Chapter 50


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Freakzilla
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Chapter 50

Post by Freakzilla »

The future of prescience cannot always be locked into the rules of the past. The
threads of existence tangle according to many unknown laws. Prescient future
insists on its own rules. It will not conform to the ordering of the Zensunni
nor to the ordering of science. Prescience builds a relative integrity. It
demands the work of this instant, always warning that you cannot weave every
thread into the fabric of the past.

-Kalima: The Words of Muad'Dib, The Shuloch Commentary

Muriz flies them into Schuloch. In the butte's center there is a pan ringed with canyons, each one containing a worm trappend in the canyon by a qanat filled with water and sandtrout. They are selling worms and sandtrout offworld at Paul's suggestion. Leto is led into a crude hut and inside is Sabiha, who has been cast out of Jacurutu, who bolts out the door and takes off running. Leto goes out to talk to her where she stands at the edge of a qanat, muriz right behind. She has been sent here to die for letting Leto escape. He tells them he has followed her here to find his future and begins to cry. They are awed by this. He tells Muriz to pray for Kralizec and promises him it will come.
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georgiedenbro
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Re: Chapter 50

Post by georgiedenbro »

I read this chapter with my wife last night, after a bit of a hiatus in getting through the book. We found Dune and D:M fairly easy to read and get through as narratives, but CoD seemed to her to be particularly vexxing, with me having to explain repeatedly what was going on in scenes. But I don't mean explaining the literal text, but rather the context and the possible meanings of exchanges. And this is where I'm starting to realize that CoD is a deeply problematic book. I know it's Freakzilla's favorite, so I'll avoid saying anything too caustic, but my feeling about the book has always been tenuous. While I could easily describe both the plot and the meta-plot (what each faction is looking to get out of the situation even if they don't say it outright) of most of the books, it has always been hard for me to recount what CoD is about. The literal story is structured in a funny way, because events happen far apart with a lot of thinking and pondering between; but the meta-story is so infuriating because you have multiple columns running in every single scene.

By "multiple columns" I mean that two people are talking, and you need to track the conversation along two columns: If person A is actually allied with Alia then their comments mean this, whereas if person B is against Alia then their conversation means something else too. And in fact usually two columns isn't enough, but you need to keep the interpretation very open-ended. At no point in any conversations can be decisively say you know which side a given character is on, and so you really don't know how the conversation impacts on the plot.

To wit there are several factions at work here:
-Alia and her people. Alia wants to rule, probably to kill the twins eventually.
-The twins: they want the Golden Path, which we are kept in the dark about so far.
-The BG: we barely know what they want, but it probably involves breeding Ghanima with Farad'n, possibly eliminating Jessica and Leto II.
-Jessica + Gurney: It's hard to know what Jessica wants, since she herself doesn't even know if she's on the BG's side or not. She is training Farad'n, presumably also with the intention to protect both of the twins if Leto II survives the tests Gurney is putting to him.
-The rebels: It seemed like Namri might have been a rebel of sorts, but now we learn he's one of Alia's men, and maybe Muriz and the Shuloch people are rebels (i.e. anti-Alia). This is really hard to tell.

The main problem is we barely ever know who is on whose side at any time, so their actions have no clear impact on the reader in shifting things toward one faction or the others. This makes it nearly impossible to see where the story is going. Even worse is that we're in the dark about the Golden Path so far, so even though the twins are their own faction, we don't even know what they want.

This chapter hammered home all of these difficulties, and made it clearer to me why I've always had trouble running through the plot threads of this book in my mind. It's realistic in a real world sense that if you were a spy or agent you'd never be quite sure whose side anyone is on, but in a book that lack of clarity makes it very hard to see narrative drive. Each chapter plays more like a puzzle whose solution may or may not be given later on.

I still enjoy all the books of the series, but I think FH made a mistake with this one, making the plot arcs too opaque with uncertainty. Having some unknowns, like what the Golden Path is, might work, but too many and every scene is mired in scratching your head wondering what the outcome meant. Just as an example, even I'm at a loss to explain to my wife what these cast-out from Jacurutu are about. They appear to me the original residents of Jacurutu - water thieves - but now have been exiled...but are still in contact with the current residents of Jacurutu. Are they allied? On different sides of the political issue? I have no idea.
Last edited by georgiedenbro on 05 Aug 2022 09:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Chapter 50

Post by Cpt. Aramsham »

I suppose you can take… comfort? in the fact that none of these subplots actually go anywhere or end up mattering at all. Only Leto's storyline ends up being relevant.
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