people that are more clever than him. They can affect how people see the world so they make him believe they've all disappeared. When, in reality, they are only a few feet away. Glossu Rabban makes a mistake and ends up giving the witches two things. First is they can now use Glossu as leverage. The second is that they have a one of a kind ship.

Duncan Idaho's journey to become a Ginaz Swordmaster is fraught with a lot of trials. These include events outside of his actual training. Due to a warring political faction, some students are dismissed from the school. These former students take the shame as showing their support to what they see as a more important cause. Once training is complete, the faction wages war on Ginaz. This ends up helping to show that the people we've spent so long looking up to, aka the Swordmasters who trained Duncan, are horribly human. Something that Duncan needed to learn, but not in the way he did.

I would recommend Dune: House Harkonnen to fans of the Dune series. I would also highly recommend Dune: House Harkonnen to those that love science fiction.